Praying Mantis


As the Wehrmacht was rapidly advancing on Paris in June 1940, Nazi propaganda claimed: "Your Government no longer deserves your respect. Despite its claim to defend the city to the end, it has left the capital and its people to their own fate. Why expose Paris to such senseless destruction and slaughter?"

Nazi propaganda during this period has been compared to a praying mantis which, by separating its hind parts from its legs, so terrifies its prey that it meets no resistance.


The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda by David Welch





Ernst Kaltenbrunner