Christmas Propaganda

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During the Second World War, all sides made propaganda appeals to enemy soldiers to weaken their morale, to encourage desertion, or to promote the idea of voluntary surrender. Here is a particularly duplicitous example printed by the Soviets for distribution across enemy lines to German troops.

Note the use of Christmas images — German prisoners with Santa Claus, gaily decorating a huge Christmas tree. The food is lavishly plentiful and letters from home are read. The reality for Germans captured by the Red Army was much more grim. Of those soldiers taken prisoner at Stalingrad, 95% died in captivity. Hundreds of thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers were kept as slave labour in the USSR for 10 years after the war.

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