Images secrètes allemandes de la guerre – 200 photographies et documents censurés en Allemagne recueillis et commentés – Secret German Photographs from the War – 200 Photographs and Documents Censored in Germany, Collected and Described, edited by Frederic Drach. A wake-up call to the world to rise in defense against German aggression ahead of Hitler’s rise to power. Published by Société anonyme Les illustrés français. Paris, 1933 – first edition. Rare.
An uncensored photo booklet documenting the atrocities committed by the Germans during World War I, serving as a warning of what was to come in 1933. On the final page of the booklet, following countless harsh photographic records of German war crimes during World War I, appears a page displaying various posters exposing German lies alongside the year 1918, and opposite it, a photograph of the Nazi SA stormtroopers (“the Brownshirts”) with the year “1933” and a question mark – intended as a warning of what lay ahead.
Throughout the booklet are harsh photos of executions carried out by the Germans during World War I in POW camps, cities, and regions they occupied, abuse of people with disabilities, as well as the systematic distortion of truth by the German press throughout the war: “From 1914 onward, censorship operated mercilessly in all countries, destroyed facts, hints, ideas, filtered false news – and more so, real news – trimmed, cut, eliminated anything that offered the public only a flattering, heroic, reassuring and even comforting image of the war, ” it reads. The booklet exposes how German censorship functioned throughout the war in the systematic reporting of false information, including the graphic manipulation of photographs – with numerous examples taken directly from the German press and contrasted with reality.
Rare. The booklet is listed in the WorldCat global library catalog with a note indicating that no library in the world holds a copy.
96 pages. 31 cm. Protected in a nylon sleeve. Cover page reinforced with adhesive tape on the inner side. Residue of the tape on the corresponding inner gutter. Good condition.
