Ww2 Propaganda Analysis

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During World War II, propaganda played a key role in gaining support for the war effort. This World War II era poster is a good example of that role. It shows a black swastika overtaking three stereotypically 1940’s-American children with the subhead “Buy War Bonds” (Smith). The use of propaganda tactics in this WWII poster reveals multiple ways to manipulate the American public to buy war bonds. The poster goes beyond persuasion, which Jowlett and O’Donnel say influences others and contains a message, point of view, or desired behavior for the recipient to adopt in a voluntary fashion (32). The poster uses persuasion tactics, but in such a way that manipulates the public into the frame of mind the propagandist intends. Jowlett and O’Donnell…show more content…
In a transfer device, an association is created between good or bad feelings and an object. The poster shows a dark swastika looming over the American children (Smith). In this case, the public’s bad feelings are directed towards the swastika overtaking the children. Since the swastika is the symbol of Nazi Germany, Americans would strongly associate the fear they felt when the dark swastika appears to took over the kids with Nazi Germany. Americans who saw the poster would become scared of Nazi Germany taking over the country and doing who knows what to their children. The poster deliberately plays on the public’s fear for their own children to scare them into buying war bonds. This tactic shows propaganda because it attempts to manipulate the public’s emotions and change their behavior by lending the government money. The poster also uses a second propaganda tactic, plain folks. The tactic is designed to appeal to normal people who lead a normal life. The poster shows normal American children, or at least normal in the 1940’s media. The kids look white, freckled, adorable, and play with stereotypical toys. When parents looked at the posters, they could see the kids as their own kids, and themselves as the parents of the children in the poster. It would be easy manipulate parents into thinking that their children were about to be bombed because the kids looked just like the kids in the poster. The poster better connects the everyday person to what is happening abroad and hits close to home. By threatening parents with the thought of their children dying, the poster manipulates parents into thinking of their children dying under Nazi fire. It forces parents to worry about every little thing that they could be doing to save their children. When the poster associates war bonds with saving their children, then the parents will buy war
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