Favorite Over The Top Propaganda in History

What I find striking in their propaganda (the anti-China stuff does seem to me to be pretty racially loaded, though) is how similar the depictions of Roosevelt are to the German depictions. The Germans made him look like a Jewish banker trope, basically, and the Japanese did basically the same except with a few more monstrous qualities. I wonder if the propagandists from the Axis had some kind of common strategy.

Anti-Chinese propaganda seems to have been a quite confusing affair as it attempted to show Japanese as superior to Chinese while at the same time support the cause of Pan-Asianism. Regarding other Asian nations, the issue was probably slightly different as it was easier to show Japanese as liberators. Thus propaganda often took a more paternalistic stance towards occupied people.

When it comes to similarities between propaganda from Germany and Japan, that is propably mostly a coincidence. Japan and Germany were fighting separate wars and there was not enough contact between them to create such similar propaganda strategies.

Dunno if coincidence or not, but apparently in East Asia even today, caricatures of westerners usually depict them with huge noses.

That is a common stereotype at least in Japan. "Common" in the sense that you sometimes stumble upon it, but it's not something you hear or see every day. I have never personally experienced any comments about Western noses personally while in Japan, though I have seen the stereotype used in advertisements and seen comments in internet from the people who have heard comments regarding noses.

The enemy in the Japanese propaganda was typically the generic ‘other’ yes. Not infrequently depicted as being out to rape white WAllied women.

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An interesting thing about works like these is that although they claim to depict awful actions by the enemy, their main intention is quite clearly to fulfill sexual fantasies of their readers.

One of the many difference with the European theater is that a select few Germans the WAllied populations got to see speak on an almost weekly basis on the newsreels and became household personas to the public in a way that didn’t happen with WW1 Germans nor WW2 Japanese.

Hollywood and the Pentagon saw the potential in cultivating the well known WW2 German personas into images to emotionally attach the WAllied public to the war and not just Hitler.

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So you had posters and magazines of Japanese troops coming to rape American women. While at the same time you had posters up of a big budget movie of a fictional French Jewish woman who comes down to Egypt to seduce Rommel for help in getting her brother out of a Concentration Camp in Poland.

They helped to crank up the public hatred of the Japanese to the end of the dial and then some, but they managed to make the European/African theater more emotionally compelling and relatable to the public.

Interestingly, the Japanese war-time cinema rarely depicted Americans directly often referering them just as an "enemy" or something similar. When Americans were attacking, it was often seen more akin to some natural catastrophe. Chinese had a much more prominent place in Japanese films of the period in general, both as enemies and allies.
 
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The Soviet Animation industry was pretty awesome. A mix of pretty well done animation, and some where it is hard to see it flying well with anyone.
In particular, there is one with a bird singing american music, which gets attacked by the rest of the birds just because they don't like the music.

Edit - Scratch that, the Mormon anti-masturbation add for Brigham Young University! It was so wonderfully over the top, comparing not jacking it to being in a war zone XD
 
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For its sheer, cinematic pomposity, it's hard to beat Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will'...
It is an amazing movie, the Nazi party was broke they spent the last of their money producing "Triumph of the will' if the movie had flopped the Nazi party would have been finished.
This is a perfect example of the effectiveness of good propaganda.
Joseph Goebbels may have been the gold medal son-of-a-bitch of the 20th century but he was good at his job.
 
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Some of the English(!) civil war pamphlets are quite good, especially quite an early version of the traditional "Woman implores man to go to war" recruitment variant:

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Three hundred odd years later and you get:

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This...thing has always made an impression on me, just for the image of soldiers crossing a WWI-style no man's land on motorcycles.
 
Does it not worry anyone else that Russia still uses the same anthem, absent the references to Comrade Stalin!?
Not just that - the writers of the original Soviet anthem, the revised version of the anthem after the death of Stalin, and the modern Russian anthem are all the same person.
 
Does it not worry anyone else that Russia still uses the same anthem, absent the references to Comrade Stalin!?

The music itself is pretty good and the lyrics are quite different though. Actually one can say the current lyrics are MORE nationalistic than the idealistic Soviet ones.
 
The old Soviet anthem is probably my most favourite anthem, from an aesthetic viewpoint.

As far as chest-beating nonsense set to awesome music goes, it's hard to go past the French one.
 
Not "Literally depicting your enemies with babies on the ends of their bayonets", but still one of the most aggressive posters I've seen. "Jesus! I'll join ANZAC! Just stop looking at me like that!"
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The old Soviet anthem is probably my most favourite anthem, from an aesthetic viewpoint.

As far as chest-beating nonsense set to awesome music goes, it's hard to go past the French one.
The Italian anthem also has some amazingly over-the-top writing. One verse translates something like

"Where is [the goddess] Victory?
Let her bow down
For God has ordained her the slave of Rome"
 
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Translation:
Helping nations
"It is possible, that he escaped from the Zoo, but it is also possible, that Ribbentrop invited him to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact."

"We now no longer yellow apes but 100 % fellow-Arians, right?"

Not my favourite, but this RAF leaflet dropped in the occupied Netherlands 19421 is intriguing, to say the least.

1according to the source. I have some doubts. It does look like a leaflet but it is not really up to date.
 
One of my favorite Propaganda Posters of all time
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"Murderers always return to the scene of the crime"

Vichy French propaganda poster attacking the allies for bombing Rouen, where Jean d'Arc was executed. I just find it fascinating that both the Vichy French and the Free French used Jean d'Arc for propaganda, the Vichies using her as a symbol of resistance against the English, and the Free French using her as a symbol of resistance against Foreign Occupation. Guess which one was ultimately more powerful as a symbol.


Leaving aside the iron that the vichy were in bed with the people who had invaded France twice in a generation





Worst ghost story ever!
 
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