'German Infantry'
A magazine from the late 1930s
Recently, while looking for predecessors of News for the Infantry (Nachrichten für die Infanterie), I ran into another magazine for German foot soldiers, a well-produced monthly called German Infantry (Deutsche Infanterie).
Published ‘with the support of the Inspectorate of Infantry’, German Infantry contains many articles that, if I am not too badly mistaken, will interest readers of The Tactical Notebook. Thus, for example, the issue published in July of 1939, contained articles that discussed the tempo of an infantry attack, condemned the folly of the ‘school solution’, explained the work of a regimental headquarters, and described the challenges of serving in the headquarters section (Kompanietrupp) of an infantry company.
In addition to professional fare, each issue German Infantry provided propaganda of the lighter sort (such as a puff piece on a visit by Italian and Spanish veterans of the Spanish Civil War), a page of puzzles, and the sort of cartoons that remind me of those that have long graced the pages of Leatherneck magazine.
‘Private Klauke, what do you do in civilian life?’
‘I am an actor, First Sergeant’
‘Then I expect you to play the role of an efficient soldier.’
To Find Copies of ‘German Infantry’
The website of the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) makes it possible for readers to download high-resolution page scans of nineteen complete issues of Deutsche Infanterie. However, as some readers will prefer to read this material in a more convenient form, I have assembled these pages into nineteen PDF documents, each of which preserves the contents of a single monthly magazine.
Paid subscribers who would like to download these PDFs can gain access to the Google Drive folder that holds them by sending an e-mail message to oninfantry@gmail.com.
Efficient.