German Army, a War Department recognition chart of ranks and insignia
A War Department chart for U.S. troops identifies German Army caps, ranks, shoulder straps and branch colors, with English beside the German. NAID 514350.
Techniques named on the archive record
Card stacking
Date
1941
Made by
U.S. War Department
Medium
Poster
Country
United States
Regime
Roosevelt Administration
NARA
NAID 514350; Record Group 44
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026
Source
Public domain (U.S. government work) U.S. War Department. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-856 (NAID 514350).
Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.
German Army is a U.S. War Department recognition chart catalogued at 1941 and made for American troops. It shows caps, four uniformed figures from colonel to corporal, shoulder straps by rank with German and English names, collar patches, and the branch colors shown in their piping (NAID 514350).
A reference sheet with no slogan
There is nothing to persuade the viewer of here, at least on the surface. The chart lays out five kinds of cap, four figures in uniform, a ladder of shoulder straps from field marshal to private, three sets of collar patches, and a key to the colors that mark each branch. Each German rank is followed by an American equivalent in parentheses, or by the word NONE.
*Shown in Piping on shoulder straps, collar patches, and caps.
The sheet's own translations
The English names in parentheses are printed on the chart itself; they are the War Department's equivalences, not the archive's. They are not always one to one. A German Generalleutnant is matched to an American major general, and a Generalmajor to a brigadier general. One senior noncommissioned grade, Stabsfeldwebel, gets the word "NONE": the chart offers no American match. That small admission is the kind of precision a recognition chart needs.
Is it propaganda?
The FRAME catalog tags card stacking and calls it faint: the chart is a selective visual catalogue made for identification. The audience is "Own forces" and the purpose "Warn or inform." There is no caricature, no slogan and no enemy face. The four figures are uniformed soldiers.
That makes it a useful control case. Set beside a sheet like Salvage Scrap to Blast the Jap, which turns an enemy into a snake, this one treats the German Army as an institution with ranks and colors that a soldier needs to read. Teaching troops to recognize an opposing force accurately is training, and it respects the reader's intelligence. The anti-Nazi hub holds the period's sheets that argued against the regime, and the Roosevelt administration essay sorts the posters by what they asked.
Sources
FRAME object record, German Army, catalogued at 1941. U.S. War Department.
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-856, NAID 514350, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
