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RARE 1942 NAZI PHOTO MAGAZINE DER VOLKSDEUTSCHE (THE ETHNIC GERMAN)

Text and images copyright by USM, Inc.

For sale on this USMBOOKS web page is a rare original example of the May-June 1942 edition of Der Volksdeutsche which has very interesting content about Waffen-SS volunteers serving in the German Wehrmacht. They are referred to as “the Germanic Fighters for the Freedom of Europe”. The photo magazine was published every eight weeks by the Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA), edited by Dr. Robert Langer and printed by Deutscher Verlag in Berlin.

There is also an interesting photo article about the Reichsschule für Volksdeutsche und Nationalpolitischen Erziehungsanstalt, the Nazi State School for Political Education of Ethnic Germans in Rufach, Germany (now Rouffach in the French Alsace).

Few examples of this 82 year old Nazi magazine Der Volksdeutsche remain in the 21st century as the Nazi concept of “ethnic Germans” was not a popular topic after the end of the Third Reich and World War II! Volksdeutschen were ethnic Germans living beyond the pre-war borders of Nazi Germany. Due to their German ancestry they were allowed to return to Nazi Germany (under strict supervision of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s SD) from places such as Bessarabia, Rumania, South Bukovina and Lithuania. After the start of World War II many ethnic Germans were also resettled in occupied German territory.

The 9-¾ x 3 inch, 16 page magazine has a striking photo of a Norwegian Waffen-SS member on the front cover. Other photos show Waffen-SS volunteers from Holland, Belgium, Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace, HJ boys and BdM girls, etc. There is also a rare photo of SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz visiting Waffen-SS men (Lorenz was the leader of the Nazi Party agency Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VOMI), the Main Office for Ethnic Germans).

In the back there is advertising by Dresdner Bank, Deutsche Reichspost, and companies producing cosmetics, musical instruments, etc. On the back page is a request to forward this 1942 edition of Der Volksdeutsche to men serving on the front lines, one of the reasons copies like this one are so rare today.

Other articles are about the second anniversary of Luxembourg becoming a part of the German Reich (left), Dutch Day of Labor celebrations in the Hague, Holland (attended by high-ranking Nazi dignitaries Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart and RAD leader Konstantin Hierl), German artists in Rumania, and German history and architecture in Litzmannstadt (now Lodz in Poland). The infamous Jewish ghetto in Litzmannstadt is neither pictured nor mentioned!