Did Axis countries have morale & welfare programs during WW2?

by CrashRiot

The USO for the US military was formed during WW2, and has been very active ever since. They were always there even during my own tours. This lead me to wonder, what sort of programs (if any) did the Axis countries have?

commiespaceinvader

Yes, but only kind of in regards to such an organization and yes, but only kind of in regards to celebrities.

As far as I am aware the USO is private non-profit organization that works in close partnership with the Department of Defense. Such a set-up would not have been really possible in Nazi Germany since the issue of entertainment for troops was always closely tied to propaganda and instilling troops with a distinctly nationalsocialist ethos. Hence, troop entertainment was not in the hands of an organization such as the USO but rather in the hands of the Wehrmacht itself, specifically in the hands of the Bureau for Wehrmacht Propaganda and the individual propaganda troops.

The Bureau for Wehrmacht Propaganda, later called Amtsgruppe für Wehrmachtpropaganda or WPr was the top level organization responsible to the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) and, for army troops, the Army High Command (AOK). It was created after the Wehrmacht High Command had made a deal with the Ministry of Propaganda under Jospeh Goebbels in 1938 that the army would receive materials from the Ministry but would be responsible for dissemination and organization of propaganda (and entertainment was propaganda as I will discuss shortly) themselves.

The WPr underwent several administrative changes and expanded its personnel massively over the war – reaching division strength with 15000 soldiers in 1942 – but what is important for the purpose and entertainment is that the WPr as a central organization created dependencies in every major theater and occupied country with propaganda troops at their disposal as well as designated officers responsible for both propaganda and entertainment in every army division. These were usually part of the Ic department of these division (the department responsible for reconnaissance, intelligence, and propaganda and entertainment). These officers received material and entertainment from the theater/country's propaganda department and organized them for the regiments of the division as well as provided feedback about the materials to the larger department. Furthermore, this officer also was responsible for the dissemination of newspapers.

The WPr and its individual dependencies were also responsible for organizing and producing press products, from newspapers to high gloss magazines and for propaganda for the enemy in order to decrease their morale. The WPr for example ran magazines such as "Signal", "Die Wehrmacht", and a broad variety of illustrated magazines, meaning high-gloss magazines with lots of pictures. Hence, they employed thousands of journalists and photographs who throughout the war wrote about 80.000 texts in various lengths and made 2 million photographs.

In occupied, these WPr dependencies also ran large parts of the press. For example in Serbia, the editors of both the only large Serbian speaking newspaper as well as of the Donau Zeitung, the newly created German-language occupation newspaper, had to submit their articles for censorship the the Wehrmacht propaganda department South-East. It also supervised and certified cinemas, theaters, the opera, and such things as cabarets and music clubs. They all had to submit their program to them for certification or had to perform the program they ordered them to do. Also, in Serbia for example, the Propaganda Department insisted on the local opera playing the Mozart Opera Figaro's Wedding in their effort as they write "to educate the Serb to appreciate high German culture". Similarly, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department there (most of them PhDs in German/German literature) closed down a lot of cabarets and variety clubs for they deemed the programs there too risqué or tasteless.

Basically, these departments controlled pretty much the entirety of the cultural landscape and entertainment in occupied territories – and made every effort to create an entertainment and cultural program in line with Nazi ideology –, including the entertainment for the Wehrmacht troops.

So, what kind of entertainment did Wehrmacht troops enjoy? Well, it depended if we are talking about combat troops or occupation troops and where they were as there was far better entertainment in France than e.g. in occupied Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union but in case of those not in France or other countries with a cultural infrastructure, it was far less exciting or explosive and exciting than what the USO offered.

The example I personally studied is the 714th Infantry Division, a occupation division of the 15th Wehrmacht wave, deployed in occupied Yugoslavia and taking part in the immensely brutal Partisan fighting there (and also committing countless war crimes). From the regular reports of the Ic department, we know that entertainment-wise their program consisted of a movie van, basically a mobile cinema that could drive to where ever its regiments were located to show movies, troops of visiting artists from Germany and newspapers, illustrated magazines, and the so-called Wehrmacht radios, radios specifically created for Wehrmacht combat troops that were mostly tuned to whatever Wehrmacht radio station that served the territory (in case of the Balkans, this was Sender Belgrade, the German propaganda station with the furthest reaching waves of them all).

So, what did they see: From the monthly reports from August 1941 to March 1942, we know that the movie van showed the movies:

  • Der Weg ins Freie (The way outside, 1941), a melodrama about an opera singer faking her own suicide taking place against the backdrop of the 1848 revolution.

  • Uboote Westwärts (Uboats westward, 1941), a war propaganda film promoting the German navy showing the British as cowardly and duplicitous.

  • Die Rothschilds (The Rothschilds , 1940), an anti-semitic propaganda film dealing with the alleged machinations of the Rothschild family and their control over British politics.

  • Der Gasmann (the Gasman, 1941), a Heinz Rühmann comedy about a gasman who changes his uniform with a man he meets on a train and by accident comes into a large fortune. It's the only Heinz Rühmann Film, in which Rühmann performs the Hitler salute.

  • Stukas (1941), a German war propaganda film about – surprise, surprise – Stukas. It was commissioned by the Luftwaffe and portrays war as a joy.

  • Frau Luna (Miss Luna, 1941), a movie version of a 1922 Operetta of the same name that – as pretty much every operetta – deals with love stories, mistaken identities and affairs.

  • Ich klage an (I Accuse, 1941), a German pro-euthanasia propaganda movie about a woman who champions to be put to death for she suffers from an un-cureable diseases and wants to save the German state money.

  • Da stimmt was nicht (Something's wrong, 1934), another comedy that is basically the Nazi version of the modern movie Wedding Crashers.

So, as you can see, the movies shown to Wehrmacht troops of the 714th Division in Yugoslavia were a mix of comedies and propaganda movies with the odd melodrama mixed in. This is pretty indicative for the Nazi German movie industry as a whole, which made either outright propaganda movies or light comedies, the latter of which a favorite genre among the Germans in Nazi Germany overall.

As for celebrities visiting the troops, from the monthly reports of the 718th Infantry Division, also a 15th wave division used for occupation and Partisan fighting in Yugoslavia) that the troops were regularly visited by theater and comedy troops associated the the KdF (Strength through Joy), a state-operated leisure organization in Nazi Germany (who was responsible for e.g. sea side resorts for workers as well as the Volkswagen program).

In July 1942 the Ic officer reported:

In July, the division was visited by 3 KdF groups. All three were well received. The Comedy Group "The Best of the Best" was especially well received by the troops and everyone laughed heartily. Comedy groups are always a huge success.

A special treat was the visit of the Rumanian State Theater. The troops were very impressed with their acting and singing. [...]

The theater group "Maria Auer" was also well-received though such small groups tend to get stale fast.

In subsequent months, they were visited by the Peasant Theater Group Löwinger, the city theater Mährich Ostrau or a comedy group called "3 women and a man" about which the Ic officer remarked that their program was really good "despite the group consisting of only four people".

What kind of program they expected and how that often clashed with what the troops wanted can be gleaned from another report of the Ic officer from the previous year:

This month the Tyrolean Gau Theater performed so-called peasants' theater for the troops. This was severely lacking in niveau for the program contained a whole slew of distasteful humor and crude jokes. We request the propagnda department have a talk with the local KdF officer in order to prevent a repetition of such occurrences.

Like the movies shown, these theater groups were far from celebrities comparable to what the USO offered American troops but that wasn't the point. The idea behind the entertainment program was to spread Nazi propaganda and ethos among the Wehrmacht troops. While it is difficult to reconstruct exactly what the content of a lot of these programs was, where it is possible, we see e.g. a comedy program full of anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic jokes while the theater groups were under orders to perform plays in line with Nazi ideology.

The cooperation between Wehrmacht propaganda and KdF resulted in 337,000 performances in all theaters of war for Wehrmacht troops and German civilians in various occupied territories.

Sources:

  • Julia Timpe: Nazi-Organized Recreation and Entertainment in the Third Reich.

  • Daniel Uziel: The Propaganda Warriors. The Wehrmacht and the Consolidation of the German Home Front.

  • Files of the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department South East and the 714th and 718th Infantry Divisions.