As the war turned decisively against Germany, raw materials were increasingly in short supply and the government dictated that people need to reduce, reuse and recycle. This also applied to paper, wood and cardboard, so that by 1943 very few games were being produced by any manufacturers. One notable exception was the game Jagd auf Kohlenklau (Hunt the Coal Thief) which was the subject of a massive Nazi propaganda campaign during 1943/44 featuring a ‘coal cat thief’.
The irony was that coal was the one resource that Germany possessed in abundance at the beginning of the war, big deposits being found in the Ruhr Valley and the Saarland. Much of German industry was powered by coal as were the trains which transported goods around the Reich. Coal was also indispensable in the home, both for heating and cooking. However, not only did coal fuel the German war economy, it also had to power many of the occupied territories including Belgium, the Netherlands and France who had few reserves of their own. As result of the Wehrmacht overrunning much of Europe and Allied bombing, shortages began to seriously impact Germany’s ability to wage war.
So, to save coal the Nazis launched an energy-saving campaign on an unprecedented scale, it still ranking as one of the most extensive marketing campaigns ever carried out. In 1942 they came up with the concept of the ‘coal thief’ to shame people into being more energy efficient (the term is still used to denote illegally procuring or stealing coal during hard times). In June a campaign was launched called ‘Battle the Coal Stealing’ and a new coal propaganda unit was set up, run by Wilhelm Hohnhausen, the head of an advertising agency based in Stuttgart, called the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Hohnhausen.81
In Germany by 1943 very few games were being produced due a shortage of raw materials. One notable exception was the game Jagd auf Kohlenklau (Hunt the Coal Thief).
In Germany by 1943 very few games were being produced due a shortage of raw materials. One notable exception was the game Jagd auf Kohlenklau (Hunt the Coal Thief).
To popularise the campaign Hohnhausen invented the coal cat thief, a cartoon character designed to shame people into conserving coal. Complete with white whiskers, hair, stubble, a wink and a flat cap, the coal thief soon became one of the most widely distributed images in Germany. His message was that anyone who wasted energy stole coal from the Volksgemeinschaft or the people’s community. The coal cat thief in turn benefitted from families who were profligate or wasteful, the coal being placed in a big bag slung over his shoulder.
To publicise their new creation the advertising agency came up with a series of creative adverts based on the concept of ‘spot the coal thief’. The adverts appeared in all the major newspapers, cryptically asking ‘Who is the Kohlenklau [coal cat thief]?’, ‘What is Kohlenklau doing?’ and ‘How do you make him harmless?’ This was followed by a promotion in the winter of 1943/44 called ‘Kohlenklau’s shameful defeat’, new campaigns running in the papers each year until the end of the war.
As well as advertising in the winter of 1943/44 a new game was produced called Jagd auf Kohlenklau or Hunt the Coal Thief.82 Printed on card in bright colours, it was produced by the games manufacturer Leptien-Schiffers and promoted by Hohnhausen. The game featured a circular board with fifty black and red cartoon pictures of a family who are visited by the coal thief. The black squares illustrated good practice in conserving coal and the red ones bad. When a player landed on a number, they had to read the accompanying text which was written on the side of the game together with the instructions. The game came as a single piece of thin card which was folded so it could be posted. In line with wartime cutbacks, Hunt the Coal Thief came with no dice or counters, people being expected to reuse existing ones from a game at home.
Some of the good practices for conserving coal illustrated by the family in the game included turning off lights when not in a room, blocking draughts, unplugging the fridge when it was cold, learning about the cat coal thief at school, removing light bulbs and staying in the same room at night. In contrast, some of the bad practices included leaving a kettle on the hob to boil over, leaving doors open, overfilling the bath, hoovering the house too often, not blocking draughts and falling asleep listening to the radio or with the light on. The winner of the game was the first person to reach number 50 who then got to clobber the coal thief. The game of Jagd auf Kohlenklau or Hunt the Coal Thief was sent for free in the post to over four million German families, a massive mail shot unparalleled in wartime history. The game proved to be very popular, families often playing it together (as the board did not have swastikas or other Nazi symbols on it, many German families kept it to play after the war).
In 1944 the board game was followed by the release of Kohlenklau, a quartet game of cards, again focusing on energy production to support the war effort.83 The deck was composed of thirty-three cards with colour illustrations of the many vital uses for coal during the war, especially in producing coal gas and plastics vital for the military. Eight themes were illustrated in the pack: Coal for Fighting, Coal for Plastics, Coal Extraction, Coal Processing, Coal Burning, Coal in Industry, Coal Conversion and the Wonders from Coal, other uses including medicines, propellants, dyes, candles and soap. The game also included a helpful calendar card showing the dates for 1944.
The subject of a massive Nazi propaganda campaign, the ‘coal cat thief’ soon became one of the most widely recognised caricatures in Germany.
Two different games could be played with the pack, variants of the classic children’s card games happy families and old maid. For the former, thirty-two cards were divided into eight sets of four, the player collecting the most sets being the winner. For the latter, the thirty-third Kohlenklau card was added to the pack, and each set of four divided into two pairs, one with red dots and the other with black dots. Players tried to collect as many pairs as possible while avoiding being stuck with the Kohlenklau card at the end of play.
Unlike the board game, the card game could only be bought in the shops but still sold well, people feeling it was part of their patriotic duty to play it. One of the cards summed up the propaganda value of the campaign when it said, ‘Ohne Kohlen kann kein Krieg geführt werden’ (Without coal war is impossible). The coal cat thief also starred in films made for schools which were shown at cinemas throughout the country, over the course of the war becoming one of the most widely recognised cartoon symbols in Germany.