U.S. PROPAGANDA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR FDR created the U.S. Office of War Information in June 1942, which soon published a Manual for the Motion Picture Industry: “Civilians must have the war brought home to them. Every individual must be made to see the immediacy of the danger to him…. He must be made to understand that he is an integral part of the war front, and that if he loses the war, he loses everything.” War propaganda focused on those victims of Hitler and Tojo with whom most Americans could identify. The OWI did combat prejudice against against African- Americans and women. The OWI made no effort to differentiate between Nazis and “ordinary Germans,” and depictions of the Japanese were blatantly racist….

“Civilians must have the war brought home to them.” (Posters by the U.S. Treasury and General Motors)

To emphasize the sufferings of Jews in Europe did not fit with U.S. strategy

U.S. propaganda did not distinguish between “Prussian militarism” and Nazism

Americans hated the Japanese the most….

FREE LABOR WILL WIN (FDR relied on the cooperation of the AFL-CIO)

The U.S. focused on the enslavement of European workers

“This World Cannot Exist Half Slave and Half Free” (1942)

“This is Nazi brutality” (in memory of Lidice, June 1942)

Dorie Miller: The mess orderly who won the Navy Cross at Pearl Harbor

In the First World War, only 42,000 of 200,000 African American troops were allowed into combat units, under white officers Soldiers from the segregated 93 rd U.S. division fight in May 1918 with French equipment

Joe Louis: “We’re on God’s side.” (He had knocked out Max Schmeling in one round in 1938.)

Rosie the Riveter and the more conventional Stenographer

“Eager for victory, Woman does manly service in Germany’s arms factories” (March 1940) Woman as Air Raid Warden

John Falter’s recruitment series for the WAVES, 1943/44

The emotional benefits of service

THE MATERIAL BENEFITS OF SERVICE: By 1944 there were 100,000 WACS & 86,000 WAVES

Norman Rockwell, The Four Freedoms: Freedom of Speech (to illustrate FDR’s speech to Congress on January 6, 1941)

Freedom of Worship

Freedom from Want

Freedom from Fear

POSTERS PUBLISHED BY THE U.S. OFFICE FOR FACTS AND FIGURES, 1942

OWI poster, 1943: By now the wartime alliance bore the name of the postwar organization agreed to at the Teheran Conference