True and Authentic Stories of War Criminals

Tasteless exploitation or public service?  An argument could be made either way for Normandy Publications' True and Authentic Stories of War Criminals. A men;s pulp that ran quarterly from 1961-66, (later issues shortened the title to simply War Criminals and apparently reprinted articles from earlier issues).  The magazine recounted the various crimes of mainly Nazi war criminals in lurid, pulp-style fashion, complete typical for the period artwork featuring scantily clad young women in mortal peril.  With World War Two still fresh in readers' memories and the full details of the horrors of the concentration camps still emerging via the trials of the likes of Eichmann, this sort of thing undoubtedly seemed ripe for exploitation by the publishers of men's magazines, who were already turning out lurid war titles like Battle Cry, chronicling various violent male fantasy versions of the war.  In the wider context of men's magazines, the use of war crimes as a basis for sensationalist semi-fiction was hardly surprising, effectively a cross over offspring of both the war titles and the ever popular 'True Crime' publications.  As such, War Criminals might be easily dismissed as being simply the most tasteless expression of the genre, exploiting concentration camps and genocide for entertainment.

On the other hand, there is an argument to be made that the magazine was actually performing an important public service by the popularisation of the subject, making the holocaust relevant for a new generation of readers without first hand experience of the war and the fight against fascism.  By the early sixties, Nazi iconography was beginning to reappear in western popular culture, with motor cycle gangs, for instance, sporting coal scuttle helmets and swastikas.  War movies of the period rarely addressed directly the actual war crimes committed by the Nazis, with Germans portrayed simply as a general purpose 'enemy', sometimes even as figures of fun.  There was also a degree of 'rehabilitation' for some wartime German military figures, like Rommel or Adolf Galland, who hadn't been closely associated with the Nazi party, (indeed, in the case of the former, his role in the 'Generals Plot' to assassinate Hitler was greatly exaggerated).  All of this, was, to a degree, understandable as West Germany was in the process of being transformed into a modern European democracy and military contributor to NATO.  But this also meant that there was a danger of the true nature of Nazism and its consequences being down played to the point that it would be largely forgotten, or simply consigned to the past, by younger generations.  War Criminals, in its lurid way, arguably ensured that the crimes committed in the name of the Swastika remained in the public consciousness and that the names o their perpetrators wouldn't be forgotten.

Whichever side one comes down on, there's no doubt that the very existence of War Criminals seems quite jarring to modern readers.  It seems unthinkable that publications in a similar format would appear today chronicling in lurid terms, say, the war crimes of Saddam Hussein, Isis or the Taliban.  One could just imagine the tabloid furore they would provoke.  Ironically, of course, it is these very tabloids which maintain the men's magazine tradition of sensationalising wars, crimes and assorted atrocities, the only difference being that they do it in the name of 'news' rather than 'entertainment'.