There followed a fantastic number of postcards showing the then rapidly expanding armed forces on manoeuvres with the latest equipment. So great was the interest that many military units were assigned their own photographer. These men were obliged to submit their work to the Propaganda Ministry where all images were selected and approved prior to production and release. If not selected for use as a postcard image the work of the unit photographer often found its way onto the pages of one or more of the many popular military magazines or newspapers of the day. Publications such as; Der Adler (the air force magazine), Die Kriegsmarine (the naval magazine), Die Wehrmacht (combined armed forces magazine), Das Schwarze Korps (the SS magazine) or Signal (the largest selling wartime picture magazine in Europe, also under the control of Dr Goebbels) featured much of the work of these men.

Military, patriotic and politically motivated postcards were widely available throughout the Third Reich with outlets on virtually every street corner. The Nazi Party had a ready source of revenue through this medium, in addition to the almost unimaginable propaganda value it provided. Many such postcards were distributed in other countries through the various German embassies before the Second World War, thus many examples turn up bearing foreign stamps and postmarks.

On the political side it has to be said production was almost limitless, particularly where Hitler himself was concerned. Of all political and military figures of the twentieth century, Adolf Hitler probably remains the single, most photographed and filmed personality of all. Many such images (some the work of Hoffmann, Hitler’s personal photographer) then reproduced in postcard form depict Hitler in incalculable situations and locations, for example speaking at rallies, meeting the people, with other heads of state, in his Berlin Reich Chancellery, or relaxing at the Berghof. The variety is staggering. As with the majority of German postcards of the period these are high quality photographic prints and not, as one might imagine, machine printed examples, (these do exist, but on a lesser scale).

The idea that Germany’s infrastructure had been completely destroyed in 1945 through Allied ‘saturation bombing’ is open to challenge, in so much that all the materials and equipment necessary for the production of postcards were still in place, right up until the last days of the war. Unit photographers were still in a position to acquire film, to have that film processed, to obtain photographic paper for printing and return the work to Berlin for approval.

In retrospect, this, combined with the fact that the government departments responsible for the design and production of new postage stamps were still operating, now seems inconceivable. This indicates that quantities of paper were available, electric power was in place and printing machinery functional. The idea that such things had been maintained at a time when priorities surely lay elsewhere, shows just how detached these bureaucrats were from the reality around them. That said, it also reveals how much emphasis had been placed on the postcard image, the believed effect it had in inspiring ordinary people and subsequently its contribution to maintaining a nation’s morale.

The Nazis utilized this medium with great dexterity to promote strength, a political idea and a way of life, using intensive and invasive propaganda techniques that were very much ahead of their time. Many of their methods of political campaigning and use of the media for electioneering purposes have been adopted by numerous post war politicians around the world. No other nation had come to recognize the potential or appeal of the postcard image for purely propaganda purposes during that period.

Nevertheless, it must be said that other countries did produce patriotic postcards. However they had little impact and were never produced on such a scale as in Hitler’s Germany. We must conclude therefore, on the evidence of the remaining postcards from the Nazi period, that the quantity and variety of these images together with the demand for them, even by today’s standards, was almost inexhaustible.