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"Arbeitsschlacht". Arbeitsbeschaffung und Propaganda in der NS-Zeit 1933-1939 . By Detlev Humann . Göttingen : Wallstein , 2011. Pp. 808. Cloth [euro]49.90. ISBN 978-3835308381 .
Book Reviews
A photograph of a German soldier with a rifle stands above an image of a tank. The caption reads: "On the battlefield of war, 1914." To the left is an image of a tractor and a man with a shovel, with the caption: "On the battlefield of work, 1934" (649). This photographic montage appeared in the official newsletter of the National Socialist Factory Cell Organization in 1935. It revealed--as does so much propaganda on similar themes--that the Nazi regime's "battle for work" (Arbeitsschlacht) slogan was never meant as a mere metaphor to describe its confrontation with the economic crisis inherited in 1933. In the early years of the Third Reich, the regime truly was at war against staggering unemployment, illegal or under-the-table labor (Schwarzarbeit), and female "double-income earners" (Doppelverdiener). It was a war fought with a variety of weapons...