Visual Propaganda During World War II: A Key Element of Communication and Persuasion on the Societies of Germany and the United States

    Communication through the visual propaganda campaigns of the Nazis allowed them to succeed in persuading their own population; Nazi's communicated strong messages, from false and stereotypical accusations of the Jews to having a strong and healthy economy.

This is a political poster that was distributed all over Germany. It promoted the belief that Jews were a weakness to the Nazi dream and that they must be done away with. This poster translates into, “The Jew: The inciter of war, the prolonger of war." This poster was aimed at the general population of Germany.

    Nazi's not only aimed propaganda at adults; they also used them to promote politics through their youth as well. This is the book cover to a child’s reading book; it depicts a stereotypical Jewish man as a toadstool. In this illustration they symbolize Jews as a poisonous toadstool, in the child's book they quote, “Just as it is often hard to tell a toadstool from an edible mushroom, so too it is often very hard to recognize the Jew as a swindler and criminal..." These illustrations in the child’s book must have been very persuasive in stating that they are being taught that this was true at a very young age. This is one type of major propaganda campaign that they could influence one central group of citizens.

    The Nazi’s like the allies would drop propaganda on the enemies’ troops to try to make them surrender or frighten them of fighting. This was a very effective source of propaganda, since they were directly speaking to the enemy. These so called “Black Leaflets,” were dropped by plane and balloon. These examples were made to instill fear into the hearts of the soldiers of the allied troops to lower their moral and hopes of returning home alive. 

This Black Leaflet depicts a nice tourist illustration of the Po River inviting them (allied soldiers) to visit. This showed them that the city was filled with common people and was a peaceful riverside city.

Then on the reverse side it shows the outcome of the allied forces visiting the quaint little Po River. This shows the grim reaper wading in the shallow water holding both an American and British helmet all the while chaos is going on around him.

    Many of the Nazi visual propaganda were aimed at women and children. The Nazi's tried to show nothing bad would come as a result of the war, but at the same time they scared their citizens of what was to come.

This poster is of a small child and a woman that are being beckoned by open arms and the text translates into, “No one shall go hungry! No one shall be cold!" This poster instills fear into citizens to help rise moral and maybe a sense of trust.

    Many of the propaganda images distributed by the Nazis were trying to give the people of Germany the idea that they all had an important part of this war and even the most non-militant of jobs could still help the war effort by production. This is a magnificent example of how they depicted the importance of economy and agriculture was to them.