Printing our Past
It was the dawning of the second world war, and the axis was engaged in furious battle with the allies. Flitting above the sparse clouds, British spitfires, German Messerschmitts and Japanese zeros dodged bullets, and shedded valuable fuselage on enemy territory. On the ground, Hitler detained jews, while Americans grit their teeth as they surged against the Nazi forces. But - within it all lay a tool with the power to sway a nation, or alter a war. A pivotal piece in the movement of propaganda and civilian exposure to the front lines. Photography stepped in just before World War I, and ended up taking on a personality of it’s own. By the time world war II swung around, photography was adopted into propaganda, and into the lives of the families of soldiers that were in combat. It allowed the axis to distort and mangle the idea of the war effort so that their citizens would see it as productive. The power of a simple capture carried more weight than ever expected.
Unfortunately, photography didn’t carry the same weight for soldiers who fought in every day battles, huddled by the warmth of their tank engine. A photo of the war was just another reminder of the time they would have to spend tearing through the fortified masses of their enemies day by day. The soldiers had a live feed of the brutality that occurred on a daily basis, and photography was only able to capture a minute sliver of what a soldier’s eyes were able to see. In this way, the rest of the world was living visually in the dark. The eyes of civilians didn’t have the gruesome pleasure to gaze upon the bodies of the fallen, real time, or burn their nostrils with the sickly, pungent aroma of fetid decay and gunsmoke. So as soon as a capture was sent home and published in a news article, eyes would ignite with curiosity and thirst for more. World War II’s photo collection didn’t serve for artistic purpose alone. War photography in this age didn’t account for expressionism, color balance, or technicality. It served to be purely communicative.
Communication in World War II was of the utmost importance to leaders, commanders, military strategists, soldiers and even civilians. The power of photojournalism and image capture played a part in the release of what your enemy was allowed to see, and what not. When photojournalists displayed the war effort in media, they had to make sure that the image displayed to the general public was a good image. The images and words placed in the media, that spread across a nation directly affected the support that the government would receive from their people. This is where Hitler excelled. Citizens knew that war was destructive, and citizens knew that war wasn’t a positive thing. But Adolf Hitler was able to directly control, and have people advocate for his cause simply because he allowed no negative media to circulate in public. “Everything had to be based upon how great the Nazis were, and how they could change the life of the Germans to be so much better”(1)
To do this, Adolf Hitler recruited his most trusted members of the nazi party for a job such as photojournalism. A Vichy France German propaganda photographer Andre Zucca “Took images of fashionable women, smiling soldiers and happy families in the capital, to show Parisians carefree and jubilant under Nazi occupation and Vichy rule.”(1) When in reality, the conditions in vichy France were less than formidable.
Hitler had to be sure that photojournalists wouldn’t photograph any dead or wounded german soldiers, and that they wouldn’t take photos that contributed to the Allies’ effort in the war. Analyzing what was ok to photograph and what was not became a large part of the lives of german propaganda photographers. “Photos of German soldiers or SS officers liquidating Jews or partisans also had no chance whatsoever of passing through the Nazi censors”(1) Photos as propaganda, and photos as communicative evidence occupied their minds at all times. Meanwhile, the Americans allowed their foot soldiers to carry small cameras in their field packs, which they could use to capture simple photos of their comrades, or pictures of the trenches in which they were stationed. These photographs served to boost morale within companies, and morale back home.
World War II photography wasn’t just a means for propaganda, or communication, but a way for memories to be held within the war, and for many years after. Memories and ideas that changed the lives of millions in single images, to be seen and studied decades later. We have seen what the power of a single capture can do today, and the power it had in the war was unimaginable.