Persuasive Images

With powerful, often shocking immediacy, the 317 posters reproduced and discussed in this volume document the political and military conflicts of our century. These works reveal their meaning most clearly when we do not relegate them to the function of illustrating a text or see them merely as specimens of the applied arts, but take them seriously as unique combinations of historical witness and aesthetic object. Drawn from Russia, Central and Western Europe, and the USA, from the turn of the century to the aftermath of World War II, the posters form a bridge between the claims of ideology and the state on the one hand and the support or submission of millions of men and women on the other. How can men be persuaded to fight for their party or country, and how can women be convinced to enter the workforce in wartime and retreat to the home when their men return? How can women be brought to believe that losing their husbands and sons is a noble sacrifice? Where can money be found to pay for the costs of the war and of reconstruction? Are guilt, compassion, and fear sufficient to bind the homefront to the fighting men?
What is the most effective way to dehumanize the enemy, whether foreign or domestic? These are some of the issues that the posters in this volume lay bare and began to explain. Together text and image open fresh perspectives on half a century of war, revolution and renewed war, and point toward a new kind of integrative history. Except for seven posters, the images in this book are from the archives of the Hoover Institution on War, Peace and Revolution at Stanford University. Soon after the outbreak of World War I, Herbert Hoover began to collect documents, including posters, from the warring powers. He laid the foundation for one of the world's great poster collections, now consisting of some 75,000 posters as well as nearly 40,000 proclamations and other purely typographical announcements.