Introduction

Изображение выглядит как текст, рептилия, динозавр, водяная мельница

PK photographer A. Grimm showing how he stood to take his pictures inside the cockpit of the Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber.

I am a ‘Special Leader’ in the Propaganda Kompanie. But not in the air force. It is true that I have often flown, but never in wartime. But it is my great desire to take part in an attack on the enemy in a dive-bomber and at last I have received permission to do so. As far as the cameras are concerned, I take my Leica with the long-distance lens with me.

PK A. Grimm, from the report published in Signal magazine.

Our perception of important historical events is coloured, as it were, by the means by which they were recorded. Prior to the invention of photography the imagery available was dictated by the available method of production and by the artist’s hand, or even imagination, as often the artist was not actually at the scene. Even with the coming of photography in the nineteenth century, the technical limitations of taking the photographs in the first place and then producing the end result, usually in the form of prints that were then reproduced in magazines or newspapers, filtered our view of the events. For most people the First World War, for example, is characterised by the flickering images captured by the early movie cameras in which the figures move at double quick time, or by the still images taken with the large plate cameras of the time. Both were black and white, albeit sepia tinted possibly, and it is fair to say that while the quality of photography had improved by the time of the Second World War, especially in terms of the more practical and smaller camera equipment available, this conflict is usually visualised in monochrome.

At least that might be the perspective from the point of view of the Allied nations. The Germans, on the other hand, can claim to have had a far more colourful war and this is due to two factors: the development of more easily processed colour films, in particular Agfacolor, and a Nazi propaganda machine that gathered images of every aspect of the war through the work of the Propaganda Kompanie and, crucially, then published the results in a range of magazines and books. As a result we have an extraordinary resource of colour photographs of the German war machine, including the men, aircraft and activities of the Luftwaffe, some of which are reproduced on these pages.

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