The appeal to fight for King and Country was only one way to swell the ranks. Guilt and shame were equally persuasive recruiting sergeants, and the evolution of wartime posters offers a fascinating insight into Edwardian male psychology.
“Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?” a little girl asks, sitting on her father’s knee in Savile Lumley’s famous poster. The father wears the thousand-mile stare of the morally stricken. “Women of Britain Say – Go!’” declares another poster, showing two women proudly watching their menfolk march away. Today, we tend to see war in terms of morality and politics; in 1914, it was also framed as an issue of masculinity. The message was clear: a man who would not fight was only half a man. Here, too, was a sly sexual nudge: British women love a man in uniform, and would shun the coward. The men in khaki could expect more than just a wave from the women at the window when they came home heroes.
One of the cleverest and most manipulative posters from the First World War showed a young civilian in a flat cap reaching across the Channel to shake hands with his doppelgänger in uniform, standing astride the battlefields of northern France and Belgium. “Come Lad, Slip Across and Help.” It evokes camaraderie, and Britain’s proximity to the battle: the word slip implies just how easy it would be to join the battle (and by implication how easy it is to leave it), while the lad so addressed is, of course, not yet a man. It was inspired propaganda, beguiling, simple and entirely deceptive.
Many wartime posters deployed advertising techniques then in their infancy. Companies found it was possible (and profitable) to sell patriotism, propaganda and their products all at the same time. War may be hell, but soup helps: “Keep on Sending Me Oxo,” says the man at the front. “When I returned to my billet very cold & wet… You can guess the first thing I did was to make a cup of Oxo.”
To modern eyes, there is something painfully naive in some of the wartime images: “Come & Join This Happy Throng Off to the Front.” Knowing the truth about the carnage of the First World War, it is hard to stomach images suggesting that war is a lark, a way to see the world at the state’s expense while bashing the Boche. “Travel All Over the World with the Machine Gun Corps.”
But the Great War posters also showed a darker world. Frank Brangwyn’s grim poster of a Tommy bayoneting an enemy soldier (“Put Strength in the Final Blow: Buy War Bonds”) caused deep offence in both Britain and Germany. The Kaiser himself is said to have put a price on Brangwyn’s head after seeing the image.
Posters also sought to mould civilian behaviour, whether by encouraging the purchase of war bonds, increasing pressure to enlist, or encouraging the public to eat less bread to ensure sufficient nourishment for the troops. Women were specifically targeted: “Joan of Arc Saved France, Women of Britain Save Your Country.”
All the combatant sides in the First World War devoted huge resources to war posters, the cheapest and most effective form of propaganda. Often these struck similar themes – patriotism, comradeship and calls for the public to contribute to the struggle – but the images of national heroism are also strikingly different: while the British Tommy is consistently portrayed as a chirpy chap, the French soldier (or poilu, meaning ‘hairy one’) is a whiskery peasant, and the German fighter a grim-faced, Gothic man of steel.
The Second World War once again saw the communications and advertising industry recruited to the cause. Drawing on pre-war advances in commercial design, some of the posters incorporated Art Deco and abstract styles. Some are genuine works of art.
By 1939, the task of the advertisers and graphic designers had expanded from merely drawing more men into the fight: henceforth posters would be used to reassure the public, build patriotism, ensure correct wartime behaviour and demonise the enemy.
In 1942, J. B . Nicholas, of the British Advertising Service, acknowledged the sheer aggressive power of the medium when he wrote that posters “are a waste of paper unless they kill Germans”.
If the posters of the first war were intended primarily to send more men to the Western Front, the poster campaigns of the second were aimed principally at the home front. One campaign depicted an idyllic view of Britain at peace, a place of family picnics, bucolic country pubs and church spires. This was the world that Nazism would destroy, and that Britain must defend. “Your Britain: Fight for It Now”, the posters ordered.
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