Giving Up the Family's Woollens for the Soldiers in the East

In late December 1941 and early January 1942, an ordinary German civilian hears the public appeal launched by Joseph Goebbels on the radio and in the press. The propaganda minister asks every household to give coats, furs, skis, boots, and woollens for the soldiers on the Eastern Front. The instruction is plain: whatever warm clothing families own must go to those fighting in the Russian snow.

The appeal breaks with months of triumphant communiqués. Since the summer, propaganda had promised the swift collapse of the Soviet Union; yet the offensive has bogged down before Moscow, and winter has caught out a Wehrmacht that was never equipped for the Russian cold. Frostbite casualties number in the tens of thousands. Asking civilians for their own clothing amounts to an implicit admission that the army had not planned to spend the winter in combat — a heavy confession for a household that believed victory was near.

The civilian must decide how to respond: give without reservation the family's furs and woollens, out of patriotism and under pressure from neighbours and party collectors; surrender only what can be spared and keep enough to face a harsh winter; or abstain, a silent sign that the promised lightning war has failed and that one will not strip oneself bare to hide it.