A complete set in four issues of the German-language propaganda booklets which were dropped over Germany by the Royal Air Force between September 1942 and March 1944, 28-32 pp. each, scattered illustrations from photographs and cartoons. 5 1/8 x 4 inches. Original side-stapled printed wrappers in colored paper stock. Some expected handling wear and soiling to wrappers, some rubbing and creasing, rusting to staples, scattered creasing to a few pages, minor chipping, pages of issue no. 4 loose from covers, overall very good. [London]: [Political Warfare Executive], [1942-1944].

The Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a clandestine organization formed in August 1941 to disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the goal of damaging German morale and sustaining the morale of countries allied with or occupied by Germany. The PWE's activities included radio broadcasts, loudspeaker operations, leaflet drops, underground publications, rumor campaings, clandestine radio stations, forged "real time" reports of war damage, and even impersonation of deceased German soldiers disseminating pacificist messages to their families back home.

The four volumes of Die Andere Seite comprise a rare complete set of the propaganda booklets dropped over Germany by the Royal Air Force. Each volume contains the first printing of an anti-Nazi radio address given by exiled German author Thomas Mann: "Nachruf auf einen Henker" ("Eulogy for an Executioner"), "Die Idee Europa" ("The Idea of Europe"), "Die apokalyptischen Lausbuben" (The Apocalyptic Rascals"), and "Ein neuer Glaube" ("A New Faith"). As part of the Allied propaganda effort, Mann delivered these addresses, called "Deutsche Hörer!" ("Listen, Germany!"), which were brodcast by the BBC German Service into Nazi Germany from October 1940 through to the end of the war. He made the recordings himself in exile, and they were copied onto vinyl again over the telephone to London. Each address lasted around 8 minutes, and he made a total of 55 of these broadcasts during the war.

Other notable works in these four volumes include: George Bernard Shaw, "Josef Stalin"; Adolf Hitler, "Grundsätze zur Notwendigkeit der Waffen-SS"; Henry A. Wallace, VP under FDR, "Das Jahrhundert des Volkes"; Rose Lamartine Yates, "Die Ernähbrungslage"; Richard Hillary, "Nachtangriff auf London"; Winston Churchill, "Der Europäische Rat"; John Steinbeck, "Die Eroberer"; and J.B. Priestley, "Die Waffen-SS in Bad Tölz", among many others. The goal in using so many different types and nationalities of writers was to present a unified front of German and international cultural and intellectual figures against Hitler and the Nazis.

The fourth issue also contains a manifesto by students of Munich, as well as extracts from a resistance flyer distributed by Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose resistance group. Titled "Schicksal der Juden im Osten", it was one of the few aerial propaganda leaflets which described in depth the mass extermination of Jewish people. The Scholls were soon after arrested, tried, and executed. The information in this and the other issues were meant as real-time warnings to the population of the atrocities that were being committed, from the closing of secondary schools and the replacement of history lessons with lessons in Nazi ideology to the death squads and mass killings.

Carrying such propaganda on one's person was incredibly risky, and as such, most leaflets such as these were destroyed immediately after reading. A complete set of all four issues is incredibly difficult to find. An important resource of real-time war reporting and a vital ephemeral historical record; as of June 2026, OCLC locates only three libraries in North America with any holdings of this title, all of which appear to be only a single issue.

Book ID: 53708

Price: $4,500.00