Closed Auction

lot # 30 - Medals, Tokens.

Wednesday Dec 19, 2018 17:00 Asia/Jerusalem

Anti-Semitic medal - "Why We Fight" - 1939

One of the special items on sale! A very rare and historic item that describes the Germans' conception of the Jews and the enemy in the late 1930s, just before the beginning of the war.


Germany: Anti-Semitic "Why We Fight" ("Wofür Kämpfen Unsere Feinde") medal, 1939; struck in zinc; no artist/maker mark; size: 40.5mm, weight: 21.15g.


Obverse depicts German soldier above industrial and agricultural workers, and legend around edge, "GROSSDEUTSCHLAND KÄMPFT FÜR DEN FRIEDEN GEGEN DEN SCHANDVERTRAG VON VERSAILLES" ("Greater Germany fights for Peace against the Shame-Treaty of Versailles") with date national (Nazi) emblem.


On reverse, a large caricatured "Jewish" figure with Star of David, with flames behind him and images of money and weaponry before him, with legend below "WOFÜR KÄMPFEN UNSERE FEINDE" ("For What do our Enemies Fight"). Relatively thick planchet, plain rim. Of interest is the use of a Wehrmacht (German military) figure rather than an SS soldier: though the Waffen-SS did not figure prominently in the battlefield in the early years of the Second World War, it and not the Wehrmacht is popularly seen as the propagator of open anti-Semitism (though photographic and documentary evidence after the War showed the military was just as involved in the extermination of Jews during the war as the SS). In UNC; Kirschner Nr. 49, pg. 83. 


Estimate: $400 - $500

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