Category: Militaria

Food Bomb, 1942

JF Ptak Science Books Post 285

In an earlier post (The Most LIterary Fireworks Catalog Ever Published? The Naming of Explosions) I wrote a little bit about names found on shells and the naming of explosions. The chances for adding to this category are slim, given the ephemeral nature of the item of discussion–I did however stumble upon this Food Bomb, found in the 25 April 1942 issue of The Illustrated London News. “Guten Hunger”, the inscription on this “bomb” (basically “good appetite” or “eat well” or “down the hatch”) was actually “not a weapon of destruction, but an enormous food container” that was going to be dropped on the German soldiers on some slender part of the Eastern Front. In April the situation was turning now away for the Germans with the Soviet counter offensive, and it was still cold. Something like 3 million German soldiers would be awarded the service medal for the Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42–not many of them would get to look at it after 1945. The campaign in the east against their former allies started on 7 June 1941 (and named variously die Ostfront 1941-1945, der Rußlandfeldzug 1941-1945 (Russian campaign) or der Ostfeldzug 1941-1945 (Eastern Campaign)) and lasted to mid-May, 1945, when the campaign line shrunk from as far away as Moscow back down to east Berlin.

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Militaria — Naming Things
The Propaganda of Restricting Infomration: Dorothea Lange’s Photos at the Japanese “Relocation” Camp, Manzanar, 1942

JF Ptak Science Books Post 283

After having written a number of pots dealing with overt propaganda issues—surrender leaflets, Nazi pamphlets on the impending invasion of Germany by Poland and Czechoslovakia, American reassurances about how to survive the coming nuclear holocaust by covering yourself with table linen, British home hearts and minds campaign about how well your loved one POWs are being treated by the Germans—I thought to write a little something on the other side of propaganda, which is simply to not publish information. One case is that of the great social photographer and one of the dozen or so mainstays of perhaps the greatest American photographic collaborative ever—Historical Section of the Farm Security administrations*–Dorothea Lange. Lange worked for the FSA—which had begun life as the ominously-named Resettlement Administration, the photographic section of which was to document the good that the government was doing helping the drought and depression refugees find new life and hope elsewhere in the country outside of their own money-ravaged areas—taking mostly landscape and architectural pictures through the height of the Depression. The time that she broke character (so to speak) and made portraits produced some of the most memorable or at least famous images from this period o American history, the most outstanding of which is the five-photo series of a female bean picker and her three children who were living out of the back of their wheel-less car in a potato-less potato field in California known as the Migrant Mother. (The making of these extraordinary images is another story for another post—suffice to say that the narrative of the history of that photograph is exceptional.) I’ve always felt that the Roosevelt administration viewed this image as being just a little too much reality than it wanted to exhibit.

This was positively the case with Lange’s photographs of the Japanese at the Manzanar concentration camp (relocation camp) in where more than 10,000 American citizens of Japanese heritage were forced to live between 1942 and 1945. This was one of camps that were established by virtue Franklin Roosevelt’s February 1942 Executive Order 9066** to imprison more than 100,000 American (70,000 of whom were U.S. citizens, including children) for the duration of the war (compared to a few camps that were designated to hold white American citizen of the other countries that were fighting, mainly of German and Italian descent, 1,500 and 300 of whom were actually imprisoned, respectively). It was a grave, undistinguished, embarrassing move brought on by the hyper hysteria in the months following Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese at the Manzanar concentration camp were from the west coast who were bused away from their homes and lives and businesses with extremely limited notice, and who were forced to sell nearly all possessions (including lands and businesses) at what were less than fire sale prices. They were made to board buses and trains and were shipped to locations (mainly in California) where they were processed and sent further and deeper into the trying hinterlands of the west for their final destinations until the war was won. (One of the processing centers was the Santa Anita racetrack, where thousands of Japanese were sent to live for periods in converted, just-painted horse stalls.) Manzanar itself is well enough out there—removed, trying, desolate, difficult. Beautiful, too , if you weren’t in prison there. It was a high desert plateau with the snow-capped sierras, ringing the place; no grass, barely a tree, with extreme temperatures and a tough wind that was freezing in the winter and blew hot in the summer…tough enough to make it hard to keep the tar paper on the roof and sides of the thinly constructed barracks that held these people. While every other relocation camp had barbed wire and guard towers, Manzanar had none—its location was so remote and difficult that it made the construction of these inferior barriers unnecessary.

As difficult was life was at Manzanar, and having being completely torn off of the American map and their way of life, the Japanese at the camp established irrigation systems and gardens, made their own furniture from bits and scraps, established a newspaper, created a government, schools, police, and so on, making their life as orderly and hospitable as possible. Dorothea Lange was allowed, after repeated requests to the US Army, to enter the facility and make a photographic record of what she saw. And what she saw and photographed was the courage and dignity of the people that she find there in the mists of deprivation and devastation—her photos were remarkable for their sincerity and insight.

And it was for precisely this reason that almost know of them were ever seen. Bits and piece emerged here and there—four in Survey Graphic in 1942 (Vol. 31, No. 9, Sept. 1942), two others here, two others there—but they were almost entirely restricted. As a matter of fact they were stamped “Impounded”, and relegated to the future.

The FSA became the Office of War Information in 1942 as well, which might explain why this propagandistic move dismissing their existence for want of fairer reception of the American war effort at home.. It wasn’t until 1972 that 27 more of them were released and received a public showing at the Whitney in NYC in a show called Executive Order 9066, and which were reviewed in the NY Times by A.D. Coleman as “documents of such a high order that they convey the feelings of the victims as well as the facts of the crime.”

Lange wasn’t the only big-name photographer zipping around Manzanar–Ansel Adams was there, too, as a friend of the camp administrator. Adams had free access to the camp, and could basically come and go as he pleased, which didn’t sit well with Lange, who had a hard go of her permissions with the Army. It was also something that she never let go of, either, as the Adams photos really didn’t get into the Being of the place like Lange’s did. Actually, one of the great, iconic images made by Adams comes from this period, and as it turns out, its one of those odd sorts of photos that turns in the opposite direction of what the photographer was there “for”. Mount Williamson is just a drop-dead shot to be sure. It is also an image of what the Japanese in the concentration camp were looking out at. Adams turns his camera around, around from the disgrace, and takes one of his greatest images. (I’ve listened to my wife Patti Digh, who is an (excellent) photographer, talk about photographers “making” photographs; I’m sure that before her I used “taking” and “making” photographs interchangeably. But “making” it should be, as you’re not owning or lifting the image away.) In this case, however, as monumental as Adams was or is, he definitely “took” this one. Stole it.

An excellent book on these photos is found in Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro, Impounded, Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (W.W. Norton, 2006).

*This incredible group included: Arthur Rothstein, Carl Mydans (up to the summer of 1936), Walker Evans (up to September 1937) Ben Shahn, Dorothea Lange (with interruptions up to 1942). Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, John Vachon, Jack Delano, John Collier. This group produced upwards of 270,000 negatives, with 77,000 or so prints available at the Prints and Photographs room of the Library of Congress in a row of double-backed file cabinets. Many thousands are available online at loc.gov I am told by a reliable historian that I am wrong in thinking that Lange was fired because of her too-intolerably human photos, but for budgetary problems.
.
**The following is the text of 9066, which basically authorized a 60-mile swath of the Pacific Coast as a military zone subject to national defense requirements, the principal object of which was to remove all Japanese residents from the area for fear of them being enemy agents and saboteurs. To accompany this I mad a WORDLE text map of the document, just to see what popped up.

Executive Order No. 9066
The President, Executive Order
Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas

Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104);

Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded there from, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.

I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area hereinabove authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.
I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.

This order shall not be construed as modifying or limiting in any way the authority heretofore granted under Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941, nor shall it be construed as limiting or modifying the duty and responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with respect to the investigation of alleged acts of sabotage or the duty and responsibility of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, prescribing regulations for the conduct and control of alien enemies, except as such duty and responsibility is superseded by the designation of military areas hereunder.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
The White House,
February 19, 1942.

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Militaria — Psychology
Humanitarian Propaganda–Hope for those at Home, September 1944.

JF Ptak Science Books Post 281

War propaganda is distributed across all levels of society during a time of conflict. I’ve made a number of posts concerning Nazi and Japanese propaganda but no so much on the Allies’ side. These two pamphlets come from a small stash of mine relating to Red Cross activities and prisoners of war (POWs).

The young man in the illustration seems extremely fulsome for being a POW–he’s healthy-looking, shaved, with good meat on his bones; he has a (white) shirt and an undershirt, and his bed has sheets, blanket and a pillow-cased pillow. The item he has received is a big thick sweater,something I’m sure that the Nazis would allow their prisoner to have rather than one of their own soldiers.

It is very interesting to note that the closest thing that I can come to the “Stalag 3” on the package that was received by the fellow on the pamphlet cover is the famous Stalag Luft III–scene of the real-life Great Escape and about 100 miles from Berlin, where 55 Allied prisoners made it out in the escape, and 75 captured. The order from Hitler itself was for all of the captured prisoners were to be executed; he lightened the edict some under the insistence of some of his inner circle, and decreed that “more than half” of the captured were to be executed and cremated. The result was that 50 of these men were indeed executed. Word of the atrocity reached the outside world and by July of 1944–three months before this pamphlet was printed–Anthony Eden called (from the floor of Parliament) for those responsible for this crime (and violation of the Geneva Convention) to be brought to justice as war criminals. With all of this so fresh in September 1944 I wonder if the use of the address in the package on the cover of this pamphlet was intended or not.
The camp came to hold 10,000 prisoners, was 52 acres in size and had a five-mile fence perimeter. A Stalag :Luft III website contained this interesting commentary about Red Cross packages:

Food was always very close to a prisoner’s heart. Germany, involved in a total war, had difficulties enough feeding its own people. Feeding POWs was well down on the list of priorities. The German POW rations were insufficient to sustain health and failed to meet the requirements of the Geneva Convention. Had the International Red Cross not shipped food parcels to all Allied POW camps except to the Russians, serious malnutrition would have been common. The Red Cross offer to feed the Russian POWs was spurned by Stalin. The receipt of the Red Cross food parcels suffered from the uncertainties of the wartime rail service in Germany and the caprice of the Germans who would withhold delivery of the food as group punishment.

The second pamphlet is still understated but far more menacing than the first, especially if you removed the pressed, smiling figure with the can of happiness in his hand, the image takes on a much darker tone. The other prisoner is heavy lidded, sunken and unkempt, and sitting; there is of course the barbed wire, and the looming and large silhouette of the Nazi guard, who although obviously standing in front of these two men is not casting his shadow on them, just on the barracks. There’s quite a a few suba rosa messages going on here, making the spiffy smiling POW seem almost like a ghost of chance and possibility compared to the reality of the sallow seated POW.

This pamphlet was produced in April, 1943 and called for “next-of-kin” pamphlet which could include “additional (?) food, invalid comforts, warm clothing, educational facilities, indoor games and books, musical instruments and of course Braille and aural comforts”. It assures the relatives that every effort is made to deliver the packages, with “positive evidence that the packages are received in camps safely and in adequate quantities”. Not only that, but “every effort is made to maintain a reserve in Geneva which may be drawn upon in time of need”. I guess that this would send a strong hint to everyone involved that the efforts were so successful that a surplus is maintained “just in case”.

A letter from a POW (“from a Prisoner’s letter”) is also included for good measure: “My Red Cross Parcel is really a wonderful affair–all good, nourishing foodstuffs, and I am sure it will do a world of good”. If this clean, utterly hopeful little pamphlet didn’t do the trick to ease the worst fears of relatives of POWs, I couldn’t imagine much else that would.

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Militaria — Prints–looking HARD/deeply at
Odd-looking Technical Inventions: the Blohm and Voss “141” Surveillance Aircraft, 1942

JF Ptak Science Books Post 276

Talk about an unusual-looking aircraft: during the Second World War the Blohm u. Voss “BV 141” may have defined that category. This image appeared in The Illustrated London News for 23 May 1942, drawn by the indomitable G.H. Davis, and gives an excellent view of what the editors called “a lop-sided freak”. Perhaps the editors of the ILN wanted to educate its readers on the plane since it was supposed to be widely employed on the Russian Front, though it looks like only 38 were ever built (and none survive today). Actually, the plane, designed by Dr. Richard Vogt (1894-1979), was a high-flying three-seater surveillance aircraft capable of 220 mph at 17,000 feet, powered by a single 1000 hp Bramo Fafnir 9-cylinder radial engine. The idea for the design was to give the pilot and co-pilot a very wide field of view–and by this, I’m guessing that the field of view most affected and aided by this would be straight down. The rear gunner also had an enormous field of view.

As it turns out Vogt survived the war and spent his Golden Years in the U.S., seven of them (1960-1966) with Boeing to evaluate hydrofoils and vertical liftoff systems: he had built other odd planes during his career, and carried them with them into near-retirement, making this sort of design his metier.

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Aviation & flight — Militaria — Technology, History of
Abbreviating Auschwitz: the Construction Contract for the Building of Auschwitz III

JF Ptak Science Books

This document of death, this pamphlet is the Auschwitz III Construction Contract between IG Farben and the Confederazione Fascista degli Industriali for Construction of the Buna Works at Auschwitz III, as well as construction at Heydebrek and Blechhammer, and was printed in 1942. I’ve only been able to scan five pages as the document is fairly weak and I have a flat bed scanner–I just don’t think it would take much more abuse without falling out of its binding. But I have scanned some of it, notably the participatory Italian companies and some of the allocation of workers to the different concentration camps.

The full title reads of the work reads:

Contratto per l’escusione di lavori di construzione in partecipazione con imprese germaniche, nei cantieri di Heydebrek, Blechhammer e Auscwitz. It was printed by Tipografia del Gianicolo, in Rome, 1942, by the Confederzione Fascista degli Industriali, Federazione Nazionale Fascista Raggruppamento Germania. The document measures a fragile 30.5 x 21 cm, and is 29 pages long. Like dozens of thousands of other things here at the store, this was formerly in the “Pamphlet Collection” of the Library of Congress (which received the publication 12 July 1945) until we purchased the collection at the end of 1999.

This is also probably the most awful thing I own. Its like looking at those blueprints for the crematoria and the barracks–so precise, swimming in their blue pool, these concise, sure, white lines; designs for one of the worst things built in the 20th century–just drawings, lines on a long sheet of paper, for building something. Completely removed from the breathing world, just cold logical constructions for someone else’s end. That’s the feeling I get from handling this thing–the Italians and Germans figuring out where to put the thousands of workers, making sure that they get paid, providing for some sort of maintenance for the workers’ health, salaries, benefits, work schedules, breaks, vacations, incentives, mailing and the post, and so on. All of the bits of the most mundane things that go into a large construction projects, like building a highrise, or a tunnel, or a highway, or a bridge to hell. This contract could’ve been for just about anything at all. But it isn’t. Its for building a part of Auschwitz when anyone with any sense whatsoever knew what was already going on there.

Of the many terible things in this document I was really bothered to see Heydebrek, Blechhammer and Auschwitz abbreviated at the top of some of these pages. This is just so wrong. Wrong on every level, being an attribute of the nothingness, of the emptiness, of this document.

It is a simple, basic document on one of the least simple and basic things of the 20th century. The contract detailed labor expectations, needs and regulations from both the German and laboring Italian sides for the construction of these three concentration and slave labor camps in 1942. Subjects of interest in this document include salaries, housing, vacations, health care and insurance, as well as the application of German laws to the workers, qualifications, and classification of occupations.

Perhaps the part of most interest is the short list—reprinted below—on pages 3 & 4 of the firms and engineers taking part in this agreement..

***

The names that are attached to this document and signing off on the contract of this agreement (of 2 March 1942 which provided 8,636 Italian laborers for this construction) include:

1) for IG Farbenindustrie AG, Heydebreck, Heydebreck OS
Adolf Mueller and (Hans) Deichmann

Hans Deichmann served as (senior) legal representative for IG Farbenindustrie in Rome and Milan from 1942 to 1945 and in 1942 was responsible for recruiting Italian workers for construction in the above-named concentration camps.

2) for Oberschleische Hydrierwerke AG, Blechhammer, Kreis-Consei
Schlick

3) for IG Farbenindustrie AG Auschwitz, Auschwitz OS
Adolf Mueller and (Hans) Deichmann

The signatures representing Italian interests include:
Aurelio Aureli
Giacomo Milella

Notes:
–Blechhammer was a satellite camp of Auschwitz III (Monowitz)
–Auschwitz III, also called Buna or Monowitz, was established in nearby Monowice to provide forced laborers for the Buna synthetic rubber works. The German conglomerate I.G. Farben established a factory in order to take advantage of cheap concentration camp labor and the nearby Silesian coalfields. It invested more than 700 million Reichsmarks (about 1.4 million U.S. dollars in 1942 terms) in Auschwitz III.

On Italian labor being used at Nazi Concentration camps, as found in Vol VIII, pg 749, Nuremberg War Crime Tribunals:

Q. Did you go to ter Meer* to get Italian workers — I am thinking of a prosecution exhibit, the one which was shown to ter Meer on cross examination.

A. I was told at the time by an official source that Italian industry, after the collapse, would no longer produce because there was no coal, no current, or something. I was also told that since the Italian State obtained goods from Germany — buna, for example — the Italian State would be willing to enter into an agreement with Germany to make labor available, as was always the case from Italy. I said to him: “In case that is so” — neither ter Meer nor I knew whether that really would be the case — I said, “help the people at Auschwitz; help them to get workers if now” — I believe this was in 1944 — “the plants gradually go into operation.” For in these plants we wanted to have skilled workers — as I said yesterday, it is very important whether or not the man in charge has knowledge of the work he is doing. –Vol VIII, pg 749, Nuremberg War Crime Tribunals.

*”Fritz ter Meer served on the IG Farben [Farben was Hitler and Hitler was Farben. (Senator Homer T. Bone to Senate Committee on Military Affairs, June 4, 1943.] board of directors from 1926 to 1945 and was the head officer directing the operations of the IG Farben factory at Auschwitz. The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal sentenced him to seven years in prison. He was released after serving only four years. Not long after, in 1956, Ter Meer was elevated to the chairman of the supervisory board at BAYER, a position he held for seven years. His grave in Krefeld has a meter-high wreath on it – donated by BAYER in recognition of his services.”

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Militaria
Visual Display of Data: Bad Graphics, Nazi War Materials, 1940

JF Ptak Science Books Post 269

This dense, complicated table showing the distribution of strategic raw materials (published in The Illustrated London News 3 August 1940) I is a decent example of how not to display data. Perhaps there’s just too many variables to try to control here in one visual display: it tracks twenty raw materials by percentage of access for thirteen different countries, with the entire graph being displayed in a sort-of progression according to metric tons of material. Maybe it’s the varying widths of the bars representing the material, maybe it’s the complex designs distinguishing the countries, and maybe its just too many lines. The only time this really works for relatively-offhand use is when you’re looking for one country in particular, and then the eye allows it self to just concentrate on the solid black (Germany) or the stars in a bar (U.S.) When the graph is used in this manner it displays rather quickly that Nazi Germany doesn’t control a whole lot of the combined tonnage of the twenty strategic materials, which was a particularly good thing for the general reading population in the Allied world to see, because the war was not going so well at this early stage. (At this point in the war—less than a year old now in Europe—the Battle of Britain had begun though it was still weeks away from when the massive Blitz begins, and Hitler had just toured Paris…it was not a good time for Britain, and a worse time for France. The Soviet Union is listed still with the Axis as it was still 10 months away from being attacked, Hitler turning on his allies in Operation Barbarosa in June 1941.)

A little further effort would show that the Allied countries are mainly lighter, with the “belligerent” or neutral countries are darker, showing the lighter is on top with darker beneath, and that in general the Allies control more of these materials than the Axis. It is also interesting to not ethe relative smallness of control by Great Britain, though when you throw in the rest of the British and then the French empires the possession summary changes dramatically.

So the data is there, and there’s allot of it, and its fairly nimble—its just that the visual display is not pretty or easy to use .

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Information, Quantitative Display of — Militaria
Graphical Display of Data: the R.A.F. and Luftwaffe Present Their Cases, 1938-1940

JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 262

These four images represent some common, popular distribution of
information to the general population, the sets of two working at cross
purposes. (I’ve written several posts here about the Nazi use of maps as a propaganda tool; if you search this blog under those terms you’ll find several entries.) The British images were issued just after the start of WWII
(30 September 1939) and then again just after the end of the Battle of
Britain (November 1, 1941), respectively. The first (“The Tremendous
Range of RAF Bombers Pictorially Shown”), illustrates the range
capacity of its long range bombers for WWI and for 1939, showing how
far they could strike into the heart of Africa. I’m not so sure why
Africa was chosen as the target, as nothing at all was happening there,
militarily speaking, at this early stage of the war; why this didn’t
show the planes screaming their way to the east is a mystery to me.
The Home Office was busy showing how far the Wellington bomber could
reach (3,240 mles), as well as the long shadows cast by the Hampden,
Sunderland and Wellesley. The second British image, “The Speed and
Power of Fighter Craft, Comparisons of Range” displays aircraft of the
principle RAF and Luftwaffe fighters and bombers.

The first German image, printed as a small inset map in a general propaganda piece in the Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzg), for November 1940, depicted the capacity of the Luftwaffe to reach, threaten and bomb any region in the British Isles from bases in Calais (France) and Norway, having secured the positions in their attacks against the two countries in Fall Gelb and Operation Weserubung respectively. Britain was effectively half-surrounded from these positions from the Brittany to the Norwegian coasts.

The second German map (and the fourth presented here) is another interesting fiction coming from the propaganda offices in 1938, showing how Germany was threatened by attack from the air forces of its neighbors. Particularly pungent in this portrayal was the threat from Checoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland.

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Aviation & flight — Information, Quantitative Display of — Maps, Cartography, History of Mapmaking — Militaria — Prints–looking HARD/deeply at
Chemical Warfare Architecture: Dugway Proving Ground’s German and Japanese Villages

JF Ptak Science Books Post 223

Dugway Provong Grounds (DPG) was selected in 1943 to test all manner of toxic agents and their antidotes, chemical dispersal systems and the nasty chemical that they would spray, the horrendous and effective (and new-ish) flamethrower and other allied bits. It was established way up in the northwest corner of Utah, in the Great Desert Basin and part of the Bonneville Salt Flats—a very tough, isolated, severe environment for being in the continental U.S., sitting where the waters of the freshwater Pleistocene Lake Bonneville used to lap up. It was at Granite Peak in DPG that biological warfare weapons were tested until that aspect of research was phased out at the end of the war in August 1946, which is the origin for these architectural plans for test combatant towns. It seems to me that these buildings were built for offensive purposes for the chemical warfare division, and primarily (?) concerned with the effects of different sorts of incendiaries against typical German and Japanese structures. i’m not sure that I’ve seen these images before.

DPG continues today to research chemical dispersal and micro environments, as well as toxins, pathogens and chemical agents; it also tests the reliability and survivability of military hardware subjected to biological and chemical attack—it is still a major facility and still does very major stuff. DPG is also a bizarre grail of some sort for the UFO people.

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Militaria — Technology, History of
Nazi Propaganda: Scare Tactics in a Hearts and Minds Campaign, 1940

JF Ptak Science Books Post 220

The Nazi propaganda office published this effort (printed in August 1940) with every intent of making it seem as though it was produced in the U.K. as a sober reconsideration of fighting against the Germans, casting much of the argument in terms of economics. It was a relatively soft-sell effort in a hearts-and-minds campaign, hitting its target audience with reminders of how alone everyone on the British Isles were in the hard summer of 1940.

These two maps compare the economic and trade situation of 1914 and 1939, from the Nazi perspective. In 1914, the British, “as a preliminary condition for the success of the hunger-Blockade, only achieved, however after four years if struggle during which Britain was to sustain heavy losses”. They announce with exclamation (!) that for 1939 there was:

“a totally different situation! The encirclement of Germany miscarries, leaving way for the expansion of Germany, and the way for her trade with neutral countries, especially with the Balkans and Russia…thus is the blockade against Germany a hopeless enterprise”.

The Nazis’ state that “Britain…energetically refuses to admit the hopelessness of her winning this trade war and tenaciously grasps upon all kinds of unfounded rumours…”, all the while refusing to discus the bombing of Britain or any other aspect of military war

After a dozen pages of making the case against the British position in being able to take care of itself, there is this folding quantitative display, making a diametrical-pictorial presentation of the British failings. The Nazis show that they overpower the British in the ability to supply itself with grain, flour, meat, cooking fat, cheese, eggs, sugar and vegetables–in every area, in fact, except for fish.

This is the summation of the pamphlet, the last paragraph, asking the Brits to just give it up and quit their fight.

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Maps/Diagrams of Imagination & Ideas — Militaria
Unusual Maps: Cartographic Displays of Comparative Distance–Supplying Great Britain in 1940

JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 209

This map comes to us from The Illustrated London News, 3 August 1940, which reproduced it from an article in Fortune Magazine. Though it looks oddly wrong from the outset, it really is pretty lucid–elegant, even–once you understand its purpose. And the purpose of this map was to show the distances that the goods and raw materials from the British Empire (and from the possessions of France) had to travel via the then-closed Suez Canal route versus the new routes “not open to enemy interference” to Great Britain. Countries depicted in outline show the distance via Suez while the same country depicted in shade show the new, longer, non-Suez route. Ever stiff lipped, the Brits announced that even though some of their major natural resources are coming from these vastly removed areas, “even with the fall of France, the British Empire and its allies remain an economically self-contained and immensely powerful war unit, and still control the great part of the world production of some vital commodities…” I’m not sure why, exactly, that it was necessary to display this map to the public eye, what with England under assault in the Battle of Britain (the Nazis extending their aerial assault in preparation for Operation Sealion), the loss of France, and the nearly-there Nazi blockade of English waters. Perhaps it was drawn to show that even though the material was coming from the same places that were now further away, they were still getting there.

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Information, Quantitative Display of — Maps, Cartography, History of Mapmaking — Militaria