Unknown DKIG pilots..

[ParaCollector45]

This has been posted before without any results, but I was wondering if anyone could help me out identifying these great photograph with a pair of unknown DKIG pilots..

Thanks!
Eric Houtman

[entasis]

sorry...can't help.


but that's one great and unusual photo.


Tony

[ParaCollector45]

Thanks!

The reservse is stamped with the following:

"Foto-Langkopt, Schrottensburg"

Does that help anyone?

[ParaCollector45]

No ideas?

[ParaCollector45]

If anyone has any ideas, it would be of great help! Thanks in advance

[Larry deZeng]

Any uniformed Germans in Russia on 7 August 1944 were either dead or in prison camps. So the photo is probably staged, perhaps in a PoW camp and used for propaganda purposes. The two in the photo look a bit too gaunt and their uniforms don't seem quite right. The Germans had uniform standards just like most armies and it would be odd to see two soldiers at the same time and in the same place, one in a tan summer uniform and the other in a dark winter uniform. But if they were both P/Ws but captured at different times of the year in different places, then it would not be odd.

[ParaCollector45]

Larry~ I can see what you mean, however, if captured by the Russians, would this kind of photograph ever be allowed to take place?

[Larry deZeng]

Larry~ I can see what you mean, however, if captured by the Russians, would this kind of photograph ever be allowed to take place?

Yes. There was a collaborator organization in the PoW camps in Russia called the National Komitee Freies Deutschland (Free Germany Committee) a.k.a. the Seydlitz Organization. Many, many German officer PoWs joined it after becoming prisoners to improve their lot in the terrible camps, were indoctrinated into the beliefs of communism, and became active propagandists for the Soviet Union. They made films, radio broadcasts, leaflets, photographs, postcards, etc., like the one you have. These postcards were mailed to PoW families in Germany to deceive Germans into thinking that life in the PoW camps was super thanks to the kind benevolence of the Soviet government, party and people. They were also air-dropped behind German lines as part of the psychological warfare effort to get individual soldiers and units to surrender. You can read all about it here:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=003...3E2.0.CO%3B2-G

After the war, the thousands of German officers who had joined the Committee settled in East Germany and many of them became political leaders and bureaucrats in the new communist East Germany.

--Larry