"'Shock Troops' of the Campaign: A Boycott Car"
Times Wide World Photos
United States, active 1919–1941
1933
A gelatin silver documentary photograph showing a 1933 German “boycott” truck packed with men in paramilitary dress and swastika flags, staged as a propaganda spectacle to intimidate opponents.
You are struck by the packed open‑bed truck—young men clustered around black flags, a swastika draped over the hood—moving through a city square while ordinary pedestrians and onlookers pass by, creating an unsettling mix of everyday life and political threat.
The picture reveals how photography and public spectacle were harnessed to the Nazi movement, documenting and amplifying techniques of mass intimidation that helped normalize and internationalize the regime’s rise.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
6 9/16 × 9 3/16" (16.7 × 23.4 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The New York Times Collection
Accession
2162.2001
Palette
Exhibitions
