Image: Eure Schuld

Description: "Diese Schandtaten: Eure Schuld!" (These atrocities: Your fault!") Propaganda poster used in occupied Germany after World War II. This poster and other posters like it were distributed in occupied Germany in the summer of 1945, immediately after World War II. As a publication of the US Government -- OMGUS was under the War Department -- it is public domain by law both under current law and under the law as it stood at the time. There was an Allied directive to Allied press agencies stating that the goal of these demonstrations was to convince the German population of their collective guilt. See Assmann and Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit - Geschichtsversessenheit. Text of the poster: These atrocities: your fault! In twelve years the Nazi criminals have tortured and murdered millions of Europeans. Men, women and children were hunted and tortured to death by Hitler's brutish henchmen simply because they were Jews, Czechs, Russians, Poles or French. You quietly watched and tolerated it. Battle-hardened soldiers of the Allies could not hide their disgust and outrage in the face of the gassed, charred and emaciated bodies of the victims in the concentration camps. In Buchenwald camp, according to German camp reports, 50,000 people were burned, shot, hanged. In Dachau, American soldiers found 50 wagons with rotting corpses. Since the beginning of this year, 10,000 people there succumbed to their tortures. In Belsen, British troops found torture chambers, incinerators, gallows and whipping posts. 30,000 people died there. In Gardelegen, Nordhausen, Ohrdruf, Erla, Mauthausen, Vaihingen, countless forcibly displaced persons and political prisoners fell victim to an inferno the likes of which have never been seen in world history! You have watched idly. Why did you not rouse the German conscience with any word of protest, with any cry of outrage? This is your great guilt - you are jointly responsible for these gruesome crimes! Freight cars loaded with dead bodies were discovered by the American troops at Dachau. Layers of corpses stacked like firewood were found by the American troops in Dachau concentration camp. The blood flowed across the floor when the soldiers arrived. This inmate of the Dachau shame-camp was found hollow-eyed and emaciated with hunger by the American soldiers. Some of the 1000 corpses found in a pit, which were found by British and American soldiers during the liberation of a camp. American soldiers inspect an abominable camp where the burned bodies of Nazi victims are piled up. Charred bodies of political prisoners who were hastened to death by SS troops in the Dachau camp. An inmate of the Dachau camp views the bodies of his comrades who became victims of brutish SS troops. The Nazis poured gasoline over the bodies and burned them.
Title: Eure Schuld
Credit: Imperial War Museum http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/x-large.php?uid=28304
Author: Unknown authorUnknown author
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No