Inspired by this thread, in which some discussion came up re: anti-Japanese propaganda posters like these.
Question:
Was analogous anti-American propaganda distributed in Germany and Japan? What were their stereotypical caricatures of American appearance/behavior like?
Well, I recall the old German “Liberators” poster, and I know they did plenty of racist anti-Jewish/Russian ones.
As for the Japanese, the only thing I can remember seeing from them (in a documentary, awhile back) was a close-quarters fighting manual that depicted Americans as huge and lumbering, and easily outmaneuvered. But the actual figures were clinically bland, stick-figureish.
Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors from 1945 has some goofy caricatures of some British officers, including a fairly dead-on one of General Percival, but they’re not especially grotesque. At least not to me, and by the standards of animation at the time.
Holy crap, that poster was awesome! I have to give them credit for including so many more details than US propaganda posters ever did.
At first glance, I assumed from the “Liberators” title that this poster was made after the end of the war to decry the perception of the US forces as heavenly goodness incarnate. But the date at bottom left is August 1944. What’s the history of this poster?
Moreover, what does the sentence on the small sign at the bottom say?
“de U.S.A. zullen de Europeesche Kultuur van den andergang redden”
I had assumed it was German, but freetranslation.com doesn’t understand any of it that way. If I select Dutch, it gets a few words: “The USA will save the Europeesche myriad of den andergang.” I’m guessing it’s something like “The USA will save all the other countries in Europe,” with implicit bitterness about the fact that the US pretty much razed Germany. But why would this have been written in Dutch instead of German? (or is it not really Dutch?)
Google Translate, from Dutch and then some reordering, suggests “The USA will save European culture in another way.”
Looks to me as if Nazi propaganda was more concerned with emphasising the ‘master race’, and German superiority, than demonising the opposition.
Here’s an Italian propaganda poster showing Churchill and FDR as gangsters: http://mouseridingox.lupous.net/nationslash/propaganda02.jpg
And a Japanese one with Winston and Franklin as ugly octopi: http://www.americainwwii.com/images/2006/japans-pacific-blitz/japan-propaganda-pacific-roosevelt.jpg
A creepy Japanese pro-Axis kids’ poster: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/1938_Naka_yoshi_sangoku.jpg
A Japanese anti-British poster intended, I guess, to appeal to impoverished Indians’ hatred of a plump Churchill: http://www.seasite.niu.edu/crossroads/aneher/toon_b.jpg
This is somewhat similar: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Japanese_propaganda_leaflet_India.jpg
And here’s an article with links to many more: http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/g/j/gjs4/textbooks/172/portrayals.htm
Halfway down this page there is a Japanese WWII poster that shows caricatures of American sailors. That’s the only generic caricature (i.e. not of a specific American leader/politician) that I could find on the internet.
US, British, and Soviet flags with crude caricature of a Jewish businessman.
German propeganda often gave rat like features to Jewish people. Beady eyes, pointy nose. Ugly portrayals.
That was a fantastic article, with many examples from the US and Japan and a lot of insightful analysis. Thank you.
It’s probably just German written phonetically, as if spoken by an American trying to say:
“die U.S.A sollen die Europäische Kultur von den Untergang retten”, that is, “the USA will save the European culture from the downfall”
A German-(or Vichy-) made video, featuring Popeye and Mickey Mouse as Allied bomber pilots, was made for French audiences. It made the rounds on Facebook a few months ago
I remember an Italian poster showing a drunk, blubber-lipped Black GI walking off with the Venus de Milo under his arm, with amorous intent. I haven’t seen it in years and forget the details of it, though.
So the Nazis thought the Klan was a Jewish puppet organization?:dubious:
If you have the time for a read, John Dower’s War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War is still an excellent work on the subject of American and Japanese attitudes towards each other during the war. If you search inside the book and go all the way to the very bottom there are 11 Japanese propaganda posters along with notes explaining them in the pages available for viewing online. The Americans and British are often portrayed having demonic characteristics, as noted in the book:
Yeah, the Nazis were a little oblivious to the contradictions in their own ideology. They thought the International Banking Conspiracy and the Global Communist Movement were both branches of the same Jewish conspiracy.
What’s up with the robotic leg tagged “world’s most beautiful leg” ?
(besides that, I’m tickled that this poster is on the fence re: whether America is bad because it has the KKK going around hanging folks, or because it has black people. Doublebad !)
I think that’s the part I like the best—that complete, crass hypocrisy (or maybe doublethink), captured in black and white (no pun intended), in a big cartoony illustration. 
Nazis aren’t known for subtlety, though. Or much introspection.
Well, actually, they were branches of the same Conspiracy, as was Naziism.
This poster was done by a Norwegian cartoonist of German ancestry, Harald Damsleth, who churned out hundreds of propaganda posters for Germany during their occupation of Norway. Kultur-Terror seems to have gotten its widest exposure from inclusion in Storm, a magazine for Dutch SS volunteers. Damsleth was convicted of treason and did two years hard labor after the war.
The main theme of the poster seems to be that, whatever European culture the US doesn’t destroy with our incessant bombing campaigns, we would steamroll over it with the influence of our degenerate culture if we won the war. Recall this was a couple months after D-Day so the Allies were already back on the continent on the western front.
I’m no historian and would have flubbed dates for battles and control of the Netherlands if I had gotten into them. I just had such a reaction to this poster the first time that I saw it that I had to know where it came from. The way the Nazi sympathizer lumps in jazz and beauty pageants as if they’re as negative parts of American history as the Klan makes me want to go over the pond and lay him out myself.
The Nazi’s were actually delusional enough to believe that the American’s and British would join them as members of the “Master Race”.
The Nazi’s believed that the Germanic people were genetically and culturally superior to the other races (especially the Slavic and Jewish people :smack:), and considered the British and Anglo-Americans to be part the greater Germanic people. They were impressed with the work ethics and productivity of both nations, and considered war against them to be an unfortunate step to building a better race.
Due to this perverse admiration, I don’t believe there was anti-American or anti-British propaganda in Germany analogous to the anti-German/Nazi propaganda in the US and Britain. The US and Britain were nations to be welcomed with open arms, unlike the nations that were to be exterminated that were targeted with propaganda.
One of Hitler’s biggest beefs with America (other than it being run by capitalist Jew bankers) was its ‘negro-influenced debauchery’, or words to that effect. He felt that American film & music was degenerate, and these two things were probably the biggest images of US culture that the common German citizen was aware of. Years ago I saw a documentary that included a clip from a Nazi propaganda film showing young American men & women dancing to Jazz and Swing in the 30s being performed by black musicians. In fact the German narrator constantly referred to the music as “Niggerjazz” as though that was the official German word for it!
