Аукцион Bidspirit | Set of Third Reich Wehrmacht

Set of Third Reich Wehrmacht Portrait Propaganda Willrich Postcards - A set of illustrated postcards depicting German military personnel in pencil and colored-pencil portrait style, several bearing printed captions identifying subjects such as a Grossadmiral (Raeder) and holders of the Ritterkreuz. Each card carries a facsimile artist signature within the image, with one legible as ”W.” in the lower corner of a portrait. The reverse sides carry printed distribution text reading ”Vertrieb für das Deutschtum im Auslande, W.B., Berlin W35,” along with printed caption lines identifying ranks and decorations of the sitters. Cards of this type were produced during the Third Reich period as part of a series promoting military figures to a domestic and expatriate German audience, often based on portrait drawings by wartime military artists. These postcards belong to a wartime series of portrait propaganda produced under the Nazi regime, disseminating idealized images of decorated Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine officers, including senior commanders such as Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, head of the German Navy until 1943, and recipients of the Ritterkreuz (Knight's Cross), awarded for exceptional battlefield leadership or valour. The distribution credit to the ”Vertrieb für das Deutschtum im Auslande” indicates the cards were circulated to promote German nationalist sentiment among ethnic German communities abroad, reinforcing loyalty to the Reich and admiration for its military. The artist signature ”W.” likely refers to Wolfgang Willrich, a painter closely associated with SS-sponsored racial and military portraiture, whose work was used extensively in Third Reich propaganda depicting soldiers as exemplars of Aryan martial virtue.