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1943 NAZI BOOK ON THE REICHSARBEITSDIENST ON THE EAST & WEST FRONTS

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The picture pages in this 81 year old Nazi book show healthy, enthusiastic young men with shovels and guns (Spaten und Gewehr), on bicycles, pulling a Mercedes Wehrmacht truck up hill, carrying ammunition, building bunkers and other fortifications, pulling supply sleds, battle damage, Reichsarbeitsdienstführer Konstantin Hierl visiting young RAD men in the east, a young RAD man in a foxhole with a Wehrmacht soldier, etc., etc. Many of the photos are not found in other Third Reich era books about World War II.

Jahrgang 24 is a 1943 German book about young men (born in 1924) of the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD, the German Labor Service) trained to assist the Wehrmacht on the East Front and in France.

By the fall of 1941 Hitler already recognized that to get the most out of his combat troops in the Soviet Union or on the East Front it would be necessary to send units of Reichsarbeitsdienst soldiers to Russia to assist in things like the movement of equipment, the repair and rebuilding of roads, the evacuation of wounded, the rounding up and imprisonment of Soviet POWs, construction of bridges and defensive fortifications, assisting the Luftwaffe in the loading of bombs, construction power and communication lines, repairing the railroads, etc., etc.

The material in the 7-¾ x 10-½ inch, 112 page book Jahrgang 24 was assembled by Hans Looks and Hans Fischer, and approved by the Head of the Press and Publicity Department of the Nazi Labor Service.

Jahrgang 24 is sub-titled RAD men in War Year 1942 and has chapters on their service during the last days at Sewastopol, the advance towards the Volga river in the Soviet Union, Nowo Grinew, and the transfer from the east front to the west front. There are stories about cold winters and summer heat, tent life, Wehrmacht movie night in the middle of a forest, encounters with the local population, rumors about Hitler’s train coming, no-mans land, clearing rubble in France, etc.

This 81 year old Nazi book is in nice used condition with a tight spine and no odor. The title page has a name stamp of a previous owner.