Grand Illusions And The Art Of War

During the early years of The European War, before it became World War I, the nation was very much divided on whether or not to enter the conflict. As an Anglo American country, millions were in favor of fighting beside the British in support of their heritage. Meanwhile, the majority of new American immigrants at that time were from either Germany or Ireland, and more inclined to fight against the British. In his new book, Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War, author and Wake Forest University Professor David Lubin chronicles the war's influence on artists of that era, many of whom were also divided, and how their propaganda work eventually drew this country into the war.

Lubin spoke with WFDD's David Ford. He says the poster “Enlist” by Fred Spear, essentially launched the WWI propaganda industry. It was completed in 1915 shortly after the sinking of the R.M.S. Lusitania ocean liner by a German U-boat. Twelve hundred victims, including 128 Americans, drowned in the attack.

He did this fabulous and really haunting poster of a young mother sinking to the bottom of the ocean with an infant clasped in her arms, and there's simply one word on the poster: ‘Enlist'. And that had a really strong effect. Most advertising at that time would be full of words. ‘Buy this tooth powder,' ‘Buy this hair cream,' and there would be many lines of text telling you why you should do it. Modern advertising comes out of posters like ‘Enlist' where there's just one well-chosen word coupled with a really powerful image to sway people's opinion.

Eventually America did enter the war, and to sustain the recruitment effort the poster "Destroy This Mad Brute," by H.R. Hopps was published in 1917. Like "Enlist," millions of copies were printed and its impact on the populace was immediate.

The image is of an enormous, angry gorilla donning a German war helmet, and mustache, that has jumped across the ocean and landed on American soil. In his left arm, he's carrying a half-naked, blonde, white woman. His right hand holds a club labeled ‘Kultur.' He appears to be in mid-screech, and his wide open mouth is drooling spittle.

Lubin says the underlying text speaks to the need for Americans to go to war “over there” to prevent this from happening “over here.” He adds, the image itself is carefully calculated to tap into deep-seated resentments and fears.

Even though it's targeting the Germans, [the poster] is making use of racist imagery that had been developed by D.W. Griffith in 1915 for the movie 'Birth of a Nation' which was very much a movie about how the South had been raped and violated by the Yankee North—particularly the African Americans—and so there was this analogy here, that the same thing is happening now: good clean, white, American women are vulnerable to rape by German barbarians.

He says that during the ten years he spent researching the propaganda posters and movies of the early 20th century, he found many links between nationalism, racism, and sexism of the day.

The makers of these images understood that if you deal with people's sexual insecurities, or racial insecurities, the sort of anxieties in the society in other aspects, you can harness that to a war anxiety, a war animosity. You get people wanting to take on the Germans because they're already afraid of how womanhood is being threatened, or masculinity is being threatened, or how the hordes of immigrants, if we don't watch out, they're gonna come in and change America from the good country, the great country it was, to some new kind of foreign object.

Male insecurity over masculinity was the target of one of the most iconic images of the 20th century: "Uncle Sam Wants You." Lubin says that although Flagg's poster was a form of satire, it nonetheless proved to be a very powerful recruiting tool.  

It became one of the most famous images by anyone of the 20th century—the most widely recognized and often parodied images. ‘Uncle Sam Wants You' is probably, if anything the birth of modern advertising. It's a direct address to the viewer, and a kind of shaming of the viewer [saying]: ‘If you don't buy this product—if you don't join this effort, shame on you'. And so, to a young seventeen or eighteen-year-old boy, it's like ‘If you want to be masculine, if you want to be like Uncle Sam, and you want to serve your Uncle Sam, you'd better get down to the recruiting station as quickly as possible.' And so that image, more than any other image probably, plays to masculine desires to be manly.  

Lubin's new book Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War was published on May 4th by Oxford Press. In August, Lubin will become Oxford University's first visiting Professor of American Art.