Description

The Other Side
Berlin • Number 3 • December 1944
German Propaganda Leaflet — Published in Berlin
4 pages scanned
English-language propaganda leaflet produced in Berlin, directed at Allied soldiers

Cover Page

Headline: “Roll On, Old War!” — The lead article challenges claims that the war is over, listing active Allied armies still fighting in Germany and the Low Countries.
Subject: Three photographs: (1) a group of combat soldiers in helmets and greatcoats; (2) a grave marker reading “ARNHEM” amid fallen soldiers; (3) a scene from the Arnhem battlefield.
Location: Arnhem; western front (Aachen, Holland, Cologne).
Photo credit: Not stated.

Major Headlines & Content

Roll On, Old War! — The article refutes any notion that the war has ended, noting that the US Ninth, Seventh, Third, and First Armies, the British Second, and the Canadian First Army are actively engaged. The plain between Aachen and Cologne is described as strewn with dead. A sardonic address to the German reader warns of continued hardship through winter into spring.

Someone Had Blundered … — Report on the Battle of Arnhem, where the First British Airborne Division suffered heavy casualties after being dropped into their own grave. An unnamed captured Allied paratrooper is quoted criticising the commanders who ordered the operation. A second unnamed Allied prisoner of war is quoted reciting his own verse, “A Soldier Asks,” which questions the purpose of the war.

Vlasov Swears Vengeance — Profile of General Vlasov (six-foot-four, bespectacled former Red Army shocktroop leader), captured at Volchov in 1941, now described as the Kremlin’s most powerful rival. Born in Kuibishev, he issued a proclamation in Prague on 14 November 1944 founding the Russian National Freedom Movement. An agreement with Himmler led him to command an Army Corps of Russian volunteers fighting on the Eastern Front. Photo: portrait of General Vlasov with caption “Stalin? I despise the man.”

“Like Sliding Around on a Sunbeam” — The New German Jet-Fighter — Enthusiastic first-person account by an unnamed German jet-pilot describing attacks on US heavy bombers. Accompanied by a panel, 13 Pilots — 2,963 Victories, listing the thirteen Luftwaffe fighter pilots who have passed 200 aerial victories, with Captain Hartmann named as top scorer at 303. A brief sidebar, Busy Judges, reports that two American military courts have been set up in Aachen, one in Hürtgen, one in Eschweiler, one in Weisweiler, one in Strasbourg, and one in Inden — thirteen courts in twelve localities.

Just Four Men — Photo feature presenting four German military personnel with short descriptive captions: Sergeant-Major Reintgen (reconnaissance pilot, credited with shooting down eight enemy aircraft); Major Gerd Ruge (leads his regiment from the front during attacks); Major Wilhelm Weidenbrück (tank group commander, known as “Wild Willy”); Lieutenant Brauer (tank-buster, credited with knocking out twelve Shermans in a single day).

Loads of Leave! — Short ironic item promising Allied soldiers further leave on the western front and, eventually, in the Far East, and speculating on the role of the Army of Occupation in Germany for generations to come.

Other Content

Human-interest feature — “Christmas Greetings — and to you, Frau Schmidt” — Fictional interview set in an unnamed German industrial town, December 1944, with Frau Schmidt (age 46, widow, three children, tramcar driver). Her husband was killed in an air raid in 1940; her eldest son is fighting in Hungary; her youngest is wounded and hospitalised in Darmstadt. The piece describes wartime deprivation and domestic hardship.

Comic feature — “Your Bath, Sir!” — Two-column satirical piece mocking the contrast between a luxurious imagined bath and the realities of the front; the soldier is told his bath is “below the cold mud of Aachen, the icy slime of the Saar, or dirty Dutch water.” Accompanied by two humorous cartoon illustrations (artist not named).

Cartoon spread — Full-page caricature presenting five figures captioned “Allow me to present the new presidents of Finland, Bulgaria and Roumania — Messrs. Stalanerheim, Stalinoff and Stalinescu” — satirising Soviet political domination of newly liberated states.

Verse — “A Soldier Asks” — Anti-war poem of seven lines, attributed to an unnamed Allied prisoner of war, quoted within the “Someone Had Blundered” article. (Text not reproduced here.)

Personal notice — Telegram signed Captain Thomas Moore, Hürtgen near Aachen: cancellation of a double room at the Victoria Hotel, London SW, booked 23–29 December, citing urgent business.