item details
Overview
This magazine was published by Der Deutsche Arbeitsfront (The German Labour Front) in 1940. The German Labour Front was established by the Nazi government in 1933 after all German trade unions were dissolved. Both employees and employers were forced into the Der Deutsche Arbeitsfront, and by 1942 its membership totalled 25 million people. Controlling the organisation of labour allowed the Nazi Party to spread propaganda in workplaces – aiming to assimilate workers into a ‘national community’ – and direct resources towards armament and strengthening the national economy.
The front cover features the insignia of the German Labour Front; a swastika inside a wheel. The swastika was an ancient Eurasian motif appropriated by the Nazi Party in the 1920s and associated with the idea of a racially ‘pure’ state. As the most recognizable symbol of the Nazi regime, the swastika came to represent fascism, terror, and the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.
Te Papa collected the magazine in 2008 for the purposes of education and to remove it from commercial circulation.
References:
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. ‘Foundations of the Nazi State’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2017. ‘History of the Swastika’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. ‘Robert Ley’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. ‘The Nazi Terror Begins’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
- Welch, David. 1993. ‘Manufacturing a Consensus: Nazi Propaganda and the Building of a ‘National Community’ (Volksgemeinschaft)’. Contemporary European History 2 (no. 1, March): 1-15.