At the beginning of this year, we talked about WW2 guns that were extremely well preserved in a swamp. These guns were found by a Russian archaeological team called “Yuri Gagarin” which publishes on its YouTube channel videos of excavations of WW2 relics from the battlefields of the war. Today, we’ll take a look at another rare war relic found by the Yuri Gagarin team – an unexploded WW2 German propaganda shell.
Propaganda shells are artillery shells that have a bunch of rolled propaganda leaflets instead of the payload. These shells have a small powder charge right next to the fuse followed by a wad that separates the charge from the leaflets. Upon impact (or after traveling a certain distance if they had a time fuse), the fuse ignites the powder charge which shoots the leaflets from the tail of the shell.
The propaganda shells were a mean of psychological warfare. The idea was to shoot these shells into the enemy territory thus spreading a propaganda material that threatened or prompted the enemy personnel and civilian population to desert or surrender.
It is really rare to find an unexploded and undamaged propaganda shell. This particular one had about 200 leaflets inside it which were in excellent condition considering their age. The Yuri Gagarin team members carefully pulled the leaflets, unfolded them by wetting and laying on a glass to let them dry.
After examining the recovered leaflets, they found out that there were five versions of these propaganda flyers. On one side of these flyers, there is a text claiming that the Red Army is in a poor shape and telling that those who surrender will find a better life in Germany. The text side of the leaflets also contains a pass that was supposed to ensure that those who surrendered and showed the pass would be treated well. The flip sides of the leaflets contain images depicting what is described in the text.
Below you can find the video where they show the recovery process of the leaflets. The video is in Russian, however, even if you don’t understand the language it still worths watching because most of the content is self-explanatory.
Hat tip to Aram H.!
Images are screenshots from the above-embedded video.