WWII GERMAN PROPAGANDA – Never Again! – English-language anti-blockade propaganda booklet mailed from Germany to the United States – 1939 – Provenance: Robert Hastings; The Churchill Collection of Steve Forbes

An exceptionally well-preserved example of the scarce English-language German propaganda booklet Never Again!, issued in 1939 and distributed by post to recipients in the United States immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Dimensions: Leaflet: 21.0 × 14.8 cm. Original addressed envelope present.

Printed in English for an American audience, the booklet forms part of the Third Reich’s early foreign propaganda campaign intended to influence opinion in neutral countries. Through photographs of starving German children following the First World War blockade contrasted with images of healthy children in contemporary Germany, it argues that Britain intended once again to wage economic warfare against civilians by imposing a naval blockade. The final page directly addresses Winston Churchill, declaring:

“Not this time, Mr. Churchill!”

The publication represents one of the earliest examples of German psychological warfare directed specifically at American public opinion before the United States entered the war. Its central argument—that Britain sought the destruction of the German people through starvation rather than military defeat—became a recurring theme of official Nazi foreign propaganda throughout 1939 and the early years of the war.

Particularly significant is the survival of the original addressed envelope, franked with contemporary German postage and postmarked August 1939, demonstrating genuine postal distribution to an American civilian recipient shortly before hostilities commenced in Europe. Such complete survivals are considerably less common than detached pamphlets.

Provenance

• Robert Hastings, Churchill scholar, bibliographer and collector.
• The Churchill Collection of Steve Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazine and one of the foremost private Churchill collectors of the modern era.

Although not a Churchill publication, its presence within these distinguished collections reflects its importance as contemporary wartime propaganda documenting attitudes towards Churchill and British policy at the outbreak of war.

Institutional Holdings

I have located discussion and illustration of the same publication in modern reference material, confirming its identity as a German English-language propaganda booklet issued in 1939.

No separate institutional catalogue record for this specific item has been traced.

Condition: Near Fine. A remarkably well-preserved example with clean paper, excellent photographic reproduction and only the usual horizontal and vertical mailing folds. The original addressed envelope survives with contemporary German stamps and postal cancellation. A superior copy.

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