A unique collection of propaganda posters which were designed to encourage Americans to Posted on 03/06/2017 9:46:12 AM PST by C19fan
A unique collection of propaganda posters which were designed to encourage Americans to support their troops in the First World War is going up for sale this week. The patriotic posters are full of stirring words and patriotic images of Uncle Sam, the Stars and Stripes and 'our boys' in the trenches and at sea, which inspired Americans back home to buy war bonds and help the war effort in other ways. The United States was initially pursuing an isolationist policy in 1914 when the war broke out between Britain, France, Italy and Russia on one side and Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Turkey on the other.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I just got done reading “The Illusion Of Victory: Americans In World War I “, and it just makes these posters all that much more cringe-worthy.
All I can say that our involvement was a complete farce and almost as fraudulent as the Spanish-American War was for reasons.
A unique collection of propaganda posters which were designed to encourage Americans to To say there was “a lot” of anti-German sentiment during the conflict would be an understatement.
Which, considering that German immigrants were the largest population block in the US up to the recent Southern Invasion makes it even stranger.
My own family had to change the way our last name is pronounced. When my Grandfather - reported to the draft office (as ordered) he was told, his face, to get out as “they already had enough G D Krauts in the infantry.”
Nonplussed, he walked down the street and signed up with the Engineers, 20th Forrest Engineers.
He survived being on a torpedoed ship, being shot at by his own first cousins, the flu of 1918 and the Army in general.
His two sons served in the ETO and PTO, I did 22 years in the military and my son pulled two tours in Iraq.
My point? It is possible to overcome anti-anything propaganda - it just not easy.
Thanks for posting the link to the posters.
I still wonder if Britain and America stayed out of the war, if we would have been better off.
I have always been underwhelmed by U.S. and allied WWI posters when compared to the ones done for the Germans by people like Ludwig Hohlwein, Lucien Bernhard, Hans-Rudi Erdt and Julius Engelhard.
Mr. niteowl77
“A unique collection of propaganda”
I don’t really like how patriotism is deliberately purported to be propaganda (a form a propaganda itself).
The poster w/the nurse spilling water is propaganda, but the remainder are ads for patriotic purpose.
I.e., there is not necessarily any truth in claiming that nurses tortured wounded soldiers.
However, saying “Women, help american sons with the war. Buy bonds...” doesn’t include disinformation.
I’ve seen this characterization as well in DVD specials where the hollywood types refer to WWII movies in toto as propaganda movies.
I think the point is that the posters were pushing a war that made no sense for the long term good of the US. The legacy of WWI was 232,000 dead in the space of less than 9 months out of a population of 90 million, the equivalent of 825,000 dead today. The Palmer raids came out of it and the FBI, as well as the first read scare.
To what good Cause, democracy? The Germans had a 2 house representative system with a Kaiser and 100% male suffrage, which the English had a 2 house representative system with a king and 32% adult male voting. The big difference was the Kaiser appointed the Chancellor as a check on the vote, while the English solution was not to allow most men to vote for the prime minister. Hardly the lie about “defending democracy” that was used to sell the war in 1916~1917. Our intervention eliminated the possibility of a true negotiated peace acceptable to both sides, and lead to a 2nd World War, which results in 430,000 US dead out of 133 million, or the equivalent of over 1 million dead today.
Sometimes you have to judge actions by their works, in this case it was pretty piss poor. Yes it was propaganda.
Not defending the Germans as good guys, frankly I fail to see good guys in WWI, the war was very stupid all round.
I’m sure there was propaganda concerning the entry into the war. There was at least the Lusitania. US hid the fact that it was carrying munitions.
If the posters were encouraging entry into the war, I’d agree w/you. But for bond sales I can’t agree since it’s in the context of the war already started.
To be fair, it was Britain that hid the fact Lusitania was carrying munitions. She was a British-flagged vessel. Of course we sold Britain the munitions under our “cash and carry” policy. Britain’s surface fleet (and Germany’s geography) limited Germany’s ability to buy from us.
And Germany did do things which tended to bother us. They did invade France via Belgium whose neutrality they had signed onto and the did things like execute British nurses and a merchant captain who rammed one of their U-boats. And in 1917 they resumed unrestricted submarine warfare.
But as mentioned above, WWI was never really about saving democracy and the problems it spawned are still biting us a century later.
WW1 was actually more about saving European Royalty, which it failed to do. These “kingdoms” has built up magnificent, unbeatable armies and were desperate to show them off. The failure of all of the armies doomed what was left of royalty.
Because of its horrific nature, it was truly the war to end all wars....for a while anyway.
Good point, I see that.
US involvement was due to to loans to England/France that would not be repaid if Germany were the victor. Anyone with half a brain saw that a German victory over Russia was going to allow a surge of troops to engage the English/French on the Western front. That would mean all the credit extended by New York bankers would be worthless! In addition, with all the destruction of war, the US was in a perfect position to profit from the rebuilding after hostilities end.
Us War propaganda was nasty in 1917 and still influences people in the US today. I've seen it first hand and the worst I've seen has been from (so called) Christian ministers who weave hate of Germans/Germany into their sermons.
Well since when did France become our buddies, anyway. Or the Brits’ buddies for that matter?
We’re damned lucky the end result wasn’t a world-wide Bolshevik Revolution, we were a lot closer to that reality than many think.
The French certainly were not “good guys” judging by their harsh treatment of Germany after the war.
The term propaganda does not imply that misinformation is present. That is a fairly modern connotation. Propaganda can be entirely truthful. It is just media packaged with information(or disinformation) designed to cause a strong directed reaction in the viewer of that media. These days we think that MUST require lies and disinformation.
France became our buddy in 1778. France, Britain & Russia signed the Triple Entente in 1907. The English had a huge propaganda advantage in that they speak (roughly) the same language as we do, share common law and political traditions with us in a way the Germans didn’t. Even the fact that Canada was part of the allied war effort from 1914 had to be of some influence on tending to favor the Allies cause, even though we didn’t want to get involved. Anti-British feelings from Irish-Americans probably was a bit of al counterbalance and of course Americans of German background probably didn’t believe that the Germans were monsters.
Have to wonder how things would look today if the Germans had won the war or at least achieved a stalemate.
I'll tell you what we wouldn't have had. No Hitler, and no Holocaust.
The agreement that doomed a continent.
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