Background: This is the booklet accompanying a 1942 exhibition on the Soviet Union, organized by the Nazi Party’s propaganda office. The brochure is 48 pages with numerous black and white photographs of the exhibition. I translate only a part of it here, and include five of the photographs. The Nazis put out a “documentary film” with the same title that supplemented the exhibition.
The source: Das Sowjet-Paradies. Ausstellung der Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP. Ein Bericht in Wort und Bild. Berlin: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1942. The German original is available here.
As early as 1934 the Reichspropagandaleitung of the NSDAP organized an exhibition from the available written and visual material. Its goal was to inform the German people about the dreadful conditions in the Soviet Union.
The exhibition’s organizers often had the feeling that
their portrayal of conditions in the Soviet Union was far from accurate.
This feeling has since been confirmed — but in an entirely different
manner than expected. Everything that had been said about Bolshevism before
the outbreak of the war with the Soviet Union has been thrown into the
shadows by reality. Words and pictures are not enough to make the tragedy
of Bolshevist reality believable to Europeans. This agrees with what our
soldiers repeatedly say. It is impossible to portray conditions in the
Soviet Union without oneself having seen and experienced them.
The idea therefore was to provide German citizens with an exhibition based on everyday life under Bolshevism in order to show them the misery of life there. A number of expeditions to areas held by our troops were made to gather the necessary original material for the exhibition.
Millions of visitors have received an accurate picture of the misery of life under Bolshevism through the numerous original items. Experts, above all our soldiers, still agree that even this exhibition does not give a full picture of the misery and hopelessness of the lives of farmers and workers in the “Soviet Paradise.”
“The Riches of the East.”
[This section discusses the Soviet Union’s natural resources.]
The Germanic Settlement in the East.
[This section discusses German migrations to the east.]
Marxism and Bolshevism — The Invention of Jewry. Early on, Jewry recognized unlimited possibilities for the Bolshevist nonsense in the East. This is supported by two facts:
1. The inventor of Marxism was the Jew Marx-Mordochai;
2. The present Soviet state is nothing other than the realization of that Jewish invention. The Bolshevist revolution itself stands between these two facts. The Jews exterminated the best elements of the East to make themselves the absolute rulers of an area from which they hoped to establish world domination. According to the GPU’s figures, nearly two million people were executed during the years 1917 to 1921. A direct result of the revolution was the terrible famine that demanded 19 million victims between 1917 and 1934. Over 21 million people lost their lives though this Jew-incited revolution and its consequences.
The Facade of Bolshevism
The bloody attacks of Bolshevism into Europe were always accompanied by wild agitation that claimed that the Soviet Union was the “paradise of farmers and workers.” In reality this was propaganda, and all the cultural, social and technical advances that Bolshevism claimed were nothing but a deceptive facade that concealed the gray misery of daily life under Bolshevism. This is illustrated in the next room of the exhibition. In its center, there is an original Bolshevist monument mass produced from plaster on a wood frame. One was found in every city. Because of their poor quality they quickly began crumbling, a true example of Bolshevist culture. Such monuments intensify the dirty and miserable atmosphere that all Soviet cities share, interrupted only by a few prestige buildings that display technical weaknesses. They are built for propaganda purposes, and to deceive travelers from abroad.
These facades, built only for propaganda reasons, are the mark of all
Bolshevist cities. Model streets in the American style are filled with
huge buildings with a thousand deficiencies, which mock the miserable
workers
who are forced
even after 25 years of Bolshevist culture to live gray and joyless lives.
The contrast between government buildings and the general wretched housing is the same as the difference between military production and those things that are necessary for daily life. The enormous military expenditures dwarf those of all other nations, but everyday goods are of wretched quality. The war is not responsible for the population’s lack of cups and saucers, furniture and beds, the most basic decorative items such as curtains or inexpensive carpets, not to mention the most necessary items of clothing. Such things are just as expensive as foodstuffs. A generous estimate of the weekly average wage of a worker is 100-125 rubles. Here are the costs:
Those were the peacetime prices in the USSR, which does not however mean that such things could actually be bought. Bad bread and potatoes were the almost exclusive diet of the miserable population during the Bolshevist system’s 20 years of peace.
The glaring contrast between the between the splendid weaponry
and the deep poverty of the people is clear from the living conditions
in Moscow, which by the way are neither
better nor worse than those in other Bolshevist cities. Conditions
were not particularly good even before the war in 1913. But by
1928 four people lived in the average room, and six by 1939,
independent of whether or not they were related. All usable rooms
are jammed full. Normal dwellings of the kind we are used to
in Germany are unknown. Each room is a kitchen, living room, and
bedroom for its inhabitants. If one looks for those responsible
for these miserable conditions, one always finds Jews. Is it
not interesting that the word “anti-Semite” is the
worst thing one can be accused of in the Soviet state, for which
one all too easily is sentenced to forced labor or death? A look
at the statistics on the Jewdification of high offices in the
Soviet Union makes everything clear.
Nearly all the ministries, which the Bolshevists call “people’s commissions,” are controlled by the Jews.
Further proof that the Soviet state belongs to the Jews is the fact that the people are ruthlessly sacrificed for the goals of the Jewish world revolution. Besides the notorious Stachanov system, women are systematically degraded to labor slaves. Even during peace, women increasingly worked even in the hardest jobs such as coal mining and the smelting industry.
A further fact makes clear to the expert that the Jews are behind Soviet industrial structure: The Woroschilov factory in Minsk was supposed to produce 650 machines tools with a value of 81 million rubles annually. Given the nature of Jewish thinking, the decisive thing was the total value of the production. Because of a lack of experts, tools, and parts the factory produced only 480 machine tools with a value of 59.2 million rubles. To fulfill the plan, the factory managers secretly built a boiler-maker in the back, which produced goods sold at black market prices. This made up for the difference of 22 million rubles. The plan was thus met with production of 81 million rubles, even though 170 too few machines were produced.
The Soviet Army — A Terrible Threat to Europe.
Ever since the murder of the Tsar, the Jewish-Bolshevist ruling clique in Moscow has planned the annihilation of Europe. All raw materials and the whole labor force were exploited ruthlessly to meet this goal. Foreign specialists and engineers were brought in to make up for the domestic failings. Production figures that astonished the entire world resulted. This became evident in the Wehrmacht’s figures on captured war booty.
180,000,000 people had to work under
the most brutal and primitive conditions solely for armaments
production. That is the explanation for the unimaginable amount
of Bolshevist weaponry, most of which has been destroyed or captured
in the great battles of annihilation of the Eastern campaign.
This vast armory was intended to help Jewry overrun Europe. In preparation, Bolshevism had prepared its positions in Finland, the Baltic, Poland, and Bessarabia. These were the bases from which the decisive blows would be struck against the West.
The vast extent of this weaponry, some of which still exists, is perhaps best shown by the booty of the great encirclement battles of 1941 and the winter battles: 25,000 tanks, 32,000 heavy guns, and 16,000 airplanes were captured or destroyed, and over 4,000,000 prisoners were taken.
Classes in a Classless State
Bolshevism preached that there would of course be no classes in its paradise, since only the proletariat would remain after the elimination of the former ruling class. The emptiness of the claim is obvious to any unprejudiced observer, who can see the degrees of slavery among the population. The Jewish ruling class and its lackeys are at the top, then the masses of factory workers in the cities. A deep chasm separates them from the totally impoverished collective farmers. Bolshevism intentionally created these great differences for two reasons:
1. To lure the masses to the cities to support the Bolshevist armaments program;
2. To give the workers the impression that they are better off than the farmers and to deceive them into believing that their primitive and miserable life is wonderful in comparison to that of the collective farmers. The workers do not and cannot know that by our standards their existence is wretched, since they are hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world. Beside the workers and the collective farmers, there are two classes without any rights at all: the members of the former intelligentsia and the middle class, who are not of proletarian descent. There are also forced laborers, who are used as cheap and defenseless slaves in the vast uncultivated regions. Millions of them die as the result of bad food, poor accommodations and hard work.
The GPU — The Terror Instrument of Jewish Bolshevism
The brutal terror Bolshevism exercises through the GPU is perhaps the best answer to the frequent question of why the Bolshevists fight so bitterly at the front. 25 years of terror have produced a gray and broken mass who silently follow orders because that is their only way to remain alive. Resistance means death, often the death of the entire family. The bestial terror regime of the Jewish GPU is best seen in the sadistic methods of torture used against supposed “enemies.”
The exhibition includes an execution cell from a GPU dungeon. According to a captured commissar, nearly 5,000 people were shot by the GPU in five years behind its iron bars.
The cell is tiled. The condemned were brought to the cell and shot in the back of the neck. The corpses were moved to the side and sprayed with a hose to wash away the blood. A fan provided fresh air so that the next victim would not faint from the blood, because he was to remain conscious until the last moment.
Another narrow cell was used to secure confessions. Prisoners were forced to kneel for hours. If they stood up they hit the ceiling and set off an alarm, and a spotlight was aimed toward them. If they sat on the small seat they got an electric shock that forced them off. A wooden prong on the door pressed against their stomachs.
The worst of all terror institutes of the GPU are the forced labor camps in which millions of innocent victims die every year. Only rarely do they know why they were taken from their families and jobs to work in the icy wastes of Workuta or any of the numerous other labor camps. Most of them are there only because free labor was needed somewhere in the wilderness. No one cared about them. They were shipped there under the principle: “People? We have enough of such trash.”
The unhappy victims, condemned with or without cause, follow a miserable path from which death is the only real escape.
It begins with a spy, often a member of one’s own family. One night the GPU knocks on the door and takes its victim. Put in narrow cells, worn out by endless interrogations. and finally forced to confess by the usual methods of torture, with or without a verdict, they are transported to forced labor camps with inadequate food, often in the bitter cold. Many die on the way. In the forced labor camps themselves, they are stuffed into small barracks. The pitiful food ration depends on the amount of work done. It is never enough, and the hard work soon leads to exhaustion. The smallest offense is punished severely by a spell in an ice cell. Continual overwork, bad food, and the lack of sanitary facilities soon lead to serious illness. The sick forced laborers are put on starvation rations to speed their deaths, for the GPU has no interest in weak workers. They must be disposed of as quickly as possible.
Very few forced laborers return to freedom. Kajetan Klug was one of them. He was a leader of the Marxist Defense League in Linz. After the unsuccessful insurrection of February 1934, he had to flee the revenge of the Dolfuß regime. His route led him through Czechoslovakia to the land of his dreams, the “Paradise of Farmers and Workers.” In Moscow he took over the leadership of the Austrian emigrants and became a party member. But he soon learned the misery of the workers and farmers. When he openly criticized these conditions, he was accused of espionage. He was arrested, tortured, acquitted, and finally condemned with no proof to 5 years of forced labor in Central Asia. The wintry wasteland of Workuta finally opened his eyes to the real nature of the “Paradise of Farmers and Workers.” A few days before the beginning of the war with the Soviet Union, he succeeded in escaping to the German embassy. Along with the embassy personnel, he was able to reach Germany.
The Misery of the Collective Farmers
[This section discusses life on collective farms.]
The Life of the Worker in the Soviet Paradise
Wherever one looks there is poverty, misery, decay, and hunger. This true both of the countryside and the cities. The atmosphere of Bolshevist cities, too, is grim and depressing.
The exhibition here, all the experts agree, is particularly genuine. It always astonishes, for the simple reason that the terrible things it makes visible are real. Here is a Bolshevist culture park, with its mass produced sculptures that cannot endure the weather because of their poor quality. They add to the atmosphere of general atmosphere of decay that all cities in the land of the Bolshevists share. There, just as it was originally, is a collapsing barracks, a so-called home for students, standing in the shadow of a university built on the American model. Its wretched inhabitants at least have a good view of the prestige buildings. From a distance, one cannot see that the quality of every aspect of the buildings is wretched.
The interior of the dormitory corresponds to its exterior. Broken chairs, a damaged bed with torn coverings, a shabby ceiling, a few propaganda posters and books, an old curtain: That is the room of the dormitory leader. As many as eleven less fortunate inhabitants are packed into the other rooms. A washroom for 63 students, without running water, is next to the dormitory leader’s room.
Look into any side street. A dark hole of a shop with the most primitive things: paper clothing (in peace time!), bread, a few cans and bottles. A modest supply of everyday items. It is a government shop. It is governmental because there are no shopkeepers in the Soviet “paradise,” at least in our sense. Nor are there any craftsmen or independent merchants, since private property has been abolished. Next door there is the workshop of a private cobbler, an exception to the usual ban on private property, since he works on his own and is not a member of the normal collective. Still, high taxes take a large part of his modest income, which is hardly enough to provide for himself and his family.
Hidden behind a pile of garbage in a courtyard in the center of Minsk is a restaurant, also a state enterprise. It is miserably equipped. The guests need to bring their own eating utensils. Such items are rare enough so that they would otherwise be stolen. And this is not a place for the poor. It is frequented by managers and government officials. The manager has a special room for his favored guests with several shabby upholstered chairs. The food itself comes from a factory and is always the same, which led to constant complaints in the comment book. And that in peace time!
Alongside the prestige buildings of the university, there are numerous wretched workers’ dwellings. One of them was removed to be part of the exhibition along with all its furnishings. Six families lived here. Each had a single room that served as bedroom, kitchen, and storage room. There was no running water, and the women all agreed that things were so crowded they could never get things in order. Still, they thought these were good rooms since at least they were dry and warm. Many of their comrades lived in wet basements, in caves, or had no roof over their head at all, since the city government did not worry about the many homeless. Everywhere there was desolation and apathy.
Even worse than all this misery is the complete disruption of family life, indeed the beginning of its complete elimination. The exhibition includes one of those offices where marriages are performed for a charge of 50 rubles, without any need for documents. There are countless cases in which men and women have been married numerous times, without ever getting divorced from their previous spouses. The reason is that papers are rarely checked carefully.
The result of such terrible disruption of marriages and families must inevitably lead to complete misery and decay of the youth. The exhibition shows this by the example of the Besprisornys. These gangs of boys from 4 to 15 rob and steal to support themselves. They live in collapsing buildings and caves. According to people in Minsk, a city of 300,000, there are 3,000 such orphaned children. These deserted children say that they never knew their fathers or mothers, ad have no names. They do not know how old they are. One such Besprisornys gang was captured and put in a German orphanage. Their clothing is on mannequins that give a realistic picture of how these unfortunate children lived in complete misery in the “Soviet Paradise.”
Many displays give a picture of everyday life in the Soviet Paradise. A doctor’s office deserves special notice. It gives the lie to all the Bolshevist propaganda about the “exemplary social condition” in the Soviet Union. As a result of the abolition of private property, the doctor is a poorly paid state employee earning 400 rubles a month. She has three rooms, one of which she lives in, one a waiting room, and one the treatment room. The medicines and equipment, the operating table and everything else are unbelievably primitive and do not meet even the minimum hygienic standards. This doctor had 30,000 people to care for, many of whom lived more than a day’s travel from her office.
“Europe Enters”
Poverty, misery, decay, hunger, and need wherever
one looks: That is the Soviet paradise that our soldiers experience every
day, and that millions of exhibition visitors encountered in many original
displays that give them a genuine picture of the so loudly praised social
accomplishments of the Jewish-Soviet state. He who has seen the exhibition
understands the historic conflict in which we are now engaged, a conflict
in which there can be no compromise. There are only two possible outcomes:
Either the German people will win and ensure the survival of the world
and its culture, or it will perish and all the peoples of the world will
fall into the barbarism of the Soviet state that has reduced millions
to powerless starving slaves.
To stop that from happening, the best elements of Europe are fighting under German leadership at the side of our soldiers to destroy the fateful threat to the life and culture of Europe. Our battle is to free the East, along with its vast and inexhaustible riches and agricultural resources, and to save Europe from the nightmare that has threatened it for millennia. In the words of the Führer:
“In defeating this enemy, we remove a danger from the German Reich and all of Europe more severe than any it has faced since the Mongol hordes swarmed across the continent.”
[Page copyright © 1998 by Randall Bytwerk. No unauthorized reproduction. My e-mail address is available on the FAQ page.]
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