The Operation ‘Wallenstein’ in the Summer of 1944

This online exhibition presents photographs, many of them little known, from anti-partisan operations in the northern Apennines in the summer of 1944. The images were taken in connection with Operation ‘Wallenstein’, one of the largest German operations against the Italian Resistance in the final phase of the occupation.

The photographs were taken by photographic correspondents of the Nazi propaganda companies, including Alfred (Fred) Rieder, Heinrich Freytag and the photographers Seyfarth, Lichter, Kohlroser and Beyer, whose first names have not yet been identified. It was unusual for a single anti-partisan operation to be accompanied by several propaganda photographers. This points to the German command’s interest in making military control visible and in legitimising the fight against the Resistance for propaganda purposes.

For precisely this reason, the images have a dual value as historical sources. They show military movements, measures of control, destruction and encounters between German soldiers and the civilian population. At the same time, they reveal how this war was meant to be seen, framed and communicated. The photographs therefore document not only the routines of occupation, but also their staging for propaganda purposes.

The photographic record of Operation ‘Wallenstein’ is today divided among several archival holdings. Important series are held in the photographic archive of the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, collection Bild 101 I–II, and in the French military archive Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD) in Ivry-sur-Seine.

These series, now preserved separately, originally belonged to the same context of production. The photographs were taken in the summer of 1944 by photographic correspondents who accompanied German units during the operation. They initially formed part of a centrally administered photographic collection of German war propaganda.

The present fragmentation of the material is the result of wartime losses, destruction and the seizure of German photographic material by Allied troops at the end of the Second World War. Parts of the negative collections were taken to France and archived there, while other series remained in German holdings. The archival separation is therefore not an original condition, but a later state of preservation that continues to shape historical reconstruction.

For this exhibition, the relevant series from both collections have been systematically analysed and virtually brought together. The photographic material relating to the first phase of the operation, ‘Wallenstein I’, is especially extensive. No photographic material relating to the second phase, ‘Wallenstein II’, has so far been identified; whether such a series was lost or never produced remains an open question. For the third phase, ‘Wallenstein III’, the Bundesarchiv holds two complete film rolls by the photographer Seyfarth, Bild 101 I/480/2230 and Bild 101 I/480/2231, which document a coherent photographic sequence from the Montefiorino area.

The value of these holdings as sources lies not only in the individual photograph, but above all in their serial structure. The surviving film sequences make it possible to trace movements, repeated motifs and shifts of perspective within a sequence of images. At the same time, significant gaps in the record remain. The surviving material therefore represents only a fragment of what was originally produced.

The photographs are shown in the order in which they are preserved on the surviving film strips. This editorial decision follows the original sequence of the images and allows conclusions to be drawn about temporal processes and situational contexts, even where these do not emerge clearly from the individual photograph.

At the same time, it must be remembered that these are propaganda photographs. Selection, perspective and choice of motif were shaped from the moment of exposure by specific journalistic and political objectives. The images therefore do not simply show what happened. They also show what was meant to be made visible – and what was left outside the frame.

Today, these photographs appear less as military documents in the narrow sense than as sources of visual perception. Their significance lies not only in the events they document, but also in the perspective from which those events were represented. Precisely for this reason, they offer insights into the routines of occupation, the practice of anti-partisan warfare and the visual self-representation of German violence in occupied Italy.