![\"Shermans\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/06\/shermans.png?w=620\")
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In the months before the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, the Wehrmacht\u2019s propagandists warned those living under German occupation that America\u2019s armies would not be as forgiving.<\/p>\n
In the pages of Signal<\/em>, a bi-weekly magazine funded by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht<\/em> and intended for foreign audiences, the Nazis invoked William Tecumseh Sherman\u2019s march across the Confederacy during the American Civil War as a sign of what to expect.<\/p>\n Sherman was, according to the Nazis, the quintessential American general. \u201cThe cruelties of the Marquis de Sade and the atrocities perpetrated by Jack the Ripper have never led to mass suggestion,\u201d Signal<\/em> editor Walther Kiaulehn wrote. \u201cSherman\u2019s strategy, however, has been acclaimed as classical.\u201d<\/p>\n The Nazis heavily invested in Signal<\/em>. Around 10\u201315 editors and 120 translators produced articles in 20 languages with an annual budget in the tens of millions of dollars in today\u2019s currency. Deliberately modeled on Life<\/em>magazine, Signal<\/em> emphasized visual stories aggregated from the German army\u2019s combat photographers equipped with state-of-the-art color cameras.<\/p>\n Signal<\/em> was, of course, heavily censored propaganda designed to present a sympathetic view of life under German military rule. At its peak circulation\u200a\u2014\u200asome three million copies\u200a\u2014\u200ain 1943, Nazi-controlled Europe stretched from the Atlantic coast in the west, deep into the Soviet Union in the east and north into the Arctic Circle.<\/p>\n But the war, at this late stage, had decidedly turned in favor of the Allies.<\/p>\n