JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

This image comes from an uncommon and somewhat surprising work, Der Weltkrieg in Seiner Rauhen Wirklichkeit¹, by Hermann Rex (“Kriegsphotographen”), which was published in Oberammergau in 1926, eight years after the end of the war.  Mr. Rex really put the “krieg” in “kreigsphotographen”–unlike the more commonly seen very tightly controlled photographs made by the news photo service participants on the Allied side, the images in this book can be very gritty, bloody, damaging, and were hardly the stuff made for contemporary publishing–they represent a “more real” “Wirklichkeit”/(reality) than that most usually seen.  

I am not sure how Mr. Rex came to make the photograph below of German POWs in a British “collection” station as it would have worked out very nicely for Allied propaganda purposes, displaying all of these thousands of German prisoners:

There were more than 8 million POWs during the course of the war, making about 5,550 POWs every day for four years.  

Notes:

1. There are more than 600 photographs in this book, a massive effort.  Rex was “Operateur des Kriegs-Bild- und Filmamtes im Dienste der Obersten  Heeresleitung von 1914-1918”.