Nine Propaganda Methods the Government Used During World War II to Control the Public

Dig for Victory

Rationing of food during the Second World War on the home front hit hard, especially in the areas of meat, sugar, fats, and wheat. The need to provide food with extended shelf life to the troops overseas, and to America’s allies, hit these areas hardest because they could last longer and remain consumable.

Americans were urged to alter their diets to replace the lost caloric intake from the rationed foods with fresh fruits and vegetables. In order to increase the supply of these items, Americans were urged to plant Victory Gardens, providing vegetables and some fruits for personal consumption. Victory Gardens also helped ease the pain of gasoline rationing, as foods grown at home did not require trips to the market to obtain them.

The United States Department of Agriculture strongly encouraged the planting of Victory Gardens, and Eleanor Roosevelt set an example by planting one on the White House lawn. In congested urban areas where open land was at a premium, public parks set aside plots of ground for the use of citizens to grow their own vegetables. The joys of growing one’s own food were exhorted by the government as both a healthful and patriotic activity. Easing the pressure on the food supply at home helped increase morale within the civilian community and provided many with more healthful diets than they had enjoyed previously.

By 1944 the amount of food produced by Victory Gardens in the United States exceeded the commercial production of fruits and vegetables. The US government touted the money being saved on the production of fruits and vegetables for home consumption as being used in other areas of military support.

More than 18,000,000 Victory Gardens fed the home front, inspired by both detailed guidelines published by the Department of Agriculture (and major food producers such as Beech-Nut) and solid reminders in the form of posters which proclaimed the advantages of growing and preserving one’s own food.

When you ride alone you ride with Hitler

Although gasoline rationing quickly became a fact of life on the home front during the Second World War it was tires which were first rationed, with sales temporarily suspended on December 11 1941 – the date Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States. One of the reasons for the immediate rationing of tires was the Japanese offensive in the Far East, which quickly overran large amounts of the world’s supply of rubber.

By early 1942 it was clear that tire and fuel rationing was a cause of conflict with the need for workers to increase production, particularly in areas which lacked suitable mass transit facilities, which were also subject to rationing. The solution proposed by the government was ride sharing.

Of all the commodities rationed during the war, the American public seemed to have the most difficulty accepting gasoline rationing, which restricted the use of their automobile. Pleasure driving was prohibited early in the war; anyone operating a car had to be able to present a valid reason for doing so, such as heading to and from work.

The government did not look favorably at cars which carried only the driver, and encouraged what would later become known as carpooling, presenting the argument that multiple passengers in a vehicle could pool their gasoline ration as well. This argument was never received well.

The government encouraged and helped produce propaganda linking the unauthorized use of gasoline as directly supporting America’s enemies, and tried (largely in vain) to encourage carpooling. Posters which appealed to patriotism were used, as were posters suggesting that carpooling would encourage an increase in social appeal. As it would in a later day, the public largely rejected these arguments, preferring the use of their own car on their own terms.

She may look clean – but…

Aimed largely at the young American troops, most of whom were away from home for the first time, the government sponsored the creation of a campaign to control the spread of venereal diseases during the war. The posters warned of the dangers of contracting venereal disease, displaying women as sometimes wholesome in appearance, sometimes clearly sultry and deliberately alluring. The anti-VD campaign was based on the US Army’s experience in the First World War, when it lost over 7 million man-days to soldiers being stricken.

Syphilis was the fourth leading cause of death by disease in the United States prior to World War II (after tuberculosis, pneumonia, and cancer), and the accepted form of treatment was mercury injections, a process that could take up to one year, so the government’s concern was legitimate. Propaganda campaigns which equated prostitutes to Nazi troops were used, as were posters which depicted a faithful wife at home, exposed to a deadly disease through the indiscretions of a wavering husband.

Other posters warned women to avoid dance halls and other areas where they would be likely to meet soldiers and sailors, any one of whom could be infected.

Posters warning of the potential hazards of syphilis and gonorrhea were displayed in bars and restaurants, in buses, subways, and trains, dance halls and public parks, and virtually all other places where people were likely to gather, no doubt encouraging some interesting questions from children old enough to read but too young to understand the subject matter.

Even Salvador Dali was commissioned by the army to produce a poster warning against venereal disease. It is hard to imagine that any of the posters which depicted women as infested with hidden horrors would be acceptable today, but during the pre-penicillin days of early World War 2 they were ubiquitous.

Buy War Bonds

Throughout the Second World War Americans were exposed to nearly constant reminders, in magazines, movie theaters, newspapers, radio advertisements, outdoor rallies, dances, political meetings, schools, and virtually everywhere they looked, to buy War Bonds.

War Bonds were viewed as a means of controlling inflation with the United States at full employment by removing cash from circulation. This was in addition to their obvious use in generating funds to help prosecute the war. Most of the advertising appealing to the public to purchase War Bonds was donated, and celebrities were recruited to add their personal appeals to the public.

Norman Rockwell created, at the behest of the government, his series The Four Freedoms, which toured the country in a War Bond drive and generated over $130 million in revenues. Films often displayed at the end of their credits (which were often watched due to the custom of having a second feature) a graphic imploring the public to buy bonds, which were for sale at the theater’s box office. Through multiple separate bond drives, posters were printed and liberally distributed which displayed fighting men in action, or pointing to their equipment, asking the public to give them the tools to finish the job.

Eventually the government sold $185 billion worth of War Bonds during the Second World War. The use of War Bonds, which were in essence a voluntary loan made by the bond purchaser to the United States government, kept inflation under control and provided much needed funding to the government without raising taxes.

You Talk of Sacrifice…

Americans on the home front during the Second World War have long been depicted as cheerfully enduring the sacrifices necessary to keep what eventually became over 12 million men and women in uniform. Their willingness to do their part is a fact of history, but another overlooked fact is the extent of the black market dealing in rationed goods in the United States during the war.

In the United States, sugar, meat, and gasoline were the most often found items in the black market, and the illegal activity was extensive enough that the government funded a propaganda campaign to warn citizens away from black marketeers.

The Office of Price Administration (OPA) estimated the black market in the United States in 1943 to have exceeded $1 billion, and both meat and gasoline offered opportunities lucrative enough to attract the attention of organized crime, still suffering from the losses endured when Prohibition ended a decade before. That same year a writer for Colliers drove from Brownsville Texas to International Falls Minnesota, consuming 123 gallons of gasoline, without needing to use any rationing coupons. He even managed to acquire additional coupons along the way. When his story appeared in Colliers he was quickly removed from the list of eligible gasoline recipients by the OPA.

In addition to the black market purchase of rationed items, hoarding became a problem as the war ran on, especially of canned goods. To combat such activities the government responded with posters which appealed to patriotism and the conscience of individuals, asking them to compare the sacrifices asked of them with those being asked by the men and women in harm’s way overseas.

Despite the efforts to prevent black markets and other violations by the end of the war over 4,000 gasoline stations had lost their licenses to sell gas and oil due to participation in black market activities. More than 32,000 Americans lost their ration coupon books after being found guilty of violations of the rationing program.

You Can’t Pop a Jap Without Scrap

Scrap drives were an important part of the home front’s contribution to American victory during the war, and metal, paper, rags and old clothes, and rubber were all collected and recycled for use in military equipment. The use of metal in civilian capacities was also reduced and contributed to changes in American life, for example by early 1942 the sale of dog food in metal cans was curtailed. Manufacturers shifted their focus to dry dog food.

Americans were pressed to collect and contribute anything made of metal which they could spare. Pots and pans, broken down tools and equipment, old toys, fence materials, jar lids, coat hangers, anything made of metal was accepted and its donation encouraged. In some towns, ancient cannons from previous American wars used to decorate parks or civic buildings were melted down and made use of in the current war.

Old tires were at a premium, for cars and trucks, bicycles and tricycles, and anything else which used rubber wheels. So were raincoats, galoshes and even rubber bands. Paper too was badly needed, both for the massive amount of it used in the administration of government and military and for its desirability as a packaging material.

Pulpwood for the manufacture of new paper was soon scarce due to manpower shortages, and publishers found their paper allotments reduced early in the war. This led to smaller newspapers with narrower margins as well as an increase in the production of paperback books, which surprisingly used less paper than their larger hardbound brethren.

Scrap drives were often organized by communities or by organizations such as the Boy Scouts. Government posters which encouraged the donation of any and all items which could be of use to the war effort were common, and nearly all stressed the need to provide the necessities of war to the troops bearing the brunt of the fighting.

Suppose it Won’t do its Job?

During the war, and even before the United States entered the war, American factories turned out the materials necessary to fight. American industrial production during the war was staggering, from massive warships to parachutes to canteens to toilet paper and the American work force reached full employment as it churned out everything needed to maintain the troops and the home front.

Nonetheless the government felt the need to maintain a propaganda campaign pleading with workers to keep up levels of production, maintain quality, and minimize absenteeism on the job.

Posters which urged a maximum effort at all times were common, most often seen at the workplace or in the buses, trams, trolleys, streetcars, and subways which carried workers to their jobs. Quality was often urged by presenting soldiers or sailors faced with possibly defective equipment while in a moment of danger. Many of these posters featured women, now doing what had until then been considered to be a man’s job.

Posters urging increased production became even more prevalent during the summer of 1945, after the collapse of Nazi Germany. With the Germans out of the war the government feared a letdown on the home front after more than three years of sacrifice and felt the need to stress the fact that the war with Japan was not yet over.

With the existence of the atomic bomb a highly guarded secret, many believed that the Pacific War would drag on for many months, or even years, and posters stressing the need to finish the job, with a direct focus on Japan, became more common. The war ended in late summer, just as American production hit its peak for the war, and many planes and tanks manufactured that summer went straight to the boneyard.

I Want You

The famous recruiting poster of Uncle Sam pointing directly at the viewer and stating “I want you for the US Army” actually dated from 1917, when the American Expeditionary Force was gearing up to go to France. Based on a British recruiting poster from earlier in World War I it returned to use in the Second World War and has been used by the US Army many times since. But it was far from the only recruiting poster in the war.

In the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack posters which depicted the American flag, battered but still flying, exhorted Americans to Remember Pearl Harbor. Later posters tried to attract attention to special disciplines required by the military, recruiting for the SeaBees, Army Nurses, Submarines, Aviation, and so forth.

Many of these military disciplines required their members to be volunteers, and thus did not fill their ranks through the use of the general draft which fed the Army’s ranks throughout the war. Many also had higher academic and physical fitness standards than those of the draft, and thus required more focused recruitment efforts.

The US Coast Guard produced recruiting posters which were addressed specifically to owner-operators of small boats, implying the need for their expertise in the smaller service. The US Navy prepared a poster which depicted a sailor preparing to attack an enemy submarine, another US Navy poster showed a young woman proudly proclaiming that her man had joined the submarine service.

All of the branches of the military were competing for the same manpower, and all used methods of attracting their attention which went beyond posters. Full length motion pictures which focused on the contributions of certain parts of the military; bombardiers, PT boat squadrons, Army Rangers, B-24 pilots (starring Jimmy Stewart, himself a bomber pilot) and many more were used as recruiting vehicles, with military representatives on hand in the theater after the show to close the deal.