Item Description
Original Item: One-Of-A-Kind. This is a wonderful personal photo album with a huge variety of different types of pictures, including post cards, professional shots, as well as personal snapshots, which look to have come from several different areas of Germany. As best we can tell, it shows many pictures of members of the HJ National Youth Organization, as well as possibly the DJ German Youngsters organization, who are undergoing training during the wartime period. There are pictures of Luftwaffe soldiers later in the war, working with the youngers and teenagers as well.
During the War, the Luftwaffe had an official program of recruiting members of the youth organizations to help with Flak Artillery emplacements, which were needed all over Germany to combat the ever increasing number of Allied bombing runs. There are some dates in the captions on the pages, indicating 1944-1945 for ones later in the book, definitely during the "end war" period, when Allied bombers saw little resistance from the depleted Luftwaffe.
The album is covered with a lovely printed pattern fabric leatherette, and measures approximately 10 3/4" x 7 1/2", and is a bit worn around the edge, so this is not an album that spent its live in a closet. There is no maker listed anywhere in the album, and it looks to probably have been hand assembled from materials available during the time.
A total of 64 photographs fill this album, making it a treasure-trove of images taken during youth Luftwaffe training during the war. These are contained on 14 pages, some of which have very long captions, and most pages are separated by spiderweb pattern "onion skin" separators. All of the photos are held in place with period corner tabs or adhesive, some of which has failed over time.
A great German WWII youth organization Luftwaffe Helper album, full of research potential!
Historical records like this album have become priceless time capsules that provide an incomparable level of insight into the individual experience of the Second
World War, now that almost eighty years have passed.
The older albums such as these usually withstand the ravages of time. The leather or fabric covers may wear, but the pages stay well intact. The black paper albums of the early 20th century are more fragile, while the glue from magnetic albums can damage photographs. And, as with all old photographs, keep albums in a safe, climate controlled environment.
The Luftwaffe was the aerial-warfare branch of the German Wehrmacht before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the Luftstreitkräfte of the Imperial Army and the Marine-Fliegerabteilung of the Imperial Navy, had been disbanded in May 1920 in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which banned Germany from having any air force.
During the interwar period, the German armed forces secretly trained pilots - in violation of the Treaty - at Lipetsk Air Base in the Soviet Union. With the rise of the NSDAP (in power from 1933) and the repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, the Luftwaffe's existence was publicly acknowledged on 26 February 1935, just over two weeks before open defiance of the Versailles Treaty through the announcement of German rearmament and conscription on 16 March. The Condor Legion, a Luftwaffe detachment sent to aid Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, provided the force with a valuable testing-ground for new tactics and aircraft. Partially as a result of this combat experience, the Luftwaffe had become one of the most sophisticated, technologically advanced, and battle-experienced air forces in the world when World War II broke out in 1939. By the summer of 1939, the Luftwaffe had twenty
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