Simplicissimus, No 48, 25th November 1942, Front Cover

Simplicissimus No. 48, 25th November 1942, 47 Jahrgang. (Years of publication) (The name is a Latin term meaning simplest and is the name given to the protagonist of a 17th-century novel, Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimuss, in which a naive and innocent boy with the name Siplicissimus, navigates a corrupt 17th-century Europe). Simplicissimus was a long-running political satire magazine published continuously from 1896 through to September 1944, when, as for the majority of print publications in the Third Reich, paper shortages forced it to cease. The magazine was popular and known for its biting satire, attacking bourgeois morality, the church, civil servants, lawyers and the military. During the Weimar period it attacked the politics of the left and the right equally, including numerous Adolf Hitler caricatures, and these continued into 1933 even after the Nazis regime assumed power. However, later in 1933, Simplicissimus underwent Gleichschalting - the process of coordination and Nazification, which forced publications to align with National Socialist ideology and state control. This involved replacing journalists who didn't conform, sacking Jewish or those of non-Aryan descent and ensuring that all content served approved Nazi objectives. Following this Simplicissimus published increasing anti-Semitic, anti-British and anti-American material which hardened once Germany was at war. Simplicissimus was published from 4th April 1896 to No 37 to the 13th September 1944. The cover picture shows a building that could be the White House. Across the top of the columned entrance are the words stencilled into the stone work Juda's Own Country'. The title and text reads: Juda's Own Country - It was really time to change the American company name!'. The cartoon is an example of overt anti-Semitic propaganda. The image and its text claimed that the United States was secretly controlled by Jewish interests, rather than founded on Judeo-Christian values. It reimagines the White House, replacing God's with Juda's which is meant to symbolise a takeover of the United States moral and religious foundations by Jewish people. The figures in the foreground are by implication Jewish financiers or bankers celebrating the change and plays into the conspiracy theory that the Jews control global finance and that ultimately America is not an independent nation but a company run for the profit of Jews

Anti-semitic Antisemitism Bankers Claimed Columned Conspiracy Controlled Example Financiers Foundations Gods Implication Interests Judas Judeo-christian Long-running Meant Moral Profit Rather Really Replacing Secretly Simplicissimus Stencilled Symbolise Takeover Theory Ultimately Values

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