Description

This is Signal magazine, Issue Nr. 1, 1945 — the final year of publication for this Nazi propaganda magazine, and the contrast with the 1940 issue you uploaded earlier is striking.

40 pages scanned.

The tone has shifted dramatically from confident triumphalism to defensive defiance. The cover features a paratrooper doing communications work, with the slogan “Fallschirmjäger können alles” (Paratroopers can do anything). The contents reflect a regime fighting for survival: a lengthy political essay by Giselher Wirsing attacking the Dumbarton Oaks conference and Allied post-war planning as imperialist and doomed; a multi-page feature titled “Die Deutschen sind fort” (The Germans are gone) portraying liberated France, Belgium, Finland, and the Balkans as descending into chaos, hunger, and Soviet oppression; coverage of anti-tank trench construction inside Germany itself; a technical article on new U-boat tactics and countermeasures; a human-interest story about a German woman born in 1896 who has endured both world wars; and an article framing German art protection in occupied countries as superior to Allied conduct.

The magazine also commemorates Karl Benz’s 100th birthday with a Mercedes-Benz advertisement, and ends with a pastoral photo essay and a literary piece on Goethe’s Faust — projecting cultural normalcy while Germany was collapsing militarily. It was published by Deutscher Verlag, Berlin, with Wilhelm Reetz as editor-in-chief.