Der Landser
Der Landser (private, common soldier) is a German pulp magazine published by Pabel-Moewig and featuring mostly stories in World War II settings. The magazine was founded in 1957 by the former German Luftwaffe officer and writer Bertold K. Jochim, who went on to work as its longtime editor in chief until his death in 2002.
The magazine claims that its war novels are true stories and that their underlying message is one of peace. In fact, many of their stories come with disclaimers reminding the reader of the horrors of war. Critics however dismissed such claims as pure lip service to avoid getting indexed by the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (German Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons) which started to index several of their editions in the 50s. Since its founding, the magazine has been criticized constantly for glorifying war and delivering a distorted image of the Wehrmacht and Nazi Germany during World War II. The content of novels is accurate regarding minor technical details, but its descriptions are often not authentic and withhold important context information from the reader. No Information on antisemitism, German war crimes, the repressive nature of the German government or the causes of the war is given. Germany's leading news magazine Der Spiegel has called Der Landser the expert journal for the whitewashing of the Wehrmacht ("Fachorgan für die Verklärung der Wehrmacht").
References
- Dirk Wilking: "Der Landser" - Wie ein Mann ein Mann wird (pdf). In Wolfram Hülsemann, Michael Kohlstruck (Hrsg): Mobiles Beratungsteam - Einblicke. Brandenburgische Universitätsdruckerei 2004, isbn 3-00-015288-1, p. 61-95 (German)
- Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexikon der "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" in Deutschland: Debatten- und Diskursgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus nach 1945. transcript Verlag 2007, isbn 978-3-89942-773-8, p. 115-117 (eingeschränkte Online-Version (Google Books)) (German)
- Hagen Fleischer: The Past Beneath the present (pdf). Historein Volume 4 (2003-4), p. 65
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