Famous Staged Battle of the Bulge Photos

I mentioned this in another topic, but one of the things that I found out recently when I was reading a World War II magazine was that some of the most famous photos to come out of the war, which were taken during the Battle of the Bulge, were staged. The story goes that on December 18, 1944, just two days after the Germans had launched their counteroffensive, some troops from an SS Kampfgruppe were making their way west. Pretty soon an SS propaganda unit came by.

By then the soldiers were making their way past an abandoned and burning column of US vehicles, the propaganda unit, which were commonly known as Kriegsberichter, saw a chance to take some shots for Goebbels and his propaganda.

The unit asked the soldiers, who were holding regular issued weapons as well as recently captured American weapons, to pose with the burning vehicles. The soldiers happily agreed.

At times the photographer, Jean Paul Pallad, had to bark at the soldiers to not gape at the camera, and one of the soldiers was photographed squeezing under a fence after he had gotten snagged.

After finding a cache of American cigarettes, the soldiers left the propaganda unit to smell the burning rubble.

Here are some of the pictures. note in the photo of the Germans crossing the road there is another figure on the other side of the road nonchalantly walking.

 

Jean-Paul Pallud was not the original photographer. He is the author of the book "Battle of the Bulge Then and Now", and took a series of "then and now" photos at the site where these originals were taken. Its an excellent book, and he has done quite a bit of research on the Ardennes Offensive.

http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Bulge-Then-Jean-Paul-Pallud/dp/0900913401/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418514689&sr=1-1&keywords=battle+of+the+bulge+then+and+now

 

Thanks for pointing that out GP. I probably got the words mixed up when I was reading the article thinking that he took the photos.

 

The trooper with the Browning Hi-Power is one of my favorite WW2 pix.

 

The top photo, staged or not, is a classic.

 

I agree. Despite it being staged, it still kind of captures the fatigue and ferocity of the fighting by looking at that soldiers face. It just captures it all.

Also from the looks of it, the soldier in that famous photo can also be recognized in the pictures of the soldiers smoking the cigarettes I believe.

 

Same guy, with a Hi-Power...

 

These are justifiably famous photos - yes, they're staged, but they are the real soldiers on the real battlefield taken very shortly after real action. I can look at them again and again and never get bored twith them. Jean-Paul Pallud's work was groundbreaking ( and I still can't believe that even this year books still appear with the photos captioned as 'SS soldiers attack during the Bulge' etc.. ).

It may interest people here that the entire sequence is published in the correct order, with analysis, in the Brassey's book 'Nuts ! The Battle Of The Bulge' by Goldstein/Dillon/Wenger.

 

I've always been wondering why the nonchalent soldier on the edge of picture was was never cut out.

 

The photo unit probably thought that the people wouldn't notice it. You kind of have to look at it for as minute or two to notice it. It is still weird that they didn't cut it out though, even if it was hard to see at first. Something like that should have been cut out by German propaganda standards.

 

yes, it's always interesting viewing pics of 'heat of battle' with the camera man IN FRONT of the weapons/lines/etc....

 

He often is when the photo is reproduced these days ( often on book covers ) and he probably would have been 'airbrushed' at the time by Goebbels' people. But the film never made it back to Germany : four rolls of 35mm and a can of movie film ( the 'Kaiserbaracke' sequence ) was captured by the US 3rd Army under circumstances which are now unknown and passed directly to the US Signal Corps.

The rest, as they say, is history............

 

I just got that magazine this week as a 1 time gift for my bother's subscription...that is a great book, Then and Now.......that magazine issue is just super thick for subscription puroposes only, I believe...

 

yes ,it is another good book.....if I'm not mistaken, it shows many pictures of the German view at, and leading up to, Malmedy...along with others, but that is what I remember most....very rustic-period photos

 

There are 30 or so still photos taken from the movie film and filed in NARA's Signal Corps collection. If anyone wants good quality scans of the stills, either PM me or go to my webpage - digitalhistoryarchive.com and send me a message via the contact form. I will then send the images to you via an ftp site (its 82MB of data).

Regards,
Marc