Posters, published during World
War Two, offer a fascinating insight into social attitudes of the time
- as well as the impact of wartime austerity. Propaganda posters
produced in Britain during the Second World War serve as important
visual source material for historians. The images themselves provide a
valuable social and, to a lesser extent, also artistic commentary on
life in Britain during the early 1940s. The posters are also
instructive in political terms.
The co-ordination of domestic propaganda in Britain during the
Second World War was carried out mainly by the Ministry of Information,
established at the outbreak of war in 1939. Its prime purpose was to
sustain civilian morale and its functions included the production of
propaganda posters both for itself and for other branches of
Government. These "weapons on the wall", as they were sometimes known,
had the advantage of being cheap to produce and easy to distribute.
They were often used as part of a coordinated campaign together with
films, radio broadcasts, pamphlets, and articles and advertisements in
newspapers and magazines. The most powerful mass medium of our
contemporary society - television - was not, of course, available
during the Second World War.
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