The Big Lie--Poland as an Aggressor Against the Reich, 1939

JF Ptak Science Books  Post  1298      (This is the second post written on this pamphlet--it is a stunner to me every time I see it. The earlier post was written in September 2008 and can be found here.)

Here’s an interesting entry from the instrumental librarians' tool WorldCat, a massive 75 million item book database that I use with some frequency, trying to determine whether some obscure-sounding/looking pamphlet or book is actually Not Around, like not in library collections.  (When something just isn't there, not located, it makes the work even more interesting to me.)

Poland’s Designs on Germany has the sound and feel of a piece of propaganda, right from the start, just from the supra-obvious title page and the very feel of the production.  Looking for my proof-in-the-pudding--the printing information and source for the information--I found none.  Another strike for the propagandist.  (And another interesting point: the phrase "Poland's designs on Germany" is a non-starter on Google, not located on the web, or in JSTOR, or in other pay-for web commercial communities.)

(This item is available for purchase at our blog bookstore.)

Then of course there was the content, which is a simple, serial distribution of The Big Lie, painting Poland as an aggressor, hungry for German land and people. So far as I can tell there is nothing truthful in this work whatsoever, or at least I should say nothing that is assertive to the point of Poland being an "aggressor". There are seven maps illustrating the points.  These are the great hallmarks of The Big Lie--a lie so vast that no one is supposed to think it possible that someone would tell a lie so fantastic, that no broadcast lie could be so incredibly big as to have been invented and told,  and so the lie must be true.  Hitler wrote about this admiringly in Mein Kampf, expressing an idolotry for the idea in print, recognizing it as a powerfull tool of subversion and propaganda, and then went ahead and followed the instructions. 

Then comes the entry in the WorldCat–I found that the year was 1939.  It would be in September of the year that Hitler would attack Poland and the war would begin.  Who would have thought that the Nazis were acting in self defense?

The WorldCat entry:

Poland's Designs on Germany as expressed since the British guarantee.  [Berlin W 62, Rauchstr. 27]  [Dt. Informationsstelle],
1939
23 S. : 7 gez. Kt. ; 8.
Other Titles:     Polnische Ansprüche auf deutsches Reichsgebiet. engl.
Locations    Library    
Germany    BAYERISCHE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK     
Germany    BIBLIOTHEK DES HERDER-INSTITUTS     
Germany    DIE DEUTSCHE NATIONALBIBLIOTHEK   
Germany    STAATSBIBLIOTHEK ZU BERLIN

And there it is: "Dt. Infomrationnsstelle" is the Deutsche Informationnsstelle, the German Information Centre.  The  GIC exists today in name only, but during the National Socialist period leading up to the war and during WWII it was an outlet for German propoagandistic works. There are no copies of this particular work, evidently, in libraries in the United States. This is too bad, because this is a tremendously insulting document, an insistent, insinuating, unforgiving document to the ridiculous, perverted manner of thought and logic of the Nazis.

Comments

[Mentallill]

I'm not sure the various "Deutsche Informationsstelle(n)" that exist today would share anything but the name of the Nazi department: it's a very generic term.

I'm not sure this is interesting, but the question of what happened in 1939 was a prominent issue in German politics this year, briefly. As quoted on http://www.wbj.pl/article-51037-poland-mobilized-before-germany-says-erika-steinbach.html, the statement Erika Steinbach made was: “Unfortunately, I cannot change the fact that Poland had already mobilized in March 1939.” That is certainly an accurate translation of what she was reported to have said in German.

For what it's worth, the German media have been very good about stating unequivocally what happened in 1939. The Big Lie lives on in the incredibly blinkered view evident in the statement, with revisionists blowing out of all proportion events to suggest Polish aggression that simply did not exist.

(Erika Steinbach went on to insult a Holocaust survivor, apparently because he didn't answer her letters. She remains a member of the Bundestag and spokeswoman of Merkel's parliamentary party on human rights issues.)

[John F. Ptak]

Thanks very much for your contribution. I added a note about the GIC to make it more clear that it even though it exists today it is not the GIC of 1939 by any means whatsoever.