How the Nazis Used War Rubble as Propaganda
As the Allies marched inexorably northward through Italy during World War II, the Nazis set to work photographing the rubble of damaged historical buildings and artwork. The images were supposed to prove that their enemies were cultural barbarians.
The riddle began 10 years ago, when Ralf Peters stumbled across an old box full of photographs in a cabinet at the Central Institute of Art History in Munich. Peters, an art history Ph.D., had just begun a new job at the institute and was trying to get an idea as to what the archive might contain. Little did he know that the box he found during his first days on the job would preoccupy him and his colleagues for years to come.
Inside the box were 600 undated black-and-white images. They were disorganized and appeared on no inventory lists. “Nobody knew what they were doing inside the cabinet,” Peters recalls. “They weren’t in good condition.”
The images were of burned out residences, destroyed monuments and crumbled palaces, all taken in Italy during World War II. Peters was initially flummoxed as to the photos’ provenance: Who took the pictures? When exactly? And, most importantly, to what end? Peters spent years searching for the answers to these questions, and ultimately they were to provide a unique look at Nazi war propaganda as the Allies inexorably pushed the Germans out of Italy in 1943 and 1944…