ABSTRACT
Prominent West German advertisers who had worked under the Nazis looked back on the Third Reich with highly ambivalent feelings. In 1981 Harry Damrow, former Hoechst advertising chief and a leading member of post-war professional bodies in the advertising industry, wrote in his memoirs: ‘In politics, National Socialism operated with lies and half-truths. In commercial advertising, however, it re-established clarity and truth and a level playing field for all.’ 1 Similarly, in 1972 the head of German Coca-Cola's advertising department judged that advertising in 1933 had been prepared ‘to sacrifice certain freedoms for the sake of creating a salutary order in which this hitherto unruly industry could thrive’. 2
