Set of German WWII "Schlag nach" Reference Booklets

A set of pocket reference booklets from the "Schlag nach uber..." series, published as inexpensive general-knowledge pamphlets priced at 50 Pfennig each. Several copies are titled "Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika" (United States of America), each carrying a colored panel promising useful facts, overviews, tables, and a multicolored map of America. One additional booklet in the set is titled "China, Japan und Mandschukuo, " offering the same format of facts, tables, and a map of China and Japan.

These small wartime educational booklets were part of a popular German series intended to inform the general public on foreign countries and regions, often reflecting contemporary geopolitical interests, including Japan's occupation-era client state of Manchukuo referenced in the title.

The "Schlag nach" series was a widely distributed line of inexpensive pocket reference booklets published in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s, intended to provide the general public with quick facts, statistics, and maps on countries, regions, and topics of contemporary interest. Titles covering the United States and the Japan-China-Manchukuo region reflect wartime public curiosity about nations central to the geopolitical situation, with Manchukuo representing the Japanese-controlled puppet state established in northeastern China in 1932 following Japan's occupation of Manchuria. Such booklets served a popular educational function, disseminating simplified geographic and statistical knowledge to a mass readership during the Nazi era, framed within the political context of the time.