Neues Volk (German: [ˈnɔʏ.əs ˈfɔlk], "New People") was the monthly publication of the Office of Racial Policy in Nazi Germany.[3] Founded by Walter Gross in 1933, it was a mass-market, illustrated magazine.[4] It aimed at a wide audience, achieving a circulation of 300,000.[3] It appeared in physicians' waiting rooms, libraries, and schools, as well as in private homes.[4]
.jpeg)
Subject matter edit
The subject matter of the magazine was the "excellence" of the Aryan race and the "deficiencies" of Jews, Poles, and other groups.[3] Articles ranged from profiles of Benito Mussolini, reports on Hitler Youth camps, and travel tips, but eugenic and racial propaganda continued throughout it.[5] The first six issues presented solely ethnic pride, before bringing up any topic on "undesirables”.[6] In the next issue, one article presented the types of the "Criminal Jew" surrounded by images of the ideal Aryan, which generally predominated.[6] Such articles continued, displaying such things as demographic charts showing the decline of farmland (with generous Aryan families) and deploring that the Jews were eradicating traditional German peasantry.[6]
Neues Volk included articles defending eugenic sterilization.[7] Photographs of mentally incapacitated children were juxtaposed with those of healthy children.[6] It also presented images of ideal Aryan families[8] and ridiculed childless couples.[9] After the inception of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, it urged that Germans to show no sympathy for Jews and presented articles to show Jewish life still flourishing.[10] By the mid-1930s, it had doubled its pages and greatly increased its discussion of Jews.[11] Other articles described the conditions under which Hitler would be a child's godfather,[12] discussed the importance of giving children Germanic names, answered racial questions from readers—marriage between a Chinese man and a German woman was impossible, despite the woman's pregnancy, and they had seen to it that the man's residence permit was revoked, and even an infertile German woman cannot marry a half-Jew, but a Dutch woman, if she had neither Jewish nor colored blood, was acceptable—praised German farming in contrast to French, declared art was determined by racial world-views, and many other topics.[3] During the war, it published articles about how the foreign workers were welcome but sexual relations with Germans were prohibited.[3]
See also edit
Notes and references edit
- ^ "USHMM Artifact Gallery: Poster from Neues Volk". www.ushmm.org.
- ^ Robertson, Michael; Ley, Astrid; Light, Edwina (22 October 2019). The First into the Dark: The Nazi Persecution of the Disabled. UTS ePRESS. ISBN 9780648124238 – via Google Books.
- ^ a b c d e "Neues Volk"
- ^ a b Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, p. 117. ISBN 0-674-01172-4.
- ^ Koonz, p. 117-9.
- ^ a b c d Koonz, p. 119.
- ^ Rodenfels, H. (2007) [Published in German in May 1939]. "Frauen, die nicht Mutter werden dürfen" [Women Who May Not Be Allowed to become Mothers]. Neues Volk. Vol. 7. Translated by Bytwerk, Randall. pp. 16–21 – via German Propaganda Archive.
- ^ "Fascism and the Cult of the Nation"
- ^ Koonz, p. 117.
- ^ Koonz, p. 121.
- ^ Koonz, p. 198.
- ^ "The Führer as Godfather"