Transcript U.S. Propaganda Posters from the Second World War

THE WAR AIMS OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
(from a speech to Congress on January 6, 1941)
FDR signs the Lend-Lease
Act, March 11, 1941
“We look forward to a world
founded upon four essential
human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech
and expression—everywhere in
the world.
The second is freedom of every
person to worship God in his
own way—everywhere in the
world.
The third is freedom from
want…everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from
fear…anywhere in the world.”
Norman
Rockwell,
The Four
Freedoms
(1943):
Freedom of
Speech
Freedom of
Worship
Freedom from
Want
Freedom
from Fear
The bestial Jap:
In memory of
Pearl Harbor,
December 1942
U.S. WAR PROPAGANDA
The British and Russian peoples needed little persuasion to
fight in World War II, because Germany attacked them.
Even after Pearl Harbor, however, the Germans and
Japanese posed no immediate threat to the USA….
The Office of War Information issued this directive in early
1942: “Civilians must have the war brought home to them.
Every individual must be made to see the immediacy of the
danger to him…. He must be made to understand that he
is an integral part of the war front, and that if he loses the
war, he loses everything.”
This goal implied that the victims of the Enemy should be
depicted as figures with whom Americans could identify.
The shadow of the
Swastika
(U.S. Treasury, 1942)
WARNING! OUR
HOMES ARE IN
DANGER NOW!
(General Motors
Finance Corporation,
1942)
Nazis as
destroyers of
churches
The crusade against slavery
“This World Cannot
Exist Half Slave and
Half Free”
(U.S. President’s
Office of Facts and
Figures, 1942)
FREE LABOR WILL
WIN
(U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1942)
Joe Louis: “We’re
on God’s side”
1942
Dorie Miller:
Hero of Pearl Harbor
(1942)
Rosie the Riveter:
Millions of women
worked in warrelated industries
John Falter’s
recruitment series
of 1943/44 for the
WAVES:
“Women
Appointed for
Voluntary
Emergency
Service”
Joining a team
Your mother’s
approval
THE MATERIAL REWARDS OF SERVICE:
By 1944 there were 100,000 WACS &
86,000 WAVES
Office of Price
Administration,
1943
United Nations Declaration of December 17, 1942
(the LAST official mention of the Holocaust during the war)
The Allied governments had received “numerous
reports from Europe that the German authorities… are now
carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to
exterminate the Jewish people in Europe. Jews are being
transported in conditions of appalling horror and brutality
to Eastern Europe. In Poland… the ghettos established by
the German invader are being systematically emptied of all
Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war
industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of
again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labor
camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and
starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass
executions. The number of victims of these bloody
cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of
entirely innocent men, women and children.”
“The Jewish Conspiracy”
(Nazi propaganda from 1942)