Description

SIGNAL
Heft 4 • 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 (Jahrgang 6)

Pages Scanned: 40

Articles and Features

Das europäische Telefon? / The European Telephone?
The issue’s lead commentary uses the cover image — a telephone whose dial holes are all Soviet hammer-and-sickle stars — as a metaphor for how Stalin’s calls to Communist party leaders across Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Belgium, and Greece have directed internal subversion in each country, arguing that only the Wehrmacht stands between Europe and total Soviet control of the continent’s political switchboard.

Abschusserfolge: 4819 : 810. Ein interessanter Vergleich der Kräfteverhältnisse im Luftkrieg / Aerial Kill Scores: 4,819 : 810. An Interesting Comparison of the Balance of Forces in the Air War
Von Leutnant Erwin Baas
A full statistical table listing the top 25 German fighter aces (led by Hauptmann Erich Hartmann at 303 kills) against the top Allied aces from the USA, Britain, and the Soviet Union, accompanied by a dramatic skyscraper-silhouette infographic showing the German total of 4,819 kills dwarfing Allied scores — the ratio cited as 6:1 in Germany’s favour.

Beispiel Rheinland: Bewährung eines Grenzvolkes / Example Rhineland: The Proving of a Border People
Von Leutnant Benno Wundshammer
A first-person account by a reconnaissance unit leader of the opening weeks of Allied ground combat in the German Rhineland — from the train approach to Cologne under air attack through house-to-house fighting, counterattacks against US infantry, and the daily reality of paratroopers, medics, and civilians under artillery — framed as evidence of the Rhineland population’s unbroken fighting spirit.

Der Fall Cauchon: Ein Prozeß aus dem 15. Jahrhundert und seine sehr aktuellen Hintergründe / The Cauchon Case: A 15th-Century Trial and Its Very Current Background
Von Conrad Conradus
A lengthy historical-political essay using the 1431 trial of Joan of Arc — presided over by Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, prosecuted by Johann d’Estivet — as a propaganda parallel to the present war, arguing that England then as now has manipulated Continental powers against France/Europe, and that Joan’s famous letter demanding the English leave France anticipates Germany’s current struggle.

Bei den Volksgrenadieren: Geheimnisse und Charakter dieser revolutionären Truppe / With the Volksgrenadiers: Secrets and Character of This Revolutionary Troop
Berichtet von den Signal-Kriegsberichtern Walther Kiaulehn und Artur Grimm
A multi-page illustrated feature — drawing the parallel to Carnot’s levée en masse for Napoleon — examining the Volksgrenadier divisions created by Himmler’s order of 20 July 1944, detailing their recruitment from Navy, Luftwaffe, and factory workers, their deliberately compressed training, their novel tactics prioritising Panzerfaust over conventional infantry fire, and their combat record on both fronts.

Eine Odyssee: Signal berichtet aus einem Kriegsbuch über die Donauflottille / An Odyssey: Signal Reports from a War Diary of the Danube Flotilla
Drawn from a war diary, this narrative account describes the German Danube Flotilla’s desperate breakthrough convoy — a 7-kilometre column of over 120 barges carrying 100,000 tonnes of oil, grain, machines, and supplies from Belgrade through Romanian and Serbian partisan territory after Romania’s betrayal — recounting night ambushes, fuel fires turning the Danube into a wall of flame, and the flotilla’s eventual success in reaching its destination.

4819 : 810 — Vier deutsche Fliegerporträts: Hauptmann Erich Hartmann / Major Specht / weitere Asse / 4,819 : 810 — Four German Pilot Portraits: Hauptmann Erich Hartmann / Major Specht / Further Aces
Von Leutnant Erwin Baas
Profile portraits of Hauptmann Erich Hartmann (303 kills, world’s highest-scoring ace), one-eyed Major Specht (20 kills including bombers, allowed to continue flying despite losing an eye), and two further aces, contextualising the aggregate kill-ratio statistics of page 5 with individual human stories of youth, training, and combat psychology.

Salzburg, die ‘unbefangenste Stadt der Welt’ — gestern und heute. Besuch aus Übersee / Salzburg, the ‘Most Artless City in the World’ — Yesterday and Today. A Visit from Overseas
A bitterly polemical piece on the Allied bombing of Mozart’s birthplace, Salzburg — calling it an act of cultural vandalism comparable to the destruction of Goethe’s house in Frankfurt and Dürer’s house in Nuremberg — illustrated with before-and-after photographs of the bombed Bürgerspital courtyard and the shattered dome of the Cathedral, alongside a nostalgic account of prewar American tourists who loved the city.

Konzert für Millionen: Lebendige Musik oder Tonkonserve? Eine Rundfunksendung entsteht / Concert for Millions: Living Music or Canned Sound? How a Radio Broadcast Is Made
A behind-the-scenes feature on the making of a Großdeutscher Rundfunk symphony broadcast, following Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic with soloists including Maria Cebolari, Emmi Leisner, Tiana Lemnitz, and Heinrich Schlusnus — contrasting the intimacy of live rehearsal with the disembodied experience of the radio listener, and arguing that broadcast music is genuine art, not mere mechanical reproduction.

Hundert Millionen Hände zu viel? Rezepte gegen die Arbeitslosigkeit / A Hundred Million Hands Too Many? Remedies Against Unemployment
A political economics article predicting that postwar Anglo-American capitalism will face unemployment twice as severe as the 1930s Depression — using Germany’s own pre-1939 rearmament and Autobahn construction as a model of how a state can absorb surplus labour — arguing that only a planned European economy on the German model can solve the structural unemployment that market democracies cannot.
Die erfinderischen Frauen: Sie denken nicht daran zu kapitulieren — Mode im sechsten

Kriegsjahr / The Inventive Women: They Have No Intention of Surrendering — Fashion in the Sixth Year of War
A fashion feature documenting German women’s improvised wartime style — handbags made from carpet wool stiffened with cardboard, blouses cut from brothers’ football shirts, evening gowns converted into shorts, house shoes knitted from wool remnants on cork soles — celebrating feminine resourcefulness under material scarcity as a form of quiet resistance.

Don Quichotte / Don Quixote
Von Paul Wiegler
A literary essay tracing the 400-year European reception of Cervantes’ novel — from Goya’s illustrations in Spain and Fragonard’s paintings in France through Romantic translators, Dohnányi’s pantomime, Richard Strauss’s Opus 35 variations, and the 1941 Don Juan opera — arguing that Don Quixote endures because Cervantes simultaneously mocked chivalric fantasy and identified the idealist as the truest kind of European hero, illustrated by a colour pastel by Hans Jürgen Kallmann.

Zum Schutz der Kunst… / In Defence of Art…
A sidebar reporting that Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting ‘The Parable of the Blind’ (c.1568), last recorded in the Naples National Gallery, has resurfaced in a Stockholm auction house, and alleging that British and American art dealers — under cover of an ‘artwork protection action’ in Italy — are systematically looting Italian cultural treasures onto the black market.

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p. 3 — Voigtländer — Cameras and lenses (‘Kameras und Objektive’)
p. 3 — Auch-Pelikan — Fülbleistift (propelling pencil) / precision engineering
p. 4 — Mauser — Arms manufacturer (‘Wir glauben an den Sieg unserer Waffen’)
p. 4 — Olympia Büromaschinenwerke AG — Büro- und Kleinschreibmaschinen (typewriters)
p. 8 — Siemens & Halske / Siemens-Schuckertwerke — Electrical apparatus (mixed-signal ad)
p. 11 — Zeiss Jena — Optical instruments (binoculars / ‘Führende Markengläser’)
p. 11 — Auto Union — Racing cars / ‘Schrittmacher der Motorisierung’
p. 18 — Junghans — ‘Lautlos’ alarm clock (‘Genau so überrascht ist jeder’)
p. 18 — Kaweco — Fountain pens (‘beflügelt Ihre Schrift!’)
p. 26 — 4711 Tosca — Eau de Cologne (‘Für festliche Stunden’)
p. 26 — Lohse Uralt Lavendel — Lavender cologne
p. 30 — Expresswerke Akt.-Ges. — Bicycles (‘Älteste Fahrradfabrik des Kontinents’)
p. 30 — Voigtländer / Bessapan — Camera and film
p. 34 — Dralle Parfümerie — Hair water, shaving cream, lavender soap (‘Der Name Dralle hat Weltruf’)
p. 34 — Henkel & Cie. AG — Laundry / cleaning chemicals
p. 35 — Telefunken — Radio / Olympic Stadium loudspeakers (‘Friedlicher Wettbewerb der Völker’)
p. 35 — BMW — Sports cars (‘1939 = 88 erste Preise’)
p. 38 — Milei — Milk-based egg substitute (‘Bodenchemie besiegt Hunger’ / Liebig / Justus von Liebig)
p. 38 — Rosodont (A.-H. A. Bergmann, Waldheim) — Toothpaste in solid form (‘Deutsche Wertware in deutschem Werkstoff’)

Color Plates Summary
• Cover (p. 1): Full-color graphic illustration — a pale grey rotary telephone on a vivid yellow background; every finger-hole in the dial is replaced by a red Soviet hammer-and-sickle star. Caption circle: ‘Das europäische Telefon? Siehe Seite 4.’ ★ MOST DRAMATIC PLATE — the cover is the most arresting image in the issue: a single bold political cartoon-as-object, unprecedented in Signal’s visual vocabulary, whose meaning requires no caption.
• p. 2 (inside front cover, double spread): Full-color photograph — Oberst Hans-Ulrich Rudel (the Stuka ace bearing the Gold Oak Leaves with Swords and Diamonds, Germany’s highest decoration) standing with his two escort fighters between sorties, studying a map; lower half shows a groundcrew mechanic reloading the 3.7 cm anti-tank cannon under the wing of Rudel’s Ju 87. PK-Aufnahmen: Kriegsberichter Erwin Baas.
• p. 19 (full-page): Full-color photograph — looking down the deck of an armed Danube flotilla monitor from stern to bow; a naval officer in black uniform walks toward camera past twin anti-aircraft cannon, life rafts, and a rubber dinghy; misty Danube hills in background. Caption: ‘Wie Zähne eines Sägefisches wirken die Aufbauten dieses Spezialschiffes der Donauflottille.’
• p. 20: Full-color photograph (top half) — gunner’s head barely visible above the armoured turret of a river gunboat at close range; lower half continues the ‘Die Donau brennt’ text article with a second color photo of flotilla vessels moored on the river. PK-Aufnahmen: Kriegsberichter Fritz Böltz.
• p. 21 (full-page): Full-color oil-style battle painting — night scene on the Danube under parachute flares; fuel tankers and barges ablaze, walls of orange and red flame reflecting in the black water, German escort vessels firing through the conflagration. Caption: ‘Die Donau brennt — Im Laufe des nächtlichen Gefechts wurden Benzintanks des ersten Schleppzuges zerschossen.’
• p. 22 (full-page): Full-color photograph — the bombed-out courtyard of the Salzburger Bürgerspital after an Allied air raid; rubble, twisted beams, collapsed arched loggias; three figures pick through the debris; the Hohensalzburg fortress visible through the ruined wall. Caption: ‘Nach dem Terrorangriff — Ein feindlicher Volltreffer hat die gemütvolle Fassade des Salzburger Bürgerspitals von der schützenden Felswand gerissen.’
• p. 39 (full-page, inside back cover): Full-color pastel artwork by Hans Jürgen Kallmann — the dying Don Quixote laid out on his deathbed, gaunt face on white pillows, with Sancho Panza’s hunched, red-vested back turned to the viewer in grief; warm earth-brown and rose palette.
• Back cover (p. 40): Full-color portrait photograph — smiling blonde young woman in a yellow scarf and Norwegian-pattern sweater, ski poles visible behind her, looking upward into an alpine sky. Caption circle: ‘Im Vorfrühling… Die letzte Ski-Tour.’