Cover of Life Magazine, May 7, 1945
The sad faces on the cover of the May 7, 1945 issue of Life Magazine are the faces of “The German People.” Why are there faces of Germans, and not faces of Jews, on the cover of Life in May 1945? Because the word “Holocaust” was not yet universally known by Americans in 1945; the genocide of the Jews had not yet started.
The German People were not yet guilty of the greatest crime in the history of the world. On May 7, 1945, it was the inhuman bombing of German cities that was in the news.
May 7, 1945 was the day that the Germans surrendered to General Dwight D. Eisenhower (“the terrible Swedish Jew“), who declined to shake hands with General Jodl, the German who signed the surrender.
The ubiquitous “Holocaust” story was not yet known, but it was about to begin. On the day of the surrender, it was the defeated Germans, who were on the cover of Life magazine.
Lest there should be some confusion about the real story of the Word War II, on an inside page of Life magazine, a reporter wrote, in describing the Germans: “the bitterness of defeat.” The faces on the cover photo were described as the “unhappy but hard and arrogant faces” of Germans. Life magazine explained that the Germans had not yet “been forced to see the atrocities committed in their name.”
Whoa! “The atrocities committed in their name”? Where have we heard that before? On day One, the day that Germany surrendered, the Allies were already chanting about the German civilians and “the atrocities committed in their name.” It wasn’t long before Eisenhower ordered that the German people should be brought to Dachau and other camps to “see the atrocities committed in their name.”
This set the tone of the Guilt which still exists in Germany: every German who did not betray his country in war time is guilty to this day, and his children and grandchildren after him. Every German must forever bow down to the Jews because of “the atrocities committed in their name.”
Two photos inside the May 7, 1945 edition of Life magazine show the German atrocities
The two photos above are from the inside pages of the Life Magazine May 7, 1945 edition. The photo on the left shows the bodies laid out at Nordhausen; these prisoners had been killed by an American bomb. I blogged about the photo of Nordhausen here.
The photo on the right shows German SS guards at Bergen-Belsen being forced to put bodies into mass graves. These prisoners had died in the typhus epidemic at Belsen.
Bodies found inside a barn at Gardelegen
The photos shown above were also included in the May 7, 1945 edition of Life magazine. You can read about the Gardelegen massacre on my website here.
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