World War II propaganda posters from the Office of War Information

World War II Propaganda Posters

WWII Propaganda Posters: Soldiers without Guns

During World War II, branches of the U.S. government commissioned propaganda posters, which were illustrated for the Office of War Information; patriotic in nature, these illustrations were intended to stir up pro-American feelings, and help mobilize citizens to support the War movement. This paper examines the prime motivating factors for wartime propaganda, national pride and fear, and reveals how those two motivators are used in a few examples of wartime propaganda posters. The paper also examines how those same posters use traditional propaganda devices to spread a pro-war message, at a time when many Americans were reluctant to enter into another European war. Finally, the paper discusses the propaganda poster as an art form, and looks into the lasting popularity of these propaganda pieces.

Introduction

Branches of the U.S. government commissioned propaganda posters during WWII, which were illustrated for the Office of War Information; patriotic in nature, these illustrations were intended to stir up pro-American feelings, and help mobilize citizens to support the War movement. Some of these posters have become iconic; for example, the picture of "Rosie the Riveter" not only helped move women into wartime manufacturing positions, but also helped usher in the era of the working women. Other posters are clearly dated by their time and purpose, and seem extremely racist and even vaguely un-American. However, it is not fair to view the posters from such a modern perspective, because that perspective ignores some of the harsh realities facing Americans during World War II. Following World War I, many Americans felt an isolationist reluctance to get involved in world affairs. This isolationism meant that, even had Americans been faced with the truths about Germany, genocide, and the likely impact that German aggression would have on the rest of Europe, they may still have been reluctant to enter into a war. Propaganda was used to help convince Americans that it was necessary to enter into World War II, to keep up morale surrounding the war effort, to convince people to sacrifice for the war, and to encourage women to make changes necessitated by the fact that so many men were in the armed forces.

Discussion

Wartime propaganda during the Second World War was escalated to perhaps the greatest heights in history. As the Allies and the Axis both prepared for war, it was necessary for both sides to motivate their population and increase production." (Thinkquest). While Nazi propaganda has been well-studied, and led to the deaths of over 6 million non-combatant Jews, as well as other members of German and Eastern European society that were deemed unworthy by Hitler, the Axis powers were not the only ones to successfully use propaganda. In fact, propaganda may have been used more effectively immediately preceding and during World War II, than in any other time during American history. Americans were reluctant to get involved in another war, and propaganda was necessary to convince them to do so:

America, just coming out of the depression, stuck to its isolationist policy. Most citizens, especially those who remembered World War I, thought that getting involved in a costly and expensive war was not a good decision for America. The majority of people thought that the war beginning in Europe and Asia was far removed from them and their lives in America. Most believed that America's resources should be spent rebuilding the country in the aftermath of the depression, and not fighting a war overseas about causes that didn't concern them. The United States government recognized that sooner or later America would become involved, if not in Europe than in eastern Asia and the surrounding islands. (Thinkquest).

However, in order to be successful in any upcoming war, the government had to convince the American people to support the war. As a result, the government began a propaganda campaign.

Propaganda seems to go hand-in-hand with war. "At times of war, or build up for war, messages of extremities and hate, combined with emotions of honor and righteousness interplay to provide powerful propaganda for a cause." (Shah). In fact, propaganda is also used to prepare a country for war, often by showing the inevitability of war. "Yet, in many cases, war itself is not inevitable, and propaganda is often employed to go closer to war, if that is the preferred foreign policy option." (Shah).

Furthermore, propaganda works; it does help convince people to do and think certain things. It seems to do so by playing to some basic human hopes and fears. As described by Shah:

Propaganda seems to work because of a number of reasons, including: people wish to believe the best about themselves and their country; fear-mongering, especially about the threat to cherished values such as freedom and justice; presenting fears and claims that appear logical and factual; media management and public relations is very professional; [and] managing thoughts by narrowing ranges of debate, thus minimizing widely discussed thoughts that deviate from the main agendas. (Shah).

A large percentage of wartime propaganda focuses on national pride. This is especially true in democracies, where people have a degree of personal responsibility for the actions of their government, while it might be less of an issue in dictatorships or other totalitarian forms of government:

In democracies, people like to believe that they and their countries are generally good, for if it was any other way then it brings into moral question all they know and hold dear. The histories of some nations may have involved overcoming adversaries for legitimate reasons (e.g. The American war to gain its independence and freedom from the British Empire was one based on strong moral grounds of freedom from imperial rule). Such important history is often recounted and remembered as part of the collective culture of the country and those same values are projected into modern times. Propaganda sometimes works by creating the fear of losing such cherished values. (Shah).

The government's use of propaganda just prior to and during World War II was not unanticipated. In an article written by them in anticipation of U.S. involvement in World War II, Miller and Minsky discussed how U.S. involvement in the war would lead to a dramatic increase in propaganda. They suggested that observers had to be aware of propaganda and ask themselves the following questions: "What propagandists seek to influence us, and to what end? How do they operate? What are their methods and their motives?" (Miller and Minsky). Furthermore, they suggested that the propagandists would operate in a predictable manner, by using seven common devices: (1) name calling; (2) glittering generalities; (3) the device of transfer; (4) the device of the testimonial; (5) the device of plain folk; (6) card stacking; and (7) the band wagon device. (Miller and Minsky).

The first device, name calling, is the most obvious form of propaganda. Names can be inherently bad, or they can be deemed bad because of times and circumstances. The concept of name calling is demonstrated very well in the WWII propaganda poster that has been captioned "Murdering Jap" in this paper. That piece of propaganda uses name calling in two ways. First, it refers to a nationality by a slang term, which, by that time, had acquired a very negative denotation. Next, it associated the slang term "Jap" with being a murderer. Moreover, it failed to distinguish between Japanese civilians and Japanese soldiers. Instead, all Japanese were lumped into the same group of people - murderers. Furthermore, the poster did not stop at lumping all Japanese into the category of murderers; it also featured what appeared to be an expert from a newspaper, discussing the torture of "Yank" soldiers by "Japs." Therefore, the poster's message made it clear that Japs were not only murderers, but also torturers.

When examining the name-calling facet of propaganda, it is important to do several things. First, one needs to define what the pejorative term actually means. For example, the term Jap clearly refers to the Japanese. However, it is a broad term that was meant to apply to all of the Japanese. While the terms "murderer" and "torture" are clearly defined, their use in the poster with the broader-based term "Jap" is misleading; it sought to equate being Japanese with being a murderer or torturer. Next, one must look at who applies the term and the motives and interests in doing so? For World War II propaganda, it was generally the government who applied the term. Government motives had multiple layers. The first and most obvious government motive was to garner public support for the war. In order to get the country behind the idea of killing Japanese, especially the use of atomic weapons on two largely-civilian targets, the government had to take steps to dehumanize the Japanese. Making the leap from Japanese soldiers to Japanese civilians, and calling them all murderers and torturers, helped justify those actions and make them more acceptable to the American population.

However, other groups benefited by the use of the pejorative term "Jap" and its equation with murder and torture, and some Americans were grievously harmed by that negative propaganda. Even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began targeting Japanese-American businessmen and placing them under arrest. Following Pearl Harbor, the efforts expanded beyond businessmen and targeted the whole of the Japanese community. Executive Order 9066 "set into motion the exclusion from certain areas, and the evacuation and mass incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, most of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens." (Children of the Camps). The conditions faced by these people absolutely contravened the principles of liberty that underlined American participation in the war; they were incarcerated without due process, lost their jobs, had to leave their homes, had inadequate medical care, and were surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, despite the fact that there was no evidence to suggest than even a single Japanese-American was aiding Japan in the war effort. (Children of the Camps). While the government and the war effort may not have benefited from the internment of Japanese-Americans, it is easy to see that other groups would have. For example, rival business owners would have benefited from the internment of Japanese-Americans, as would have real estate speculators.

Knowing what motivated anti-Japanese propaganda does not wholly explain the success of posters like "Murdering Jap." To understand the success of propaganda, one must look to the reasons why people like to believe in propaganda. For anti-Japanese propaganda, the largest motivator may have been fear, because the Japanese attacked on U.S. soil. However, the poster used fear in another way; by equating "Japs" with torturers, that propaganda suggested that there was something even more fearful than death at the hands of the Japanese: torture at the hands of the Japanese.

Miller and Minsky identified a second type of propaganda, the glittering generalities. With this, the propagandist "identifies the race, nation, policy, program, candidate, with virtue by the use of virtue words - words that instead of making us fighting made, as the bad names do, put us into a kind of rosy glow." (Miller and Minsky). Specifically, they warned against the use of the word "democracy" because it would be "the key word of any propaganda campaign to get [the United States] into war or to keep [the United States] out of war." (Miller and Minsky). By remembering the four key components of democracy: political democracy, economic democracy, social democracy, and religious democracy; one can examine propaganda to see if it truly supports democracy.

The war poster that is captioned Half-slave, Half-free, uses the concept of democracy, though it couches it in even broader terms by using the word "freedom." The poster has a very moving depiction of slave-like conditions. People, including children, cowering from a shadow-figure that is dressed like a Nazi. The shadow-figure holds a whip, and is raising it towards the cowering people. The image is moving, and it clearly intends to encourage U.S. involvement in a war against a country that has not aggressed against the United States at all. However, the poster uses the glittering generality of "freedom" in a very interesting manner; one that did not portray the reality of life in America, but instead portrayed an idealized version of American life. This poster's use of a glittering generality was logical, given that it appealed to national pride, one of the key reasons that people believe in propaganda, and Americans prided themselves on celebrating freedom.

However, at the same time as this poster's publication, African-Americans in the United States were still living with the vestiges of slavery. For example, though slavery had officially ended, blacks were expected to act in a specific and subservient manner. "This racial etiquette governed the actions, manner, attitudes, and words of all black people when in the presence of whites. To violate this racial etiquette placed one's very life, and the lives of one's family, at risk." (Davis). Blacks were expected to act subserviently when encountering whites in public, by stepping off the sidewalk, removing their hats when speaking to whites, and to bring their own implements when dining from a public restaurant. (Davis). Therefore, this call to freedom belied the truth of what was going on in the United States. At the same time, however, the image of the whip was probably meant to resonate with an African-American population that was not yet a lifetime removed from slavery. While African-Americans had not attained substantive freedom, they had attained nominal freedom and were no longer subject to ownership. The idea of slavery, especially the legal and sanctioned use of the whip and the treatment of people as property, were ideas that were anathema to most African-Americans. African-Americans joined the armed forces in substantial numbers during World War II, despite discrimination in the army. Therefore, that piece of propaganda may have been effective with African-Americans, as well.

The third type of propaganda described by Miller and Minsky was the device of transfer:

Here the propagandist would transfer the prestige and the sanction and the authority of some institution we respect, like the state or the university or the Church, to some cause he would have us respect. Or it works in reverse. He may transfer the condemnation of this institution to something he would have us condemn or reject."

Symbols are used as part of the transfer process. "Symbols are effective because, with the speed of light, they can bring in us a reaction that arouses a whole complex of feeling, of emotions." (Miller and Minsky).

In the poster captioned "Ride with Hitler," the artist used the device of transfer. Obviously, once America became involved in World War II, Hitler became public enemy number one. Therefore, to transfer the emotions surrounding Hitler to the idea of riding in a car alone, is a good example of transfer. Moreover, by that point in the war, the image of Hitler had actually become a symbol, as well. His image came to symbolize oppression, murder, violence, and irrational behavior. As a result, showing the image of Hitler in the car with a lone driver reinforced the notion that to ride with Hitler meant that one was engaging in oppression, murder, violence and irrationality.

The transfer of Hitler to a concept like the wasteful use of resources is a more complex piece of propaganda than suggesting that children are endanger of being enslaved by the Germans or tortured by the Japanese. Therefore, the emotions prompting people to believe in such propaganda had to be more complex and more complete, as well. Therefore, one sees that such an image is aimed at impacting people on multiple levels. First, the thought of Hitler in a car with someone is frightening, so the poster uses the image of fear. It also incorporates national pride; people do not want to be seen as aiding the country's enemy. However, the entire conservation message also worked because it aimed at individual pride; people would be shamed by failing to conserve, because it was presented as a very simple way to help one's country. Finally, the conservation message was presented in a logical fashion; by making the connection between waste and hurting the troops, the poster helped make it clear why Americans were being asked to conserve.

Miller and Minsky also point out the use of the testimonial in propaganda. Testimonials come in the form of an individual speaking about an issue, product, person, or policy. The testimonial can be coupled with other devices. In wartime propaganda, the testimonial was often coupled with the plain folks device:

The plain folks device is a familiar American method of persuasion by means of which an advocate of any proposition identifies it, himself and his audience with plain people. It was a notably strong weapon in the hands of Huey Long, and it serves anyone who wishes to appeal to great masses of ordinary folks. (Miller and Minsky).

The combination of the two devices is a way to get mass appeal for a testimonial. If an average person believes that something is beneficial, the likelihood is that other average people will find that same thing to be beneficial, as well.

The plain folks and testimonial devices were combined in the propaganda poster that is labeled "Crop Corps" in this paper. The poster has two very all-American looking people, a man and woman who appear to be part of a couple. Both of them are young and healthy, and they look a lot like people from middle America. The man appears healthy and is an age range that would make him eligible for voluntary service, if not for the draft. The message of the poster is clear; American men can contribute to the war effort by working on a farm, as well as by engaging in active service in the war. The message also makes it clear that women can engage in the war effort in a meaningful manner, by working at a farm and helping grow crops for the troops. Unlike many pieces of wartime propaganda, the "Crops Corp" poster did not use any elements of fear, but, instead, worked solely by appealing to feelings of national and personal pride.