see also:

Art Deco

7 American Art Deco and the Second World War

 

Germany in the 1930s
 

While the 1930s in the United States was a time during which a critical mass of modern artists was coming together to forge new styles, America's gains came largely at the expense of continental Europe—particularly Germany, which had been the leading site for International Constructivism in the 1920s. The situation in Germany had changed swiftly and dramatically in the spring of 1933, when the Nazis successfully consolidated their power. The Nazi government immediately implemented two of its core governing strategies: the use of violence and intimidation, complemented by aggressive control of the mass media and related culture.

The Nazis and the Mass Media

Scholars consider the Nazi regime to be one of the most media-aware governments of the twentieth century. Before 1933, Nazis used the mass media in order to sway popular opinion. The photo illustrated here (fig. 7.34) shows some people in Berlin circulating around a 1932 election poster. Under the direction of Josef Goebbels (1897-1945), Reichsministcr fur Volksaufklarung und Propaganda {Minister of National Enlightenment and Propaganda), there was an officially sanctioned effort to control most aspects of German culture. Illustration and graphic design, for example, were overseen by "Department V," a pan of the 6th division of Goebbel's ministry, which oversaw the wide range of visual arts. Other divisions set standards for the press, broadcast­ing, theater, music, and literature. Goebbels and the rest of the Nazi leadership, minds twisted by delusions of national and racial superiority, desperately desired to define German culture in terms that fitted their ideological beliefs. Anything that shied away from their reactionary conservative sensibility was suppressed. Typographers and graphic designers were expected to reject mod­ern styles, and artists of all types were compelled to use regressive representational styles in works that idealized the leadership of the Nazi party.

Typical of Nazi arts policy was the closure of the Berlin Bauhaus in 1933. As previously discussed, the Dessau Bauhaus had been shut down in 1932, when the Nazis had taken over the regional government, but a group of professors and students had reopened the school in modest quarters located on the outskirts of Berlin. A photomontage by student Iwao Yamawaki (1898-1987), The Assault on the Bauhaus, shows Nazi officials marching back and forth across the buildings, which have been turned on their sides at an oblique angle so that they form ramps (fig. 7.36). In a prescient foreshadowing of the terrors yet to come. Yamawaki has strewn his composition with screaming fig­ures and bodies lying on the ground.

On April 11, 1933, police and paramilitaries raided the Berlin Bauhaus, and closed it after claiming to have found "illegal propa­ganda material of the German Communist Party." An article from the next day in a Berlin newspaper reinforced this assertion that the Bauhaus was a hotbed of Communist revolutionaries, claiming that Gropius had removed himself to Russia. As the closing indicated, the attempts by Mies van der Rohe and others to depoliticize the Constructivist style practiced there had not been successful. Clearly, while no one in 1933 on the faculty and staff at the Bauhaus was actively working against the Nazi government on behalf of Communism, few people at the institution supported the new regime. In the context of the Nazi belief that all culture a inherently political, the Bauhaus style was allied both with Communism and with a commitment to universalism that contradicted the government's desire to promulgate strong nationalist ideology. Amid the obsession with so-called "Aryan" German culture that characterized the regime's propaganda, the Bauhaus was considered not sufficiently German enough.

The cultural program overseen by Goebbels was not strictly one of suppression, as many graphic designers were employed by the government in order to promote its policies as well as the gen­eral reputation of the Nazis. Even before Hitler gained power in 1933, Hans Schweitzer (1901-1980) had allied himself with the Nazis, becoming a party member in 1926. A close friend of Goebbels, Schweitzer took on the pseudonym "Mjolnir," a reference to the hammer of Thor, a Norse god of thunder. The poster Our Last Hope: Hitler dates from Hitler's unsuccessful presidential campaign of the spring of 1932 (fig. 735). Schweitzer had been trained in an academic style, and he used the type of conventional plain drawing techniques that were favored by the Nazi leader­ship. In this image the letters arc made up of negative space, and the bold all-capitalized "Hitler" appears as a banner being carried by the figures in a march. Schweitzer later achieved his greatest success with posters that showed idealized paramilitary "stormtroopers," and in 1937 Goebbels appointed him the director of the Hilfwerk fur Deutsche Bildende Kunst, an administrative body.

The graphic designer known by the single name Leonid produced a poster in 1936 that stated All of Germany Listens to the Leader with the Peoples Receiver (fig. 7.37). Scholars often cite this image as evidence of the centralized control of the press and mass media that was such a fundamental pan of Nazi ideology, and which contrasted with the commercial media dominant in the rest of Europe. This image creates an odd juxtaposition in that it combines a truly modern element, the photomontage, with fraktur lettering. (Nazi typography is discussed below.) According to modern design principles, nothing clashes more than a mix of ornamental script with a photo. Leonid attempts to have it both ways, referencing the modern technology of the radio by putting it into the context of traditional German nationalism.

The graphic work of Richard Klein (1890-1967) is exemplary of one specific txend in Nazi design: the embiace of classical idealism. Hitler himself greatly favored this ancient imperial style, and it was employed prominently in government buildings designed by Albert Speer (1905-1981). Klein's poster for the "Great German Art Exhibition" held in 1937 and 1938 displays centered lettering that is intended to remind the viewer of the carved inscriptions on monuments of the ancient Roman Empire (fig. 738). The emblem above the text is made up of swastika, eagle, torch, and helmeted allegory—a motley assortment of items, most with an imperial pedigree. Klein's classical design has been influenced by Art Deco style, particularly in the smooth geometric shapes of the figure's head.

Most Nazi propaganda posters used traditional illustration combined with personal appeals to the viewer. The image shown here reads, "Hitler constructs, help him by buying German goods." It features a typical "Aryan" idealized man working with his hands (fig. 7.39). The image suggests a return to German tradition in that there is no sign of modern life in the poster, a theme reinforced by the fraktur lettering and the crude construction techniques shown in the image. This poster illustrates the Nazi commitment to Heimatschutz, the "preservation of regional tradition," through which the party set itself up as the heroic protector of German identity in the face of corrupt, urban-based, universal concepts such as those promoted at the Bauhaus.

While most of the designers employed by the Nazis had never been involved in modern design movements, one, Ludwig Hohlwein, had established himself in the early 1900s as an inno­vative artist. A pioneer of the Sacbplakat style, one of the first modern design movements, Hohlwein continued to employ it on behalf of his new masters. The poster shown here publicizes a girls' sports festival held in 1934 (fig. 7.40). Hohlwein has posed the figure of a young athlete so that her limbs replicate the shape of the swastika on the flag behind her, while the color of her shorts reinforces the connection. The flat areas of color in her torso as well as the lack of a horizon line and cropping all hark back to the roots of Sachpiakat in Japanese woodblock prints.

     Some government-sponsored publications, such as Deutschland Ausstellung, the catalog for an exhibition celebrating German culture under the Nazi regime, were produced in an up-to-date Constructivist style. Herbert Bayer, who worked in Berlin in private practice during the 1930s, was the designer of the catalog shown here, which surveyed radio broadcasting in Berlin, the new capital city under the Nazis (fig. 7.41). The roman type at the top forms a solid block of text, while the illustration is suggestive of the elegant Art Deco work of Cassandre. This publication was clearly aimed at a sophisticated urban audience, not inspired by Heimatschutz, one to whom conventional illustration would have looked retrograde. The previous four examples—one classical, one conventional illustration, one Sachpiakat, and one modern— are indicative of the precarious balancing act of the Nazi regime as it selectively, and pragmatically, mixed styles and ideologies to reach different constituencies.

7.34 Anonymous, Poster and Crowd, Germany, 1932 Photograph.

7.35 Hans Schweitzer, Unsere letzte Hoffnung: Hitler
(Our Last Hope: Hitler), 1932. Poster

7.38 Richard Klein,
Grosse Deutsche Kunstaussteliung
(Great German Art Exhibition),
1938. Poster

7.41 Herbert Bayer, Deutschland Ausstellung
(German Exhibition), 1936.

"Degenerate Art"

As early as 1933, the Nazis had appropriated the scientific term "degenerate," meaning "to have declined to a subnormal state," as part of its attack on modern art. The most notorious use of the term "degenerate" occurred in 1937, when the government organ­ized an enormous show of so-called Entartete Kunst ("degenerate art"). This exhibition was conceived of as a broad indictment of all forms of modern an and design, including just about everything that has been covered in the previous few chapters: Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Purism, De Stijl, Art Deco, and Constructivism. Organized by Adolf Ziegler and Schweitzer, the "Entartete Kunst" exhibition opened in July 1937 in Munich; it consisted of a hastily assembled survey of modern art from German public collections (fig. 7.42). The art works were installed in a cavernous space broken up by temporary partitions. The works were deliberately displayed in a helter-skelter fashion, mixing disparate trends in the an of the twentieth century. The walls of the show were festooned with slogans decrying the sup­posed "degenerate" character of the an and anists who made it. For example, a number of works by Kandinsky were juxtaposed with the words "Crazy at any price," while additional text noted that the anist was a "teacher at the Communist Bauhaus at Dessau until 1933."

     The Entartete Kunst catalog also displays an attempt by the Nazis to distort the tradition of modern art. The cover shows a full-bleed photo of an Expressionist sculpture, The New Man (1912), by Otto Frcundlich (1878-1943), in extreme close-up (fig. 7.43). One of the main themes of the exhibition was that Expressionist distortions of form were the result of diseased, "unGerman," and, of course, "Jewish" art practices. The typography on the cover is an artful mix of letters. The top spells out the word "Entartete" with neutral type, a bold, condensed roman. Below the sculpture, the word "'Kunst'" appears to be scribbled on to a piece of paper; the word means "art" and was placed in quotation marks in order to question whether the works are indeed art. The letters feature the spiky, angular forms seen in Expressionist graphics. Farther down, the word "Ausstellungsfuhrer," meaning "exhibition guide," is composed in a new type of fraktur. Finally, the price is displayed in plain sans serif letters at the bottom. All these different type styles are used in order to reinforce the different message carried by each word or phrase. As opposed to a unified design, the artists chose to treat each bit of text as a discrete unit; of course, the overall chaotic effect was also intended to replicate the supposed irrational disorder of modern art.

Most of the posters produced to publicize the 1937 show and its smaller-scale predecessors mined the Expressionist vein featured on the cover of the guide. However, one poster from 1936 was created in a Constructivist style in order to mock the practices of modern design pursued at the Bauhaus (fig. 7.44). The text refers to the exhibition as featuring work that is both "Bolshevik" and "Jewish," two terms often applied to progressive modern artists regardless of their political sympathies or religious identity. Naturally, the poster makes use of geometric abstraction and the familiar red and black of Constructivism without any attention to compositional balance or aesthetic achievement. Compare this last work with Klein's poster for the "Great German Art Exhibition"; the latter was installed in a new classically inspired building in 1937 and was intended to serve as a foil to "Entartete Kunst." However, the juxtaposition of these two exhibitions generally failed in the attempt to convince the German people that art and design under the Nazis had reached new heights of aesthetic achievement.

7.42 Anonymous, Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) Exhibition, 1937.

Typography under the Nazis

The ongoing debate in Germany over the appropriateness of roman versus fraktur lettering also gained new impetus under the Nazis. While this debate had long been rife with political over­tones, it is notable that a majority of the German public probably did not care one way or another. While in The New Typography Tschichold had asserted that fraktur was a dangerously nationalist form of lettering, many progressive typographers before 1933 had worked in both styles without asserting a specific political view­point. Likewise, the Constructivist designer of Futura, Paul Rcnner, sometimes produced texts using fraktur. While Renner worked briefly for the Nazi government, and was head of design for an international exhibition in Milan, his 1933 article "Kulturbolschewismus?" ("Cultural Bolshevism?") led to his arrest. In this article, Renner challenged the Nazi claim that modern, urban culture was somehow "Bolshevik," a theme often repeated in government publications. The Nazis were able to gain considerable support from German industrialists by invoking the specter of Communism and suggesting that private enterprises were in danger of being made into communal property. Despite his opposition to Nazi policies, Renner was one of the only modern designers who never fled Germany.

    After the Nazis seized power, they quickly instituted a policy whereby all official government publications had to be printed in fraktur. Because they considered blackletter script to convey a strictly German national identity, children's textbooks and curric­ula were overhauled to stress this new national style. While this policy was never totally implemented, and exceptions were made for the faux classicism exemplified by Klein's work, the overt use of either seriffed lettering or sans serif forms as well as the geo­metric principles of the New Typography became quite rare. Under this state ideology, the New Typography became known as Schriftentartung ("degenerate writing"), a corollary to the concept of Entartete Kunst. The Nazis were obsessed with the idea of cul­tural decline, which they believed they would forestall through the implementation of conservative typographic principles. Significantly, the strict cultural policies of the Nazi government were not always enforced to the letter, and plentiful examples of sans serif type and ranged left designs exist from this period.

    While there were already a number of useful fraktur scripts in circulation in the 1930s, the Nazis oversaw the creation of a num­ber of new alphabets, most with staunchly ideological names such as Deutschland or National (fig. 7.45). These 1930s' scripts are referred to by typographers with some irony as Schaftstiefelgrotesk, which means roughly "jackboot grotesques." The stylistic reference in the name points to the schematic shapes of many of the letters in these new alphabets, which tended to favor long black vertical elements reminiscent of the long black boots worn by Nazi paramilitary forces. Undoubtedly unbeknown to the Nazi patrons of the Schaftstiefelgrotesk  forms, they actually represent a hybrid type of blackletter that merges the fraktur tradition with some of the abstract geometric principles of contemporary sans serif.

    In a stunning reversal to this policy that often goes unre­marked today, in 1941 the Nazis abruptly instituted a total elimination of fraktur in favor of roman type. The reason for this shift was not immediately clear, as the official communique made use of the Nazi's catch-all theme of the "Jewishness" of fraktur (fig. 7.46). While no scholar would attempt to explain Nazi policy in entirely rational, human terms, the notion that blackletter script represents a tradition of Judenletter (literally "Jewish letters") is m especially bizarre fabrication even for a regime led by anti-Semitic monsters. The historian Hans Peter Willberg has pointed out that the shift to roman probably represents the German government's belief in 1941, the year of its greatest military successes in the Second World War, that it would inevitably dominate the entire globe. Taking a page from the Bauhaus ideology of univer-salism, it probably seemed apropos for the regime to adopt a more "global" style of roman typography. In addition, civilians in many countries under German occupation were unable to read fraktur. Ironically, this late shift in style went largely unrecognized by later generations, and in the postwar years fraktur was hopelessly tainted by its perceived function as "Nazi writing."

7.45 Anonymous, Deutschland Typeface, 1934.

7.46 M. Bormann, A Letter Against Fraktur, 1941.

see also:

John Heartfield

John Heartfield's Photomontages
 

An interesting counterpoint to Nazi propaganda emerged in the case of John Heartfield, a Berlin Dada artist who used photomontage to subvert the propaganda images of the Third Reich. Heartfield had joined Berlin Club Dada in 1918 following his discharge from the German military. Along with Hannah Hoch, Raoul Hausmann, and George Grosz, Heartfield endeavored to make some of the first Dada photomontages at this time. He also enthusiastically embraced the German Communist Party, with which he remained involved well into the 1930s.

Heartficld's 1932 photomontage Adolf the Superman: Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk  was created as a political poster for use in the 1932 elections (fig. 7.47). Its artful combination of a photo of Hitler, an X-rayed torso, and a cascade of gold coins was used to undermine the politician's vaunted public speaking ability through caricature. By calling attention to the wealthy industrial­ists who bankrolled the Nazi party, Heartfield sought to discredit the idea of the Nazis as representative of everyday working people—an idea shown in Schweitzer's poster from the same election (see fig. 7.35).

After working for a number of publications, in 1930 Heartfield joined the staff of the Communistinclined Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ), or "Worker's Illustrated Newspaper," for which he made some of his most daring photomontages. A February 1935 cover for AIZ, captioned at the top "Nazis Playing with Fire," used montage to depict the Nazi Hermann Goering (1893-1946) as a crazed arsonist (fig. 7.48). Goering is shown using a flaming torch to set fire to the Earth, a reference to the second anniversary of the notorious Reichstag fire of 1933. Goering was a Nazi deputy and President of the Reichstag in 1933, and played a significant role in the Nazi crackdown following the fire. Most historians believe that the fire was started by the Nazis themselves in order to provide a pretext to round up, imprison, and kill a number of their political enemies in what would become the first of many extrajudicial actions by the government. Soon after Hitler consolidated his power in 1933, Heartfield fled to Czechoslovakia and eventually settled in Britain. Heartfield's image of Goering as a violent monster is actually not too far off the mark, as in 1941 Goering initiated the plan for the complete elimination of European Jewry now known as the Holocaust.

The Second World War

The Second World War began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, triggering that country's defensive alliance with France and Great Britain. Prior to the invasion of Poland, Britain and France had sought to appease Hitler in the vain hope of avoiding armed conflict. The first two years of the war saw a series of spectacular successes by the German military, which came to control most of continental Europe. By 1941, swelled by the army's achievements and con­vinced of Germany's inevitable global domination, Hitler commenced "Operation Barbarossa," opening a second, Eastern front against his former ally Russia. In December of that year the United States joined the Allied cause, having previously provided Britain with a lifeline of military supplies. During 1942, the Nazis established the "final solution" as secret state policy, committing substantial resources to the mass murder and elimination of all European Jews. The two European fronts, Western and Eastern, eventually proved impossible for Germany to sustain, and Nazi forces suffered their first major defeat against Russia in 1943 at Stalingrad. After that loss, Germany was gradually overcome by the Allies, and ultimately surrendered after Hitler's suicide in his bunker on May 7,1945. The survey of Second World War propaganda posters here is not as detailed as the section on those of the First World War, and is intended solely to point out new trends during the second conflict; it should be noted that most propaganda of the second conflict repeated techniques and themes from the first.

Germany

When the Second World War began in 1939, the German government continued its substantial output of propaganda. The Nazis favored the new media of radio and newsreel, but still relied on posters as well. Chapter 3 made note of Hitler's disdain for Germany's emotionally flat propaganda posters from the First World War and his admiration for the British effort; before and during the Second World War Nazi poster artists used emotionally laden themes of guilt that British designers had deployed over two decades earlier.

While propaganda artists worked in a variety of styles, illustration was the mainstay of the German war poster. Early in 1939, Goebbels initiated a new poster campaign called the "Message of the Week." The resulting images were among the most emotion­ally manipulative produced during the war. For example, a poster from September 19 that year, produced just two weeks after the invasion of Poland, juxtaposes a photograph of dead civilians with a photo of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940), and the slogan "Chamberlain's Work!" (fig. 7.49). The reference is to the murder of a group of German civilians by Polish partisans; the poster echoes the ridiculous Nazi claim that the attack was planned by the British. In fact, the Nazis had conceived the attack in order to provide a pretext for their invasion. The photo of the bodies of what are clearly civilians combined with the blood-red, dripping letters create a prime example of an "atrocity" image intended to inflame public opinion.

Ludwig Hohlwein continued to serve the Nazi cause during the war, producing a number of posters in his familiar Sachplakat style. An example from 1942 calls for German civilians to obey the blackout rules established to hinder allied bombing campaigns (fig. 7.50). The elegant skyline is formed from a series of overlap­ping flat blue fields, punctuated by the bright yellow windows.

    Boxes for text add energy to the image in that they seem to have been hurled in the air by an explosion. The scripted letters read, "Can you be responsible for this? You are helping the enemy!" This poster sounds the note of betrayal that Hitler had first invoked following the First World War, in which he argued that German civilians had treacherously undermined the war effort.

7.49 Anonymous, Chamberlain's Work!, 1939. Poster.
Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, CA. Poster Collection.

7.50 Ludwig Hohlwein, Blackout, 1942. Poster.
Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University,
CA. Poster Collection.

Britain

In a telling contrast to German propaganda, British designers tended to tone down their posters during the Second World War, as there had been substantial criticism by English pundits of the extremely manipulative nature of First World War posters. Most of the new British posters returned to familiar themes of heroism and adventure (fig. 7.51), without resorting to explicit themes of guilt, as in the first war's Daddy What did you do during the Great War? In this example the text attempts to lift morale on the home front through a wholly positive message that is reinforced by the image of soaring Spitfires. In addition, there was a much more widespread use of photography in posters during the Second World War.

    The British poster captioned "Never was so much owed by so many to so few" celebrated the heroism of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Battle of Britain, when the RAF managed to hold German forces at bay during the summer of 1940 (fig. 7.52). By maintaining air superiority, Britain was able to forestall Hitler's planned invasion of the isles indefinitely. The text of a famous quote about the battle, spoken by Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) in a speech in the House of Commons on August 20,1940, appears to float in the sky on top of a full-bleed photograph (actually a photomontage) of British pilots. The white lettering is placed so that it looks like "skywriting" on the blue sky. The all-capital sans serif lettering emphasizes Churchill's inspiring words while seamlessly meshing with the modern pho­tographic image. The pilots are framed so that they seem to look into the distance over the head of the viewer, a vantage point seen previously in El Lisskzky's Russian exhibition poster of 1928 (see fig. 5.42) as well as Lester Beall's poster for the US Department of Agriculture (see fig. 7.23).
 

Russia and France

After the German invasion of Russia in 1941, artists in that country ramped up their production of propaganda posters. There is some irony in that, under Josef Stalin, the Constructivist style that the Nazis claimed exemplified "Bolshevism" had been completely suppressed in the Soviet Union itself. In fact, Stalin insisted on the same type of idealized naturalism in the arts that Hitler admired; for both countries it was imperative that pro-govern­ment propaganda be intelligible to the broadest number of people. For these reasons, Russian posters from the Second World War use the techniques of illustration combined with strong emotional appeals. The example shown here, Our Hope is in You, Red Warrior!, shows a tearful young woman in a German prison camp (fig. 7.53). In the background, a Nazi soldier is shooting through the barbed wire at helpless civilians. After the invasion, millions of Russians had been trapped behind the advancing German forces.

In contrast to German and Russian realism, a French poster from 1944 is in line with Art Deco style. This poster celebrates the courage of the "Legion of French Volunteers" who fought the Nazi occupation of France (fig. 7.54). The sleek, geometrically stylized wedge of the soldier's body rises up at an angle like the prow of a ship, a subject seen in so many Art Deco travel posters. Invoking the machine aesthetic, the figure's body has the same smooth texture as the steel of his machine gun.

7.53 Ivanov and Burova, Our Hope Is in You, Red Warrior!, 1943. Poster.
Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, CA. Poster Collection.

7.54 Anonymous, Legion of French Volunteers, 1944. Poster.
Hoover Institution Archives. Stanford University, CA. Poster Collection.

The United States

In the United States, the Second World War witnessed a continuation of the Art Deco styles made popular by the Federal Art Project, a trend that was reinforced by the assistance of several European expatriate artists, such as the French graphic designer Jean Carlu. Carlu's poster Production: America's Answer! was created in response to a contest organized by the Museum of Modern Art in April of 1941 (fig. 7.56). Later printed by the Office of Emergency Management, the image shows a gloved hand turning a hexagonal nut that also forms the letter "O." While the sleek machine forms are pure Art Deco, the rather plain-looking letter­ing lacks the stylish shapes typical of the style. Carlu uses this nondescript lettering in order to convey the simple, unadorned strength of American industry in a manner that is visually striking without appearing affected and elitist. Cognizant that the poster was intended for the walls of factory lunch rooms, Carlu found just the right balance of artifice and naturalism.

   Charles Coiner, who served as an art director for the Office of Emergency Management during the war, oversaw the production of Carlu's poster. He also worked in the field of information design, which had taken on a new urgency because of the need to train millions of unskilled soldiers in the use of complex weaponry. Coiner's most famous foray into information design was a set of symbols for the Citizens' Defense Corps which were to be used if the United States itself was invaded (fig. 7.57). The symbols made use of simple iconic drawings each of which indi­cated a different role, such as fireman or policeman. Anticipating later integrated information design systems, Coiner's work used "universal" geometric shapes such as the triangle.

    During the war years, traditional realistic representation also thrived, as iconic figures such as "Uncle Sam" were rolled out again, matched now with "Rosie the Riveter," a figure that personified the millions of American women who worked in factories in support of war production. The legend of Rosie arose partly out of the verses of a popular song written in 1943 by Redd Evans and John Loeb:

All the day long,

Whether rain or shine,

She's a part of the assembly line.

She's making history,

Working for victory,

Rosie the Riveter.

But it was not until the famed illustrator Norman Rockwell featured "Rosie" on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in May 1943 that the character became well known. Because Rockwell's work was copyrighted, the poster captioned We Can Do It!). Howard Miller, an illustrator for the Westinghouse Corporation, became the most recognizable image of "Rosie" (fig. 7.55). Miller's image was widely accepted as representing "Rosie" even though it was an anachronism, having predated the song by almost a year. It is interesting to compare the muscular, commanding figure of "Rosie" with the lithe, feminine "Christy Girls" of the First World War. While the Christy Girls were intended to appeal seductively to an audience of men, the image of Rosic was used to encourage thousands of women to join the war effort.

7.55 J. Howard Miller, We Can Do It!, 1942, Poster.
Photolithograph. National Archives, Washington, DC.

7.56 Jean Carlu, America's Answer' Production, 1942  Poster Offset lithograph.
Museum of Modern Art, New York.

7.57 Charles Coiner, Citizens' Defense Corps Symbols, 1942. Collection of Merril C Berman.

Norman Rockwell

While American propaganda posters of the 1940s toned down the "atrocity" themes, like their British counterparts, many images sought to contrast American society with that of Nazi Germany. Perhaps the greatest examples of this theme were the images of the "Four Freedoms," produced by Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), based on a speech by Franklin Roosevelt. On January 6, 1941, President Roosevelt spoke before Congress, implicitly decrying the lack of civil rights in Germany. He listed "four freedoms." "The first is freedom of speech and expression— everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want... The fourth is freedom from fear."

Rockwell, America's most renowned illustrator at the time, made four original paintings for the Saturday Evening Post based on the speech. Later, these illustrations were turned into posters advertising war bonds. The Freedom of Speech poster features a working man who looks suspiciously like former President Abraham Lincoln at a town meeting (fig. 7.58). Rockwell's ideal­ized portrayals of American life earned him a popular following, although progressive artists disdained his representational style.

In many ways, the Second World War marked the end of an era in American graphic design, as realistic illustrations such as Rockwell's, which had dominated American graphic media for decades, had one final hurrah. After the war, the modern abstract styles championed by Conde Nast and the Museum of Modern Art came to dominate the mass media. One reason for this development was that idealized naturalism became tainted in many people's minds by its association with the manipulative propaganda of Nazi Germany.

7.58 Norman Rockwell, Save Freedom of Speech, 1943. Poster. Color lithograph.