Description

SIGNAL
Heft 3 • 1945 | Berlin, Germany
Publisher: Deutscher Verlag, Berlin SW 68, Kochstraße 22–26 | Hauptschriftleiter (Editor-in-Chief): Dr. Giselher Wirsing | Stellvertreter (Deputy Editor): Hugo Möβlang | Frequency: Twice Monthly

Pages Scanned: 44

Articles and Features

Bewährtes Hellas: Legenden und Wahrheit über Griechenland / Proven Hellas: Legends and Truth About Greece
Argues that German forces left Greek cultural monuments — including the Acropolis, Olympia, and Delphi — intact, countering Allied press claims of German destruction, and credits German troops with introducing thousands of soldiers to classical antiquity firsthand.

65 Kilo pro Kopf und Tag: Der Kampf um den Nachschub im sechsten Kriegsjahr / 65 Kilograms Per Man Per Day: The Battle for Supply Lines in the Sixth Year of War
Von Leutnant Erwin Baas
A multi-page illustrated feature — with infographics, railway snapshots, and factory photographs — detailing the staggering daily logistical requirements of a Wehrmacht division (87 rail wagons per day), tracing supply chains from decentralized factories through the Reichsbahn to the front, and arguing Germany has won the ‘supply battle’ against Allied bombing.

Der Gentleman und die Europäer: Ein Kapitel über den grotesken Widerspruch im zweiten Weltkrieg / The Gentleman and the Europeans: A Chapter on the Grotesque Contradiction in the Second World War
Von Giselher Wirsing
The issue’s lead political essay contends that European nations — Poland, Finland, Romania, Hungary — were betrayed by their faith in a Victorian ‘Gentleman’ ideal of Britain that had long been supplanted by a pro-Soviet mass politics, leaving them absorbed into the Soviet sphere while Churchill proved powerless to intervene.

Vom Sieg des Geistes über die Materie: Das Flugzeug — eine Schöpfung Europas / On the Victory of Spirit over Matter: The Airplane — A Creation of Europe
Von Paul Karlson
A sweeping intellectual history crediting European thinkers — Archimedes, Leonardo, Galileo, Newton, Lilienthal, Prandtl — with the scientific foundations of modern aviation, arguing that American propaganda falsely claims technological primacy that belongs wholly to European civilisation.

Ein großes Opfer: Von der Theaterleidenschaft der Deutschen / A Great Sacrifice: On the Germans’ Passion for Theatre
Profiles the closure of Germany’s 180-plus opera houses under total-war mobilization, framing it as the nation’s deepest cultural sacrifice given the centrality of opera — Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven — to German national identity, while noting radio broadcasts now bring opera to millions.

Fabeltier Vater: Das Schicksal von Millionen Europäern / Mythical Creature Father: The Fate of Millions of Europeans
Von Hans Schwarz van Berk
A humorous first-person essay by a frontline soldier reflecting on how years of absence have turned fathers into legendary figures in their children’s imaginations — functioning as leave-visit packages rather than real parents — and appealing to all European war fathers to reclaim their ‘normal’ family roles after the war.

Warum gibt es keine Seuchen mehr? Signal erklärt eine erstaunliche Tatsache / Why Are There No More Epidemics? Signal Explains an Astonishing Fact
Von E. Lutz
An explanatory science article tracing how German research into sulfonamides (Prof. Domagk) and bacterial vitamin requirements (Prof. Kuhn, Heidelberg) enabled the mass prevention of cholera, typhus, malaria, and dysentery that had devastated armies in previous wars, presenting systematic vaccination and chemotherapy as distinctly German scientific achievements.

Wilhelm C. Röntgen / Wilhelm C. Röntgen
Commemorates the fiftieth anniversary (May 1895–1945) of Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays, tracing the development from his 1896 public demonstration in Würzburg through diagnostic medicine and crystallography to the modern apparatus used in millions of hospitals worldwide.

Colombine… / Colombine…
Von Paul Wiegler
A cultural essay tracing the Commedia dell’arte figure of Colombina from Italian street theatre through Molière, Marivaux, Watteau, and Willette to Zerline in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Zerbinetta in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, illustrated by a colour pastel by Hans Jürgen Kallmann.

Die Unschuldigen / The Innocent
A propagandistic commentary on a Life magazine photo-reportage about American foundling homes, arguing that the practice of abandoning newborns on Christmas Eve reveals a fundamental deficit of family tradition in American society.

Fabeltier Vater / Tsantsas… / Mythical Father / Tsantsas…
Brief sidebar noting a Life magazine photograph of an American sailor who sent his Arizona girlfriend a Japanese soldier’s skull as a war trophy, comparing the act to Amazonian Jibaro headhunting practices and their shrunken-head (‘Tsantsa’) trophy tradition.

Advertisements
p. 3 — Auto Union / Schrittmacher der Motorisierung — Automobile racing and engineering
p. 3 — Siemens & Halske AG / Siemens-Schuckertwerke AG — Electrical welding equipment (‘Schweißen statt Löten’)
p. 4 — Carl Zeiss Jena / Prismen-Feldstecher — Prismatic field binoculars
p. 4 — Mercedes Büromaschinen-Werke AG — Office machinery / social welfare (‘Soziale Betreuung’)
p. 11 — Wanderer-Werke Aktiengesellschaft — Continental typewriters / Beethoven’s Ninth (‘9. Sinfonie für unsere Arbeiter’)
p. 11 — Joseph Vögele AG, Mannheim — Road-building machinery (Strassen-Baumaschinen)
p. 18 — No. 4711 / Tosca Eau de Cologne — Perfume (‘Für festliche Stunden’)
p. 30 — Lohse Uralt Lavendel — Lavender cologne
p. 30 — Luxor / Teleskophalter — Telescoping fountain pen
p. 31 — Expresswerke Akt.-Ges. — Bicycles (‘Älteste Fahrradfabrik des Kontinents, gegründet 1882’)
p. 31 — Voigtländer / Bessapan — Camera and high-sensitivity film
p. 32 — Dralle Parfümerie- und Feinseifenwerke — Birch hair water, shaving cream, lavender soap
p. 32 — Henkel & Cie. AG — Laundry and cleaning chemicals (‘Forschergeist und Unternehmertum’)
p. 38 — Telefunken — Radio apparatus / loudspeakers (‘Als Pionier der Funktechnik ein Weltbegriff’)
p. 38 — BMW — Sports cars and motorsport (‘1939 = 88 erste Preise’)

Color Plates Summary
• Cover (p. 1): Full-color portrait photograph of Oberstleutnant Ihlefeld in cockpit leather helmet and Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords — one of 51 German fighter aces with 100+ kills as of autumn 1944. PK-Aufnahme: Kriegsberichter Schödl.
• p. 2 (inside front cover): Tinted sepia photograph of a young woman writing at a desk with a human skull beside her — surreal, ambiguous image with no caption; possibly related to the ‘Tsantsas’ sidebar. ★ MOST DRAMATIC PLATE — the skull-and-woman image is the issue’s most unsettling and visually arresting color photograph, entirely unexplained in any caption.
• p. 11: Color photograph of a camouflaged German half-track (Schützenpanzerwagen) with mortar launcher on the Eastern Front in winter snow; warm pink and lavender sky. PK-Aufnahme: Kriegsberichter Els.
• p. 12 (full-page): Color photograph of a steam locomotive on a supply line; dramatic cloudscape behind signal post. Caption: ‘An die Front… Wo die deutsche Reichsbahn fährt, ist Front.’
• p. 19 (full-page): Color photograph of paratroopers (Fallschirmjäger) lying in formation on a green airfield awaiting jump aircraft; packed reserve parachutes in foreground. PK-Aufnahme: Kriegsberichter Wegener.
• p. 20 (full-page): Full-color oil-style battle illustration: German grenadiers with Panzerfäusten fighting Soviet infantry amid explosions and tree-line flames. ‘Faustkampf gegen Sowjets.’ PK-Zeichnung: Kriegsberichter Buitz.
• p. 21 (full-page): Full-color battle illustration of German infantry storming through bombed-out rubble, Panzerfäusten raised — vivid warm tones of fire and destruction.
• p. 22 (full-page): Color photograph of Tilman Riemenschneider’s carved stone grave-relief panels on the floor of the Marienkapelle, Würzburg — amber-gold tones, princes in ecclesiastical vestments.
• p. 30 (full-page): Full-color illustrated watercolor: bird’s-eye view of a lakeside thatched-roof cottage with English-style garden, swing hammock, and rowing boat. ‘So möchte ich wohnen’ / dream-home feature.
• p. 31 (interior spread): Full-color watercolor interior — bright living room with round fireplace, bookshelves, blue armchairs; floor plan in color showing round wings. Part of the dream-home article.
• p. 33: Color photograph of Otto Lilienthal’s 1891 glider in flight above a hill — sepia-tinted archival image used as chapter opener for the aviation history article.
• p. 37 (full-page): Full-color aviation diagram overlaid on a modern aircraft plan-view, numbered medallions identifying 12 European scientists (Archimedes through Prandtl). Striking graphic design in red-black-cream palette.
• p. 41 (back cover interior): Full-color pastel artwork by Hans Jürgen Kallmann — Colombine in pink dress and a sad Pierrot in white costume with pointed hat; moody blue-green background.
• Back cover (p. 42): Full-color portrait photograph of a smiling blond toddler girl in traditional Bavarian dirndl and oversized black hat. Caption: ‘Das unsterbliche Leben’ (The Immortal Life).