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A Call to Sabotage and to Arms of French Youth by the Communist Party of France, 1944

FAJON, Etienne and Arthur Giovani, and others Jeunesse, Espoir du Pays. Published meeting of the French Communist “Assemblee Consultative”. Published in Algeria (?), 1944 (?) 6.5”x 4.5”, 36pp. Printed on newsprint. Original wrappers; crude but yet charming cloth repair to the spine.  Provenance: Library of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), via the Library of Congress, each of which has contributed a rubber stamp to the pamphlet. GOOD condition, only. $250  NO Copies located in WorldCat.

Well. Someone at the library of the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) labeled this “COMMUNISM—France-Propaganda”, which it is, though what it is first, I think, is a call to arms. And that clarion call is very directly aimed at the youth of France, which the Communist Party saw as being directly under attack by the Nazis.

The writers here established that “combat over slow death” was the approach to take, there in 1944.

Here's a selection of what they were talking about:

(Section header: Helping Youth to Fight)

“We all want to save the French youth that the enemy is trying to destroy. All that, there is only one way: to help young people in France to defend themselves against the enemy, to strike him, to hasten his defeat.”

“..the rations granted to the French, from January 1943, were equivalent to the death of one in five individuals. No fight could cost our young generation so dear.”

“Helping French youth to fight that means: Replace certain wait-and-see or stupid broadcasts on our radio with specific advice to young workers to organize the sabotage of enemy production and transport with minimum risk and maximum efficiency

“...develop the struggle of prisoners and deportees in Germany who are, in their vast majority, young people doomed to death. Our radio must give directives for escapes, for sabotage, for all forms of struggle • in enemy territory. Above all, to urgently send by all means, to young soldiers without uniform, small arms, ammunition, clothing, instructors.

“We are concerned with restoring, upon liberation, the compromised health of millions of children and adolescents in France. In our opinion, the Government will not be able to solve this problem...”

“We all want to save the French youth that the enemy is trying to destroy. All that, there is only one way: to help young people in France to defend themselves against the enemy, to strike him, to hasten his defeat.”

 

“..the rations granted to the French, from January 1943, were equivalent to the death of one in five individuals. No fight could cost our young generation so dear.”

 

“Helping French youth to fight that means: Replace certain wait-and-see or stupid broadcasts on our radio with specific advice to young workers to organize the sabotage of enemy production and transport with minimum risk and maximum efficiency

 

“...develop the struggle of prisoners and deportees in Germany who are, in their vast majority, young people doomed to death. Our radio must give directives for escapes, for sabotage, for all forms of struggle • in enemy territory. Above all, to urgently send by all means, to young soldiers without uniform, small arms, ammunition, clothing, instructors.

 

“We are concerned with restoring, upon liberation, the compromised health of millions of children and adolescents in France. In our opinion, the Government will not be able to solve this problem...”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rare Mimeographed Item on Japanese Constitutional History (1944)

Notes on the Constitutional Development of Japan.

Unknown publisher. Dated 7 June 1944. 13”x 8”, 7pp (4 leaves). Mimeographed.

Provenance: British Society for International Understanding (the possible publisher?); then received 11 June 1945 by the Library of Congress. Rubber stamps from those two institutions on front, plus a LC surplus rubber stamp on the rear blank.

GOOD copy, only. The staple holding this together is rusted and has degenerated the paper around it (see photo). There is also some edge wear on the leaf leaf.  $250

Scarcity: NO copies located in WorldCat.

Interesting note from page 6: “The Secret Societies and Fascist Bodies.  These are really only carrying on an old tradition, but perhaps the first of importance in modern times was the "Black Dragon"formed from extreme reactionary elements of the Sei yu-kai about 1925. It was probably responsible for the "Death Bands" which carried out a series of political assassinations from 1952 onwards. From them came the "Back-to-Asia-" ideology. They attracted fervent youth by their claim to stand for spiritual regeneration...”

Rare Work on the Free French, 1941

Pierre de Lanux, Notes by Pierre de Lanux, for his Friends, October 1941. The Free French, their Motives, and the Meaning of their Cause. November, 1941. Received by the Library of Congress November 10, 1941. 11”x 8.5{, 11 leaves. Mimeographed. Includes he following sections: Those Who Walk by Night; A War of Independence; The F.F.F.(Free French Forces);the Invisible Army; In Terms of History.  $200

Provenance: Library of Congress, with a small oval stamp plus three small rubber stamps on front page; LC rubber stamp on rear page. Front page a little dusty but he rest of the ext is near-fine. Stapled, with last leaf detached. Very old and nearly gone horizontal fold at center.

NO copies located in WorldCat.

(WWII Jewish Refugees, 1939).

“Interview with Two German Refugees.” A Neighborhood Guild Broadcast from WJJD—1130 kilocycles, Sunday February 26, 1939, conducted by Charles Copeland Smith. Chicago, Illinois.

11”x 8.5”, cover+6 leaves of printed interview. Provenance: U.S. Department of State.

GOOD condition.  $150

This is a radio interview conducted by Charles Copeland Smith in 1939 of two German refugees (Mrs. King and a Miss Greta King”) shortly before the fighting war begins later in the year.

Four rubber stamps on the cover (see image); last leaf detached from the stapled binding.

Why did the Kings leave Germany? Because they were Jews. The husband, Dr. King, lost his practice and privilege on April 1933. They outlined what was happening to Jews in general in Germany—the stormtroopers, the loss of life, imprisonment. Reports on some anti-Semitism in the US towards them

By 1935 determined to leave, the end was in sight for the Jews.

The April 1 1933 law that is mentioned I this interview refers to “The “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service”, the first official banishment of the Jewish people as menials, second-class citizens,  banning the Jews from government jobs. The Jews had already been established by the Nazis as being the cause for the loss of WWI, the debacle at Versailles, the ruination of German culture and mortal enemy of the Aryan German. Many hundreds of laws like this would be instituted over the coming few years, establishing the legality of the supposed inferior nature of the Jewish people.  (Also in July 1933 came the underpinning legislation of some future nasty thinking, Ernst Rudin’s “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring”, which established health courts and compulsory abortion and sterilization for a variety of physical and hereditary traits found to be unacceptable for the promulgation of a superior German race.) And this is all before the Nuremberg Laws of 1935/1936, (specifically the “Reich Citizenship Law” 1936)  which basically established the fate of the Jews, removing their citizenship and making them “subjects of the state”.Do I really need reiterate the case for the Nazi subjugation of the Jews, and their making the social and legal basis for the coming extermination policies which were codified at Wansee in 1942?  I think not–though it seems to me that for whatever reason the Smiths decided to not utilize this already well established (even by 1939) information. I think that at the very least they did not want to know.”

Rare First-Hand Account of the Japanese Surrender in Tokyo and the Philippines (1945)

Deglin, Lt. Col T(heodore) .L.  (“PRO AFWESPAC”, Public Relations Officer, Armed Fores Western Pacific, Phillippines). Account of a Trip to Japan and to Baguio to Witness Surrender of Imperial Japanese Forces and of Japanese Forces in the Philippines. 1945  5pp.  Very good condition.  $950

After serving as public relations director for Madison Square Garden (1935-1942), T.L. Deglin became a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army (and later a full colonel) in a public relations capacity, finding himself a witness on 2 September 1945 to the Japanese surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri. He and his party then leaves immediately for Baguio (in the Philippines) to bear witness and report on the surrender of Japanese forces in the Philippines, including the arrest of the Beast of Manila, General Yamashita. What follows below is his five-page (1750 word) description of those events.  The report is an offset-printed production, so it did see some sort of distribution, but I can find no mention of it anywhere. 

An example of Deglin's reporting from the desk of the USS Missouri:

• “General MacArthur is a terrific showman. Every move of his is dramatic and beautifully timed. He spoke briefly, then instructed the Jap foreign minister to sign for the emperor of Japan and the Japanese government. The skinny, bespectacled, top-hatted minister, Shigemitsu, limped forward, pulling his game leg after him. He sat down, facing MacArthur, and had trouble getting the leg under the table. He fiddled around, picked up a pen, put it down, looked at his watch, looked around, looked at his watch again until everyone was slightly nervous, and the general looked quite irritated. Frankly, I could think of only one thing: that a kamikaze plane was going to dive out of the clouds at this time and blow us all over Tokyo Bay. No such excitement, however; the old boy signed both copies of the surrender document and limped back to his position. Then General Umezu, chief of staff for the Imperial Japanese Army, signed quickly.”

Here's an example of Deglin's reporting from Baguio:

• “The conference room was set up with a long table. On one side were a dozen high, hand-carved chairs. On the other side were four wooden folding chairs. The newsreel cameras, still photographers, and radio broadcasters were all set up in their places. Then the Japs were brought in. They were led to the side of the table where the small chairs were and started to sit down but were instructed to remain standing. They were kept standing for nearly 10 minutes; then the top generals came in and sat down. After them came a group of 15 brigadier and major generals. Then the correspondents were herded in—about 35 of them.
  The ceremony was partially designed for the radio broadcast. The surrender document was read, Yamashita was asked if he understood the terms (an interpreter stood behind him), he answered “yes,” the documents (four copies) were signed, the generals filed out, and Yamashita was turned over to the MPs for delivery to New Bilibid Prison near Manila. Incidentally, when he left Baguio he wore a string of ribbons. Guess who has them now!

Rare Document on Japanese Surrender in the Philippines (23 September 1945)

"Headquarter / United States Army Forces Western Pacific / Public Relations Office / General Release - 47, APO 707, 23 September 1945". Single sheet, offset on newspaper print. 13”x 8”, printed front and back. About 700 words. The entire document is reproduced here.

GOOD condition, only. The document was printed on an inferior paper, which has browned and has become brittle along the edges. There is one old old (at bottom) and one short tear (at top side right). Rare. $500

Even though WWII in the Pacific was ended on 15 August 1945 (or at least the surrender was initiated then) and the surrender papers signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945 ("VJ Day"), there were many elements of the Japanese Army that took weeks and in some cases months to actually lay down their weapons and submit. (There are some rare cases of individual soldiers lasting for years and decades past the surrender, refusing to give in, living their lives in remote places.)

This document--"Headquarter / United States Army Forces Western Pacific / Public Relations Office / General Release - 47, APO 707, 23 September 1945"--released by the propaganda/public relations office of the U.S. Army Force Western Pacific, details some of the process of large forces of Japanese forces in the Philippines coming in to surrender. 

Stating that 31,000 Japanese soldiers (and 17 generals) had already been placed under guard in Luzon's POW camps, the three-paragraph document ends with this interesting statement:

"No date has yet been set when it is expected all the Japanese in the hills will be in our hands."

 

WWII German Bombing Report (1940)

Title: Allied Bombing and a Report on Damage to German Industry-- Fliegerangriff in der Nachct vom 17./18.8.40 auf die Hydrierwerk Scholven A.G.   1940. 

With 27 original photographs displaying bombing damage. $750

**NOTE: Hydrierwerk Scholven A.G. was a synthetic petroleum plant and was one of the earliest targets of the British in the Ruhr Valley. It was owned by the Hibernia Mining Company, as a hydrogenation plant in 1935. Gelsenkirchen is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the Ruhr area. Publication Data: no indication of author/printer or which agency/department was responsible, but this looks like (to me) to be the beginning of a standard protocol on reporting damage from British bombing raids. It seems as though the typing under the captions is first generation.

 

Publication data: there is no indication of author, place of publication, or any other printing data. Given the production values here this may be a unique work, or at worst, one copy of a very restricted number, of extremely highly limited distribution. It also seems that the typed captions under the photos is first generation.

It seems to me that this is a standard bit of reporting made after every bombing raid (?) 

Size: 11.5 x 8.5 inches. 20 leaves with 27 original photographic images of damage caused by the bombing. Each leave is quite thick—much more stiff and heavy than a 110-lb cover stock sheet. The photos are all 3 x 4.5 inches, and are clear and bright. Condition: fine condition. Provenance: ex-library, U.S. Library of Congress.

Provenance: this book was part of a very large collection of 90,000 pamphlets bought of the U.S. Library of Congress. Known simply as the “Pamphlet Collection” it is identified by a distinctive and tiny 3mm perforated stamp on the title page (bottom), plus a bookplate at the front pastedown with the LC surplus/duplicate rubber stamp on it.

Binding: bound in thick cloth boards, with heavier black cloth board tips and spine.  

Condition: there is a bit of rubbing to the extremities, though overall the book is in Very Good condition.  

Notes:

"Gelsenkirchen in the time of the Third Reich In the time when the Nazis held sway in Germany, Gelsenkirchen, owing to its location in the heart of the Ruhr area, was a centre of wartime industry. In no other time has Gelsenkirchen's industry been so highly productive. This brought about, on the one hand, after the massive job cuts in the 1920s, a short-term boost in mining and heavy-industry jobs. On the other hand, the city naturally became the target of many heavy Allied bombing raids during the Second World War, which destroyed three fourths of Gelsenkirchen. Even today, many old above-ground air-raid shelters can be found in the city, and some of the city's official buildings such as Hans-Sachs-Haus downtown and the town hall in Buer have air-raid shelters still kept more or less in their original form. Two synagogues in Gelsenkirchen were destroyed in the anti-Jewish riots of Kristallnacht in November 1938. The one in Buer was burnt down. The one in downtown Gelsenkirchen was likewise destroyed. Exactly 66 years later, the cornerstone was laid there for a new synagogue. The Institute for City History set up a documentation site: "Gelsenkirchen in National Socialist times". Throughout the time when Hitler was in power, from 1933 to 1945, the city's mayor was Carl Engelbert Böhmer, an NSDAP."

Title: Allied Bombing and a Report on Damage to German Industry-- Fliegerangriff in der Nachct vom 17./18.8.40 auf die Hydrierwerk Scholven A.G.   1940. 

With 27 original photographs displaying bombing damage. $750

**NOTE: Hydrierwerk Scholven A.G. was a synthetic petroleum plant and was one of the earliest targets of the British in the Ruhr Valley. It was owned by the Hibernia Mining Company, as a hydrogenation plant in 1935. Gelsenkirchen is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the Ruhr area. Publication Data: no indication of author/printer or which agency/department was responsible, but this looks like (to me) to be the beginning of a standard protocol on reporting damage from British bombing raids. It seems as though the typing under the captions is first generation.

 

Publication data: there is no indication of author, place of publication, or any other printing data. Given the production values here this may be a unique work, or at worst, one copy of a very restricted number, of extremely highly limited distribution. It also seems that the typed captions under the photos is first generation.

It seems to me that this is a standard bit of reporting made after every bombing raid (?) 

Size: 11.5 x 8.5 inches. 20 leaves with 27 original photographic images of damage caused by the bombing. Each leave is quite thick—much more stiff and heavy than a 110-lb cover stock sheet. The photos are all 3 x 4.5 inches, and are clear and bright. Condition: fine condition. Provenance: ex-library, U.S. Library of Congress.

Provenance: this book was part of a very large collection of 90,000 pamphlets bought of the U.S. Library of Congress. Known simply as the “Pamphlet Collection” it is identified by a distinctive and tiny 3mm perforated stamp on the title page (bottom), plus a bookplate at the front pastedown with the LC surplus/duplicate rubber stamp on it.

Binding: bound in thick cloth boards, with heavier black cloth board tips and spine.  

Condition: there is a bit of rubbing to the extremities, though overall the book is in Very Good condition.  

Notes:

"Gelsenkirchen in the time of the Third Reich In the time when the Nazis held sway in Germany, Gelsenkirchen, owing to its location in the heart of the Ruhr area, was a centre of wartime industry. In no other time has Gelsenkirchen's industry been so highly productive. This brought about, on the one hand, after the massive job cuts in the 1920s, a short-term boost in mining and heavy-industry jobs. On the other hand, the city naturally became the target of many heavy Allied bombing raids during the Second World War, which destroyed three fourths of Gelsenkirchen. Even today, many old above-ground air-raid shelters can be found in the city, and some of the city's official buildings such as Hans-Sachs-Haus downtown and the town hall in Buer have air-raid shelters still kept more or less in their original form. Two synagogues in Gelsenkirchen were destroyed in the anti-Jewish riots of Kristallnacht in November 1938. The one in Buer was burnt down. The one in downtown Gelsenkirchen was likewise destroyed. Exactly 66 years later, the cornerstone was laid there for a new synagogue. The Institute for City History set up a documentation site: "Gelsenkirchen in National Socialist times". Throughout the time when Hitler was in power, from 1933 to 1945, the city's mayor was Carl Engelbert Böhmer, an NSDAP."

German Anti-Soviet Propaganda (1942)

Sous la faucille el le marteau (“Under the Hammer and Sickle”). (No indication of place of publication, or publisher, or date of publication, though I would guess around 1942.) 18”x 28”. One separation along 10” of a fold repaired with archival Japan tape; otherwise VG. Provenance: Library of Congress, with their rubber stamp on the front cover. WorldCat locates 10 copies—none in the U.S. (Also they estimate the publication date to be 1945, which I think is too late in the war; I would guess 1942.)

$250

This “pamphlet” is uncut from the original sheet, meaning that in order to read it you unfold/open the object three times: one panel to start, then two, then four are revealed, and then eight. This is an effective technique, as the images become progressively more grim; when you arrive at the “poster” portion of this pamphlet, the images are very bad.

 

This is a searing and bitter piece of German anti-Soviet propaganda printed for French readers somewhere near 1942—it seems to me to be a product of the Nazi thought engineers that was made before the turning point of Operation Barbarossa, before things started to go very badly for the Germans in mid/late 1941 and advancing into 1942 (the campaign and the VI army ending in January 1943). This is something that goes far beyond a general strafing of the Soviet Union, and on into a condemnation of the system/soldiers/people as barbaric and “deviant”.

The opening page leads with an indicting quote from Lenin and then introduces the rest of the imagery saying, in effect, “what the domination of international communism means in reality” and reporting the first-hand accounts of what “the German troops and their allies and saw...everywhere with their own eyes” which is established as the “practice, the aspect of Bolshevism that menaces Europe”.

Then comes the hard stuff, the pamphlet opening into a poster, with grainy pictures depicting terrible things: menacing-looking portraits of men said to be the 'deviant” USSR soldiers; depictions of hardscrabble and dilapidated villages in the “worker's paradise”; a common sight of a sign in a park prohibiting the burial of cadavers on park grounds; profanities committed against the church, including imprisoning priests in barrels as cells, and then advancing to the terrible depiction of the “children's paradise”, showing “the youth, neglected and abandoned, starving”, with photos of piles of small bodies.

On the other side of the “poster” is another dire set of images, again depicting the supposed hell-hole of Bolshevism, the “Soviet paradise” nothing but misery, accompanied by the “annihilation” of intelligence/intellect. Very tough stuff, especially writ large like this.

The Situation in Poland, 1944

Poland, a Factual Statement that Every American Ought to Read. New York, 1943. Polish Information Center, 151 East 67^th Street, NYC; 9”x 6”, 16pp. Printed wrappers. Provenance, Library of Congress, with their rubber stamp on the front cover. VG copy. WorldCat locates only 5 copies. $350

Of particular interest is the section “German Reign of Terror” [reproduced below] (pp 12-15), leading with these numbers of crimes committed by the Germans: To forced labor in Germany (1,000,000 Poles); to the Government General (700,000 Poles); shot and murdered (1,200,000 Poles), starved to death (about 500,000 Poles). “It staggers the imagination to think that every tenth human being in German occupied Poland had already been shot or hanged tortured to death, starved...or deported to Germany.”

There are other stories of mass executions, as well as a short description of Auschwitz: “More than 60,000 Poles have been murdered in the concentration camps of the Government General and the Reich. Oswiecim is the most gruesome on Polish territory. It was set up in July 1940 and consists of ten barracks, each of which is supposed to contain 400 prisoners, but actually houses 1,000 men. Prisoners wear thin cotton uniforms in winter as in summer. They were only given shoes on October 15 and had no caps before December. On arrival they had to fill out answers to 32 questions about their life, family, health, wealth and political activities. Two weeks suffice to break men above 45 years. Younger men lose their vigor and youth within half a year...”

This is the scan of the “German Reign of Terror” section:

Report No. 1. (Confidential) Eye Witness Reports from North of the 38th Parallel (Russian Occupation Zone) in Korea. 13x8", 5 leaves, offset printed. Offset printed. WorldCat/OCLC locates NO copies. $750

Condition: old vertical fold at the bottom quarter. Stamped “declassified” by the exchange and gift division, Library of Congress, with their surplus/duplicate stamp on the rear page.

There are various reports with the "eyewitness" names left out, replaced by subscript lines. The materials removed are categorized so: coal, food, machinery, Manchuria, heavy industries, manufacturing machinery, steel mills, textile mills, electric smelting mill, railways, and so on.

This document seems to offer proofs of large-scale stripping of North Korean facilities back to the Soviet Union--at just the time when it was said that there perhaps wasn't good evidence for this. (See: The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 By Charles K. Armstrong, page 150, available online).