"Bolscevismo senza maschera". Una mostra nazista del 1944 Paolo Ferrari, "Bolshevism unmasked". A Nazi exhibition of 1944

The A. introduces the photographic documents, as yet unpublished, of the exhibition "Soviet Union - Bolshevism unmasked", put on by the Nazis in the Summer of 1944. Made of large panels exposed in various city sites, the exhibition was inaugurated in Trieste and then transferred to Udine, from whose town archives come the images illustrating the diverse themes: the representation of the enemies (Soviets, Anglo-Americans, partisans and Jews), the sufferings inflicted to the Italian population by allied bombardments and the "occupation" of the "basest races" (the blacks fighting in the American army); the alliance between bolshevism and capitalism, British imperialism and Hebraism as responsible for the degenerations of both capitalism and bolshevism; the horrors of the "Soviet paradise"; the destructions caused to London by the V.1 and V.2 rockets, and the confidence in the secret weapons that were to secure the final victory of the Third Reich. Special emphasis received the racial and anti-semitic discourse, as well as the depiction of Nazism as a paladin of Catholicism and in general of moral habits despised by the enemies. A significant stage of the intense propaganda drive the Nazi were engaged in until the end of the war, this exhibition was motivated not only by the need to sustain the war effort, but also by the project to annex the eastern provinces of Italy to the Third Reich, cutting their cultural ties with the rest of the country.

Keywords: Adriatic coast, Nazi war propaganda, Trieste, Udine, Soviet Union, anti-semitism, racism

Paolo Ferrari, "Bolscevismo senza maschera" Una mostra nazista del 1944 in "ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA" 268-269/2012, pp 551-572, DOI: 10.3280/IC2012-268011