Background: These photographs are taken from one of the “bestsellers” of the Nazi era: Germany Awakes: Growth, Battle and Victory of the NSDAP. First published in 1933, over a million copies were in print by the following year. It was a so-called “cigarette book.” One got the pictures as premiums for buying cigarettes and pasted them into the album.
I've selected color photographs from the book. Since most photographs of the era are black and white, it’s easy to forget that Nazism was a colorful phenomenon. Color film was new (the first common color film was introduced in 1932 by Agfa), so the color in these photographs was added to existing black and white photographs.
The source: Deutschland erwacht: Werden, Kampf und Sieg der NSDAP (Hamburg: Zigaretten-Bilderdienst Hamburg-Bahrenfeld, 1934). This book saw a variety of editions. Early ones included pictures of Ernst Röhm. This post-Röhm edition brought the number of copies printed to 1,075,000.
Go to the German Propaganda Home Page.