War Primer. Bertolt Brecht
Germans were ‘kind’ to this Frenchman. They blindfolded him before he was shot.
And so we put him up against a wall:
A mother’s son, a man like we had been
And shot him dead. And then to show you all
What came of him, we photographed the scene.
Lion Feuchtwanger (facing camera) behind the barbed wire in the brickyard concentration camp. This hitherto unpublished picture was smuggled out of France by Mr. Feuchtwanger.
It’s true he was their enemy’s enemy
Yet one thing they could not forgive: that he
Was enemy to his own government.
Lock up the rebel. Throw away the key.
The people hate them more than a foreign foe.
Shitting themselves, they balance on the fence
And fear Germany less than they fear the French.
Be ruled by Germans? Yes. Ruled by the people? No.
Gang law is something I can understand.
With man-eaters I’ve excellent relations.
I’ve had the killers feeding from my hand.
I am the man to save civilization.
It’s we who fly above your city, woman
Now trembling for your children. From up here
We’ve fixed our sights on you and them as targets.
If you ask why, the answer is: from fear.
The City TodayDuring the blitz the City of London was reduced to a ruin. This view was taken from St Paul’s.
Here’s how I look. Some men betrayed their duty
And flew a course that differed from the map.
Hoping to act as fence, I was the booty.
Let’s call my fate a technical mishap.
Liverpool harbour, England’s second biggest, is well known to be the target of many German aerial bombardments and took many direct hits. This photograph gives a clear picture of the harbour – the smoke at the top shows that it has just been visited by German bombers.
I am a city still, but soon I shan’t be –
Where generations used to live and die
Before those deadly birds flew in to haunt me:
One thousand years to build. A fortnight to destroy.
The ‘flying sharks’: that was the name we boasted.
Along the crowded coastlines we went flying
With sharks’ teeth painted on our fighter-bombers
All of us sure for once that we weren’t lying.
‘Bombs Away!’ shouts the observer as he celebrates a successful drop.
You’re looking at a bastard, and a poor one!
‘I laugh at news of other men’s distress.
A corset salesman formerly, from Nürnberg
A dealer now in death and wretchedness.’
There was a time of underneath and over
When mankind was master of the air. And so
While some were flying high, the rest took cover
Which didn’t stop them dying down below.
New Source of Income
Thanks to the bombing, London’s poor have found a new source of income. Children gather round the exits of underground stations which serve as air-raid shelters. They have reserved places in the shelters and hire them out, with bedding, when there is an alert. Our picture shows a group of youngsters with mattresses and blankets carried in prams.
Far older than their bombers is the hunger
That they’ve unleashed on us. And to survive
We have to earn the cash to buy provisions
So, for survival, gamble with our lives.
A cloud of smoke told us that they were here.
They were the sons of fire, not of the light.
They came from where? They came out of the darkness.
Where did they go? Into eternal night.
Searchlight display
We reproduce a picture from Associated Press, Berlin, showing a German fighter plane caught in English searchlights.
What you see here, caught in your night defences
These steel and glass cocoons for killing people
With tons of bombs, are just the consequences
For all, and not the causes of the evil.
British Bombers over Berlin
In late summer 1940 the RAF mounted several raids on Hamburg, Bremen and other major German towns of industrial and military importance. The British bombed Berlin for the first time on 10/11 September. The picture shows a house in Berlin after a British raid.
Stop searching, woman: you will never find them
But, woman, don’t accept that Fate is to blame.
Those murky forces, woman, that torment you
Have each of them a face, address and name.
You see me here, eating a simple stew
Me, slave to no desire, except for one:
World conquest. That is all I want. From you
I have but one request: give me your sons.
Suffer the old women to come unto me
That they may glimpse, before their graves close o’er them
The man their sons obeyed so faithfully
As long as he had graves left open for them.