Description
(Pamphlet) Schlag auf Schlag (Allied anti German propaganda) (1942)
This was a double sided parody on the wellknown German WWII “Parole der Woche”. Schlag auf Schlag means: “Blow upon Blow”.
In very good condition.
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Background information found on the PSywarrior website:
36/1942 – PWE No. H.257: Schlag auf Schlag (Blow upon blow). 10,000 copies delivered on 19 November 1942; 10,000 copies sent to the Free French on 27 February 1943. Reprinted as H.332: 5,000 copies delivered on 11 March 1943. Red and black. Ellic Howe says about this leaflet:
This was a greatly reduced version of a typical Propaganda Ministry ‘saying of the week’ poster and we must have used the Promi model for at least half a dozen suitable subversive gummed stickers. The latter had the advantage of being easy to carry and could be applied quickly in any convenient place during the black-out. H.332 provided greatly exaggerated details of German losses in Russia …graphically demonstrating that the ‘cemetery’ conquered by the German troops in the Soviet territory was bigger than the British Isles .
The English-language text is:
Blow upon blow the German Armed Forces are pounding our enemies on land, on the sea and in the air! Since the beginning of the spring offensives, from the end of the fighting on the Kerch peninsula to the end of the battle for Stalingrad, 960,000 German soldiers have died. From the beginning of the Russian campaign on 22 June 1941, German troops have lost 4,600,000 dead, severely wounded or missing.
The graveyard newly conquered by our troops in 1942 in Soviet Russia, is bigger than the British Isles.
On the home front, over exhaustion, under nourishment and overwork have killed about 65,000 men and women in work-related accidents. Another 115,000 have lost their lives through air raids. Full of pride, the Führer looks at these historically unique successes and is ready to have us make any possible future sacrifices, until the German people lies bled to death on the ground.
Sefton Delmer, director of the British black radio operation said about this leaflet in private correspondence to the head of the German Section of the Special Operation Executive (SOE):
I think you might tell your distributors that this Schlag auf Schlag sticker is a very close imitation of a German poster called “Schlag auf Schlag bis der Feind am Boden liegt,” (“Blow upon Blow until the Enemy lies on the ground”), and that it is the habit of the Propaganda Ministry to turn such posters into stickers of exactly this size with the serial name: Parole der Woche (“Saying of the Week”).
I have included the Parole der Woche and the NSDAP as authors of the sticker, in order that anyone putting it on a letter can say: “Oh, but I felt sure that it was one of our stickers. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it”.
This propaganda text Schlag auf Schlag was also produced in leaflet form and later an updated version was airdropped by the British ‘M’ Balloon Unit.
