Oldal 225 [225]
Images of the Enemy from Both Sides of the Front: Ihe Case of Estonia (1942—1944)
Propaganda, Humour and the People
Estonian history between 1942 and 1944 is complex and troublesome. Estonias
political situation at the end of WWII was largely decided by the Soviet and Nazi
struggle for the territory. Historians have estimated that a total of about 100 000
Estonians served in the Red Army and German armed forces. Of these men, one
third was recruited by the Soviets to the Red Army. Ihe remaining two thirds
served in the German armed forces. This often divided families and friends who
fought on different sides of the same battlefront, turning brother against brother
and friend against friend regardless of their ideological convictions. This significant
detail is also reflected in Estonian life histories (see for example Köresaar 2011)
and present-day public discourse when talking about the history of the twentieth
century, as well as in personal memory and cultural “deep memory” (Wertsch
2009). More subjective accounts of history, for instance in the form of folk stories,
add another perspective to written history. For example, the rumours of a human
sausage factory that were common at the end of WWII reflected upon the wartime
Other by attributing cannibalistic tendencies to them (Kalmre 2012). However, as
our main question here is the nature of the caricatures printed on two sides of the
front, audience reactions in the form of stories and memories fall outside the scope
of this article, although they offer an important backdrop to the study.
Propaganda on the Two Fronts
Already after the failure of the Beer Hall putsch in Munich in 1923, Hitler had
stated, “Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda. The only important thing is propa¬
ganda” (cited by Taylor 2011: 280) because he realised that although he had failed
to achieve his immediate goal of seizing power, the event gave the Nazis their first
exposure to national attention as well as a propaganda victory. The importance of
different forms of propaganda was increasingly valued by all countries as WWII ap¬
proached, and it peaked during the last stages of the war. The distribution of news
was regulated by local censorship in order to deliver only the kind of news that
would be suitable for the government. It was considered best to censor important
news before it was published (Ibid.: 248). Apart from leaving some information
out, accounts of reality were tailored to fit the aims of the countries at war by
deliberately adding false details. This does not mean that people were successfully
fooled by doctored news items: in Quisling Norway, the subversive Jéssing move¬
ment distributed jokes and stories that portrayed the Nazi occupiers as liars and the
official newspapers as lies (Stokker 1997). Taking all news as truth was impossible
also because of the changeability of the politics of the period. The truth of one day
could become the untruth of the next day. For example, as seen in an analysis of
the main topics in the Soviet press between 1939 and 1941, the prevalently anti¬
Fascist tone was abruptly replaced by National Socialist-friendly articles and re¬
marks shortly after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in September 1939
(Thompson 1991: 389), changing the tone completely within just a day. After that
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