This is the Enemy: Describing Nazi Aggression in Text and Image
December 2014 - March 2015, Special Collections & Archives, Olin LibraryA survey of American and English print media from 1933-1945 addressing the threat of Nazi violence.
This is the Enemy: Describing Nazi Aggression in Text and Image
Before World War II, the Nazi Party gained power in Germany by combining shrewd political maneuvering with acts of intimidation and violence. Led by Adolph Hitler and known formally as the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Worker’s Party), the Nazis used targeted acts of aggression, including murder, along with a fervently nationalistic, anti-Semitic rhetoric to secure control of the German government in 1933. As the decade progressed, Hitler expanded the party’s program of violence by killing political opponents and ethnic and religious minorities. This violence escalated with the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which led to the outbreak of World War II. Before the war’s end in 1945, Nazi atrocities intensified in occupied Europe with the systematic murder of approximately six million Jews during the Holocaust.
Overall, the objects seen in this exhibition vacillate between representing violent acts already committed and portraying violent acts not yet perpetrated. This diversity results in part from the variety of agencies that produced these objects and the range of intended audiences. For example, the American posters on display at left rely upon different levels of emotional content and historical specificity to deliver a message quickly. This contrast is particularly noticeable between Ben Shahn’s poster “Nazi Brutality,” that refers to a specific war atrocity, and the other American graphics on view, which deemphasize historical details.
The different types of media displayed provides a second contrast. Whereas posters typically hung in public spaces adjacent to multiple visual distractions, brochures required a more dedicated, focused reader. As such, writers of long-format political tracts often outlined an argument over a series of pages. For example, many of the British brochures in the case at the far left demonstrate a reportorial style that presents past instances of Nazi violence as immoral acts that will likely compromise the reader’s own safety. In these publications, authors often deemphasize emotionally charged rhetoric and instead rely upon documented facts to persuade readers. Despite the variety of visual and physical material seen here, all of these objects attempted to disseminate the seriousness of Nazi violence in an age when print media played a major role in the distribution of ideas and information.
This exhibition draws from the holdings at Kenyon’s Greenslade Special Collections Library, the Bulmash Collection, and an anonymous lender.
Austin Porter
Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of American Democracy
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History