Propaganda can be traced all the way back to 1622 during Roman Catholic times. Today it can be seen in all forms of media, however that is not completely the case.According to the dictionary the official definition of propaganda states as following.
prop·a·gan·danouninformation, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.People when asked about Propaganda people will usually give negative answers regarding it, not far from the truth. Propaganda is generally biased information revolving around a whole story with information being heavily misleading.As stated previously propaganda has been used throughout times. The main purpose of it is to affect our emotions, whether being for the better or the worst. To change our thoughts and even our ways to the one of the propagandist.
It can be Governmental, Political and Corporate.This leading us to a time period where Heavy propaganda was everywhere. WW2 was a dark period in history.More or less in the U.S propaganda was everywhere, the war in Europe was taxing and help was needed severely. A very important reason why WW2 was so important was due to propaganda and the fact that is promoted a large percentage of industry as well as economic stability.Almost everyone from their countries that were participating in the war participated in some way because of propaganda. Nationalism was heavily used in this time period.
The methods that the American Government used in order to influence their people, worked quite effectively. The information used to create their propaganda was quite immoral most of the time. That however didn’t stop from influencing people in the war despite it.
WW2 posters were used for a total of 2 main reasons. To supplicate sympathy from the public.They needed money to finance a war they could not afford, and what better way than to get support than from the public.Out of all the posters that invoked sympathy, the “Alliance” poster was the most influential. The poster depicted the U.S flag along with the Allied flags ( Canada, UK, France,ect.) drawn to show that the Allied powers had the bigger advantage and power to defeat the lesser enemy ( The Axis Powers).
As for the 2nd type of poster the ” Victory” poster, depicts the US flag as well as a soldier in uniform. This was meant to be drawn in a very specific way in order to give a feeling of patriotism. The poster as well was usually followed with written words along the lines of ” America, now and always”.
Along the lines these posters as well were usually associated with Uncle Sam , The American Eagle as well as stars and stripes ( National US Symbols).Advertising was very heavy and since technology was not as advanced back in the 1940’s. A very popular way of getting word around was either via. Newspaper or posters, However the poster method was more popular and effective in order to get information to the public. This leads to the way the poster were made specifically made to catch the attention of people. In order to have that effect certain colors were used that were bold and contrasting in a way. As stated previously the colors that represent the US are red, blue and white, as a result these colors would be used to represent patriotism.As a result Darker colors being browns and blacks were represented to be the enemy( Axis Powers).