October 23, 1943
Introduction to the content
In Stalin Corrects, Curt Bloch watches as the two dictators, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, paint: Hitler portrays himself in colorful paintings of lies as the patron saint of churches, countries, and peoples. He imagines himself making an agreement with the British, while he paints Bolshevism in black on black and depicts Stalin as a man who drinks blood instead of coffee. Then Stalin picks up the brush and crosses out Hitler’s predictions for the future – as on the magazine’s cover.
With the slogan “Heim ins Reich” (Back home to the Reich), the National Socialists justified their ruthless expansionist policies. They forced the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and resettled ethnic Germans in annexed territories. Curt Bloch lists where and how the Germans implemented their ideology of “Lebensraum.” But now this triumphal march is over; the Russian army is pushing the Germans back to their old borders: “Heim ins Reich.”
A German soldier in a trench holding a megaphone inspired Curt Bloch to write The Megaphone. Joseph Goebbels claimed that the man was urging the Russians to give up their hopeless fight. Bloch puts different words in the soldier’s mouth: “Don’t shoot so fiercely. Adolf is not doing well. The front is becoming too elastic and may soon break.” Bloch considers the megaphone a good symbol of the German aggression, as it has mostly consisted of words lately.
In The Tank Miracle, Curt Bloch examines why the Russian tank stocks do not shrink despite the Germans’ great destructive power. His explanation is that as the Wehrmacht retreats, the Russians come into possession of their own wrecked tanks and use the parts to create new combat vehicles. This fuels hope because “a people that can achieve something like this […] must surely win the war.”
In The Animals Complain, Curt Bloch interviews several animals: a dog, a cat, a horse, a flea, a lion, a moth. They all describe serious problems as they struggle to survive the war’s conflagration. But the dung beetle is happy “because dirt swims at the top, and rules and dominates today.”
