Ad Analysis Of The Allies, Hitler's Campaign

“All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach” -Adolf Hitler. This is ironic because Hitler used propaganda to help try to exterminate the Jewish people, but he makes the excellent point that propaganda must be warped to be easily conceived and understood by the simplest mind in the audience. He says that for propaganda to be successful it must be easily understood by everyone. This compares to the propaganda poster above through warping the true view of Germany and Japan since they clearly aren’t a two-headed monster. They were just two countries fighting for what they believed in, which just happened to morally oppose the United States, and the rest of the Allies.

Correspondingly the ad depicts Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as a savage, under biting, two-headed monster, with blood dripping from their mouths’. The monster is a darker, more muted tone representing death and evil. In the monster’s wake, he leaves a fiery blaze of destruction. The monster is holding a bloody dagger, in a spiked gauntlet covered hand. The other hand is crushing the statue of liberty. The destruction and fire caused by the monster in the ad depicts how much damage the Axis powers could cause if not contained or stopped. Therefore, the god-like hand represents the Allies, holding a wrench that reads: “PRODUCTION” swinging towards the monster, about to give a deadly blow. This is meant to show that helping with production adds weight to help destroy the monster. The hand is glowing and shiny to look inherently “good”. The ad’s message directly below the image: “Stop this monster that stops at nothing… PRODUCE to the limit!” depicting that the monster won’t stop the mass destruction on its own, or just go away. The exclamation “This is your War!” is written in blood red lettering to show the seriousness and tries to get you involved against the “monster”.

There is no listed sponsor of the ad, but we can safely assume that it was created by the United States government. The purpose of the propaganda was to help them try to win World War II by getting the people involved in production to help the military. They used fear of the Axis powers against the American people to inspire anger and hatred towards the enemy for fear of if they don’t, they will be destroyed and killed. Fear is among the strongest of emotions and using fear was a primary tactic when designing most propaganda posters due to it having such strong effects on persuading people usually against another group of people (the opposition).

The ad accomplishes its goal to motivate and persuade Americans by tapping into Americans fear because making the Axis powers look like a savage unrelenting monster would cause the people to believe that “monster” was coming to them next. This caused an outburst of the people to have immediate hatred and anger for Germany and Japan since they were painted as monsters coming to destroy the US in the ad. The propaganda poster is “selling”/ persuading people to get involved in the production for the military. This was successful because of the strong emotional connection it gave people, which was that if they got involved in the production it would be another metaphorical blow to the Axis powers. In their minds this was a great thing because that meant their country would be winning the war and everyone likes to win.

How well did this propaganda poster persuade Americans to get involved in the means of production for the war? I believe the ad did a very well because they forced fear into the minds of Americans against the Germany/ Japan monster that it would come to the States next. This rocketed the people to get involved with production to help defeat the monster before it comes to them. The other media that would also depict the Axis powers as unrelenting savages helped in the persuasion because “a lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth” (-Joseph Goebbels), this is spoken very well and can be interpreted as, that since the Allies and the US has so much propaganda posted to turn the average people against Germany and Japan. The lie of the Axis powers being savage, merciless, uncivilized beasts was told so many times and posted everywhere that it became the truth to the average American.