'Illustrierte Kriegs Kurier'
a German Magazine for the Occupied Territories
- 'Illustrierte Kriegs-Kurier' (Illustrated War-Chronicle) was a German magazine mainly intended for foreign and overseas consumption. It was published in German, French and Dutch which clearly indicated that it was sold in the ocupied territories of Belgium and northern France. Some early issues had English captions for the American market. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russian captions were also printed. 'Illustrierte Kriegs-Kurier' should not be confused with the other magazines published in territories occupied by the German armies. Those were generally edited by citizens of the those countries and they had no specific love of the occuping forces nor did they necessarily espouse German war aims or even try to paint the German armies and authorities in a favorable light.
'Illustrierte Kriegs-Kurier' was different in intent and content. Being edited and published by the German authorities it portrayed the occupying armies and authories in a different light and placed as little emphasis on Allied soldiers and armies as possible, prefering instead to highlight German reconstruction of infrastructure and the supposed warm relations between occupiers and occupied. This magazine did not print any text articles at all, prefering instead to fill every page with photographs. Few of these are of combat or the more dreadful occurences of warfare. Instead they portray a varied view of life behind German lines and the many officially attributed cultural and altruistic virtues of the average German soldier. Paper was usually of lesser quality than most magazines and as time wore on, became very atrocious during the last year of the war. As a source for the less usual and at times surprising illustrative material, 'Illustrierte Kriegs-Kurier' is an excellant source indeed.
