WWII Germany loved posing for photos with a man in a polar bear cosutme
WWII is one of my areas of study. The most I read on the topic though, there’s always something new to uncover. Case in point, the German fascination around posing with a polar bear during the Third Reich (and extending through the 60’s).
“It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
Yes, Winston Churchill was referring to the Soviet Union’s geopolitical strategy in 1939 when he made that declaration, but it’s safe to say that same statement can also apply to the bizarre German affinity throughout the 20th century of posing with an unknown man dressed as a polar bear.
Had they not heard of stranger danger?
The vintage photographs, rediscovered by Jean-Marie Donat, a French art collector and publisher, often fall under the aegis of the absurd — nothing like a good family day at the beach punctuated by posing with a man sweating buckets underneath all that faux fur — to the more sinister: Two grinning Nazi soldiers can be seen standing arm-in-arm with the bear; a young, blonde haired girl happily poses, her shirt embossed with a swastika.
An intrigued Donat eventually amassed hundreds of the silly — burgeoning on bizarre — images, and ultimately culled them into “Teddybär,” a 200-page — that’s an inordinate amount of polar bear costume photos — compilation and overall bundle of photographic confusion.
Turns out the explanation is rather pedestrian. The Berlin Zoo acquired two polar bears in the 1920s and this kicked off the craze of posing with bear stand-ins.
Jeff LPH 3 gets credit for getting this story to us.
Source; Military Times
Category: Guest Link, Historical
And this is how we ended up with fury’s?
https://youtu.be/3pJiPwH5M0g
furry
So, anyone who likes polar bears is a Nazi. Give it a few days before ANTIFA storms the local zoo and hold these bears accountable.
the polar bear is white, therefore it is racist by default.
but the polar is also not dying off like these same geniuses want them to prove their dire “global catastrophe” theory.
Last, the polar bear eats seals and seals are cute, so it is obvious that they are not vegans.
Result: polar bears are nawzees and must be eradicated immediately to preserve the antifactist narrative (yes, I spelled that correctly).
Glad that you brought up the bare facts SarMaj. I can barely contain myself.
Well we just have to grin and bare it. My late Neighbor was 12 when she was in the Hitler Youth. Married an American after the war and came to the US. She was some looker in her day and worked in an office but had to put up with a lot of BS and dirty looks from others. I once mentioned to her that she should go to the Schools and tell her story but it was a no no.
I’ll throw in a wrinkle. . .
THEY HAVE BLACK SKIN!!
White fur, black skin, hung out with NAZIs, cute enough for environmental causes but aren’t dying fast enough to prove Climate Change™ is real!!
Unravel that one!!
But Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, so unless you eat things that had parents, you are a Nazi. Hitler also wore shoes, so if you have footwear, you are calling for genocide of the Jewish population.
Hitler LOVED cakes and cookies, so if you eat anything sweet, you’re one of them awful nawzees…
German wimmin do love bearing all.
PETA!!!!!
that polar bear looks more like a Samoyed. 😉
Reading this article rang a faint bell in the back of my brain, as I thought I had read somewhere that there was a Wehrmacht division nicknamed the Polar Bears. Did some checking and turned out there WAS a “Polar Bear” division that fought in WWII, but it fought on the Allied side, namely the British 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division of the Brit Territorial Army. The division served in WWI, and in World War II served in the Norway campaign, garrisoned Iceland, and fought from Normandy into the Netherlands under Monty’s 21st Army Group. It was nicknamed the Polar Bears because of its polar bear divisional insignia. Unit history linked below…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/49th_(West_Riding)_Infantry_Division
Also the US 31st Infantry Regiment (“Polar Bears”). So named because it spent 2 years in Siberia (198-1920). It too has a polar bear as its insignia.
Whenever my Dad wanted to tease my Mother he’d threaten to drag out the picture of her at 10 in her BunD Deutsche Madel uniform