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Military Art In The Third Reich: Part 1

German military art WW2 Will Tschech
Grenadiere 1943. Will Tschech
As you know, Hitler in his youth used  to make a living by drawing the sights of Vienna. Even during the First World War, as a corporal of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, in between fights, he painted landscapes in Flanders. When this former street artist and retired corporal was appointed chancellor of Germany,  there were internationally renowned artists in the country - the avant-garde and Expressionism. Such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. The work of such artists was declared "degenerate art", and their pictures were taken out of the exhibition halls, and the artists themselves had to flee Germany. In Nazi Germany there was only one direction of painting - realism. 

Before the war, German artists diligently painted rural landscapes, German workers and peasants, naked Germans. Pornography in the Third Reich was banned, but there was an easy sensuality in classical painting style. 

With the start of the war, German painters, of course, began to paint battle scenes.  - because one of the first salvos of the new World War were volleys 280-mm guns.The German ship Schleswig-Holstein fired the first shots of World War II when she fired at the Polish base at Westerplatte in the early morning hours of 1 September 1939..  Submarines too were painted - the initial period of the war, German U-boats beat all records of the tonnage of ships sunk - 420 thousand tonnes in the first four months of the war, and 14,119,413 tons in the whole war! 

In one of the pictures we see a ship of the line " Bismarck "- a symbol of the German Kriegsmarine.  50,000 900 tons full displacement, 8 guns caliber 380 mm. To his credit - the British battle cruiser "Hood" (46 480 tons full displacement, 8 guns caliber 381 mm - the enemy of equal "weight category"). On May 27, 1941 "Bismarck" was destroyed in an unequal battle with the British fleet during the attempts to break into the vast Atlantic. 

In the  later paintings other combat arms - infantry, tanks, aircraft, artillery were fully represented. 

Of course, German artists painted just soldiers, and war. Mass executions, burning of villages, and other "exploits", which became a pretext for carrying out numerous trials after the war, was not a source of inspiration for German artists.

Most of the artists whose works are shown below, are long and well forgotten.

German military art ww2 Claus Bergen
German U-Boat. 1941. Painting by Claus Bergen

stalingrad painting bush
Stalingrad. 1943. Painting by K. Bush

claus bergen U boat ww2
U-Boat returning from a trip. Painting by Claus Bergen von Feindfahrt Zurück
Submarine U-003. Claus Bergen

waffen ss 1943 painting  will Tschech
Waffen SS 1943. Will Tschech

Kameraden, 1940. Will Tschech
Engineers in Assault Boat May 10, 1940 by Mathias Padua. (Click here to see in large size)

A Messerschmitt 110 covers German storm troopers
Battle Britain German painting
German planes over England
The big German transport plane,"Focke-Wulf-200"
stuka dive bombers painting
The Stuka Dive Bombers  (JU 87) attack

German motorised infantry. Hans Liska


Victory in an air battle




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