German WWII Book "Waffentraeger der Nation"

A red cloth-bound book titled "Waffentraeger der Nation" ("Weapon-Bearers of the Nation"), with a Wehrmacht eagle and wreathed swastika stamped in metallic ink on the front board and the title repeated on the spine. The title page identifies it as "Ein Buch der deutschen Wehrmacht fuer das deutsche Volk", issued by the Reichskriegsministerium (Reich Ministry of War), Berlin, published by Dr. Hans Riegler, Verlag fuer vaterlaendische Literatur, Berlin SW11.

The work was produced as a piece of Wehrmacht-sponsored publishing intended to present the German armed forces to the civilian population, part of a broader genre of state-issued patriotic literature circulated in Germany during the 1930s.

"Waffentraeger der Nation" was published under the auspices of the Reichskriegsministerium, the German Reich Ministry of War, which oversaw the Wehrmacht's high command until its dissolution in 1938 when its functions passed to the OKW under Adolf Hitler's direct authority. Books of this kind were commissioned to present the army, navy and nascent Luftwaffe favourably to German civilians during the rapid rearmament of the mid-1930s, reinforcing the regime's narrative of national resurgence after the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. Such state-sponsored volumes formed part of a wider propaganda effort to normalise military expansion and cultivate popular support for the armed forces in the years preceding the Second World War.