The Anarchy of Nazi Memorabilia

From Things of Tyranny to Troubled Treasure

Michael Hughes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000531923
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

Out of the numerous books and articles on the Third Reich, few address its material culture, and fewer still discuss the phenomenon of Nazi memorabilia. This is all the more surprising given that Nazi symbols, so central to sustaining Hitler's movement, continue to live long after the collapse of his 12-year Reich. Neither did Nazi ideology die; far-right populists would like to see the swastika flown over the White House or Buckingham Palace. Against a backdrop of right-wing extremism, military re-enactors think nothing of dressing up in Waffen-SS uniforms and romanticising the Third Reich in the name of living history. Auctioneers are prepared to hammer down Nazi artefacts to the highest bidder, but who is buying them, and why do they do so? Should collectors be allowed to decorate their homes with Nazi flags?

The Anarchy of Nazi Memorabilia begins by examining the creation and context of Nazi artefacts and symbols during the volatile Weimar Republic to their wider distribution during the Third Reich. There were few people in Nazi Germany who did not wear a badge or uniform of some sort. Whether it be mothers, soldiers or concentration camp inmates, they were all branded. The chapter on the Second World War demonstrates that although German soldiers were cynical about being given medals in exchange for freezing in Russia. They still continued to fight, for which more decorations were awarded. A large proportion of this book is therefore given to the meaning that Nazi symbols had before Nazi Germany was eventually defeated in May 1945. Equally important, however, and one of the characteristics of this book, is the analysis of the meaning and value of Nazi material culture over time. The interpreters of Nazi symbols that this book focuses on are internationally based private collectors and traders. Sustained attention is given in a chapter outlining the development of the collectors' market for Nazi memorabilia from 1945 onwards. No matter how much collectors go out of their way to paint the hobby in a positive light, their activities do not fully escape the troubled past of the material that they desire. So contested are Nazi symbols that another chapter is devoted to the ethics and morals of destroying or preserving them. The issues surrounding private versus public custody and ownership of Nazi artefacts are also discussed. So far, in this book, the examination of Nazi artefacts has been restricted to physical objects within societies that are generally aware of the consequences of Hitlerism. As we increasingly move into the digital age, however, and there are few survivors of the Second World War left to relay their horrific experiences, the final chapter contemplates the future of Nazi symbols both digitally and physically, fake or real.

This book will appeal to all those interested in the Third Reich, Nazi ideology, Neo-Nazism, perceptions of the Nazis post-1945, modern European history and political symbolism. It will also hold particular appeal to those interested in the collecting and trading of contested and highly emotive artefacts. It considers aesthetics, authenticity, commodification, gift exchange, life histories of people and objects, materiality and value theory.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003000617-1

Fascination

The fascination with the Third Reich and its legacy shows no sign of abating, whether among scholars or the general public. The term ‘fascination’ only goes so far, and any discussion of Nazi artefacts should not lose sight of the victims of Hitlerism. As I lost my eyesight as a result of a genetic condition, had I lived during the Third Reich I might have been sterilised along with thousands of other blind people (Teicher 2019). Despite sustained interest in the Nazi movement, there is a shortage of scholarly literature on the symbols and ritual objects produced and deployed by and for the Nazi Party (NSDAP), emblems created to construct a Nazi identity and ethos, first among Party members and then, after the seizure of power in 1933, for Germany as a whole. This important subject has traditionally been left for the most part to those who choose to controversially collect and trade Nazi memorabilia. It has only been in the last few years that scholars have started to investigate the meaning and value of Third Reich medals.

The study of these decorations has typically been the domain of ‘dubious militaria collectors’ (zweifelhafter Militaria-Sammler) (Römer 2012:131). Scholar Warren Gade reviewed a publication on the Nazi Close Combat Clasp in gold, but complained that it was a form of ‘vanity’ publishing that had no analysis and merely listed the 538 recipients of the award (Gade 1988:518). Secretly recorded conversations between German prisoners of war reveal that military decorations had a ‘very significant meaning’ (besaßen militärische Auszeichnungen überragende Bedeutung) (Römer 2012:131). In Wages of Destruction, Tooze (2006:595) mentioned decorations given to civilian workers who built tanks, but he did not contextualise these otherwise common medals, nor indicate what the workers thought of them.

For the postwar period, there are only a few articles and books that engage with the perplexing phenomenon of Nazi memorabilia. A classic article is Susan Sontag’s ‘Fascinating Fascism’ (Sontag 1980), in which she offered a highly critical review of Jack Pia’s SS Regalia (Pia 1974) (Figure 1.1). Sontag compared the allure of SS memorabilia to sadomasochism and soft pornography, and to support her claim, she observed that the SS armband on the front cover of Pia’s book was obscured by a tag which read Over 100 brilliant four-colour photographs, which she stated was ‘exactly as a sticker with a price on it used to be affixed, part tease, part deference to censorship, on the cover of pornographic magazines over the model’s genitalia’ (Sontag 1980:98). Pia’s book could be seen in the context of the so-called ‘Hitler Wave’ (Hitler-Welle) of the 1970s (Binion 1974; Becker 2018; Caplan 2019), a decade in which numerous books and films catered to, and arguably fuelled the public’s insatiable appetite for, the Third Reich.

Figure 1.1 Front cover of SS Regalia.

Source: Pia (1974) SS Regalia. New York: Ballantine. Scanned by author. Reproduced by permission of Penguin-Random House, request number 59654, 13 October, 2020.

In the 1980s, fascination with fascism reached dizzying heights during the fake Hitler diaries affair, vividly brought to life in Robert Harris’s Selling Hitler (Harris 1986). Although Harris focused on the fraudulent diaries, he made two points which are relevant here: firstly, the forger Konrad Kujau and the journalist Gerd Heidemann, who was duped by him, both traded in Nazi memorabilia; secondly, by the 1980s this trade had an annual turnover of USD 50 million (Harris 1986:183).¹ In other words, in spite of the significance of Nazi regalia, before and after 1945, there is a deficit of scholarship on it.

In the last few years, there are signs that scholars are beginning to have an analytical interest in Nazi memorabilia. Historian Richard Overy penned the foreword to a heavily illustrated book entitled The Third Reich in 100 Objects (Moorhouse 2017:xii), astutely stating that during the Third Reich, the deployment of symbolism by the Nazi movement replaced the need for people to ‘think seriously about what it all meant.’ Much of the research on Nazi symbols has taken place under the umbrella of material culture studies. In ‘You Shall Know Them by Their Objects: Material Culture and Its Impact in Museum Displays about National Socialism,’ Paver (2010:172) remarks that ‘Everyday items whose National Socialist content is not apparent until it is pointed out suggest even more strongly the reach of National Socialist influence.’ An influential archaeological project entitled Dark Heritage engaged with the remnants of Germany’s military footprint in Finland (Thomas et al. 2016). There are differing attitudes in Finland to so-called German war junk. Metal detectorists consider it treasure; others find it a blight on Lapland’s winter wonderland; indigenous Sami People say it evokes an aura and should be allowed to decay with age (Seitsonen 2018:62; Seitsonen 2020). Similarly, for some residents of the British Channel Islands, occupied during the Second World War, German steel helmets once regarded as hated junk became collectors’ objects (Carr 2016). In addition to the forementioned authors, I also take inspiration from the anthropological material culture approach advocated by Saunders (Saunders and Cornish 2009) when asking: How did Nazi symbols facilitate the creation and maintenance of the Third Reich, then after it collapsed, how did these discredited emblems manage to be transformed into highly prized collectors’ items?

Material culture

According to Appadurai, commodities ‘like persons, have social lives’ (Appadurai 1986:3). Kopytoff advocated a biographical approach to the study of things in which he was interested in finding out ‘where does the thing come from? What has been its career so far? And what do people consider to be an ideal career for such things?’ (Kopytoff 1986:66). There is ‘nothing else to social life but symbolic exchanges and the joint construction and management of meaning, including the meaning of bits of stuff’ (DiMaggio 2013:III). The meaning of Nazi regalia has undergone a transformation from ritual objects to trash to commodities sold to the highest bidder. As such, I ‘follow the thing’ from commodity production to commodity consumption (Appadurai 1986:5).

Another aspect of my approach is that although medals are inanimate objects, I assess the degree to which they can be considered alive. Material culture ‘emphasises how apparently inanimate things within the environment act on people, and are acted upon by people, for the purposes of carrying out social functions’ (Woodward 2007:3). Jane Bennett also sought to break down the distinction between inanimate and animate objects (Bennett 2010). Samuel Alberti acknowledged that although ‘objects prompted, changed, and acted as a medium for relationships,’ he contended that they were ‘nonetheless inanimate’ (Alberti 2005:561). In contrast, rather than ‘seeing matter and thought as playing off each other, they are better thought of as entwined in complex, non-linear ways’ (Richardson et al. 2014:17). Material culture keeps history alive, although even a lucky bullet can be buried with its wearer; thus, the social existence of an object is often more fleeting than one might think (Saunders 2014).

Interweaving the practical nature of objects with their agency,² one ‘would die quite quickly of exposure to the elements in the absence of clothing, buildings, heating, and whatever’ (Pickering 1995:6). This statement is as relevant today as it was for freezing German soldiers on the Eastern Front during the Second World War (Assmann 1950). It should also not be forgotten that in January 1942, Jews were ‘compelled to surrender their winter coats, furs, muffs, boots, woollen articles and blankets for shipment to the Eastern front’ (Jelenko 1943:184). Albeit less extreme than the aforementioned example, the distribution and supply of much-needed personal protection equipment (PPE) experienced delays during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus potentially exposing healthcare workers to the virus (BBC March 2020c). Military equipment is a curious form of material culture, as although it initially had a utilitarian function, collectors do not purchase respirators in order to wear them (nor are old gasmasks safe). For some collectors, war artefacts, due to their former destructive or protective capacity, may provide reassurance that although collectors are living in an unstable world, at least they do not need to charge at a German machine gunner across no man’s land or hide in an air raid shelter.

The concept of objectification is also relevant to my study, as is the extent to which Wehrmacht soldiers and citizens of Hitler’s Germany were objectified through medals. An objectification perspective ‘attempts to overcome the dualism in modern empiricist thought in which subjects and objects are regarded as utterly different and opposed entities, respectively human and non-human, living and inert, active and passive, and so on’ (Tilley 2013:61). Furthermore, the study of material culture ‘challenges the assumption, perpetuated by disciplinary divisions and also philosophical trajectories, that the object and subject are separate’ (Woodward 2013).³

Our problem with material culture studies tends to be finding a middle route into the study of artefacts which avoids either an isolation of the artefact stripped of the social relations that produce and consume it, or an isolation of the human subject denuded of the artefactual environment which creates constraints and is a primary means by which the subject has consciousness of her or himself.

(Miller 1998:491)

In his ‘Biography of a medal …’ Jody Joy asserted that the ‘physical differences between humans and things become insignificant. Once an object has been socially constituted as a thing it can transcend the traditional barriers set up in our own society between people and objects’ (Joy 2002:141). In this regard, ‘objects make people as much as people make objects’ (Saunders 2004:6).

Artefacts constitute a historical fact (Evans 1997, 2000:285–286). Jelavich (1995:78) begins ‘with an artefact and looks for issues that it generates.’ Carr (2018) excavated a button and a corroded lead eagle of the Organisation Todt at the former forced labour camp Lager Wick in Jersey, which provided material evidence that it was this notorious Nazi construction organisation that ran the facility. As a blind person, I especially concur with Saunders (2014) that material culture has a multi-sensorial dimension. Additionally, everything that ‘we make or own has a reason, a story behind it. These stories can be told through artefacts in fascinating ways’ (Pershey 1998:18).

Key questions arise from such issues: How were Nazi badges and medals designed and produced; with...