History of Sorts

Propaganda was and still a very effective tool to win the hearts and minds of the population.Both allies and axis nations used propaganda to recruit and raise funding for the war efforts, and also the political good will of the ordinary citizen.

In this blog I will be looking the Propaganda used by the allies

This image depicts a WWW-II-era ad issued during food-rationing days in America. From 1943, the “Fleischmann Yeast Bread Recipe,” promoted by a character known as “War Production Joe,” encourages people to eat bread. There was a time, during January of 1943, when the federal government (via the Food Administrator Claude R Wickard) issued a ban on sliced bread. It was soon abandoned, however, since monetary savings (from not slicing the bread) were negligible.

During WWII, Americans—like people in other parts of the world—were subject to rationing of items like gasoline and food. Encouraging U.S. citizens to grow—and preserve—their own food, the federal government hired artists—such as Alfred Parker, who created this poster during 1943—to be as self-sufficient as possible.

Photograph of an American World War II propaganda poster, called “In the Face of Obstacles – Courage,” by Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer / U.S. War Department.

As depicted in this WWII-era poster, the U.S. federal government urged people to set-aside 10% of their income to buy war bonds. Poster-creators often used the theme of sacrifice—particularly the sacrifice made by war-widows—as a theme for war-bond posters.

The U.S. government, via the various branches of military service, created many posters to recruit American women during World War II. This image depicts one such poster, intended to influence women to become members of the Womens Army Corps (WACs)

People in America, the UK and the Soviet Union worked extremely hard to create war assets to use against Hitler and his Nazis. This image depicts a poster, created by the TASS News Agency on or about 26 May 1944, which reflects the cooperation between these WWII Allies. Their mutual objective was to annihilate Hitler and his forces.

Joe Dope was a fictional cartoon character created by artist Will Eisner. Joe’s purpose was clear, during the WWII era—to remind American military men to avoid doing inapproriate things on and off the job. Image online via the Library of Congress. Click on it for a much-better view.

During the war, the U.S. government (via “Uncle Sam”) urged Americans to grow gardens whether they lived in the city or in the country. This poster is an example.

The poster below is a Dutch poster with the text” Get out, Indonesia has to be liberated”

The 2 posters below were Polish, unfortunately I don’t know what they say, but the pictures are clear enough.

A big worry was that people would unwittingly give information to people who were not suppose the hear the information, a great number of posters would warn for this.

We have all seen the “Keep Calm and …….” Posters,Memes,T-Shirts etc and most of us, me included, would have presumed the origin of this slogan was fairly recent. But in fact it first appeared in 1939, it was rediscovered in 2000.The posters were designed in Spring of 1939 and were aimed to re-assure the British public.There were 2 more posters which had the same lay out one said “Your Courage,Your Cheerfulness.Your Resolution will bring us Victory.” the 3rd one said “Freedom is in Peril, defend it with all your might”