Publisher's Synopsis
American Posters of the World War II. Among these 188 posters the major themes include recruitment and enlistment, fund raising through liberty loans, communications, medical and social aspects, economic and industrial aspects. Some posters also represent the civilian war effort. About half of the posters were issued by the United States government or the American Red Cross. The function of the war poster is to make coherent and acceptable a basically incoherent and irrational ordeal of killing, suffering, and destruction that violates every accepted principle of morality and decent living. World War II marked the first large-scale use of the poster for political purposes and saw a democratized art employed in a new kind of "democratized" war, that is, a war that involved entire populations. It was felt that propaganda was most effective when it was least propagandistic. Another reason was the appearance by World War II of a number of other new propaganda weapons and strategies: radio, film, newspapers, public loudspeakers, airborne leaflets and newspapers. Posters were important, however, as simple announcements or publicity - for such things as appeals for production, the conservation of fats, the availability of war bonds for purchase, and exhortations to stop careless talk. They also created a sense of involvement in a national mission by providing constant reminders through one image or another that "this is my war, and I am a part of it."
