# Two small caricatures tend a swastika-marked giant, an untitled OWI graphic of 1945

An untitled 1945 graphic credited to the U.S. Office of War Information shows a huge patched and bolted green figure with a red swastika on its chest, worked on by two small caricatured figures, one on a stepladder with a toothbrush moustache. It carries no printed text.

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- Two small caricatures tend a swastika-marked giant, an untitled OWI graphic of 1945

      Small Figures Assembling a Swastika-Marked Mechanical Giant (untitled)

      Two small caricatures tend a swastika-marked giant, an untitled OWI graphic of 1945
      An untitled 1945 OWI graphic with no words: two small caricatured figures, one with a toothbrush moustache, tend a bolted giant marked with a swastika.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingTransfer
      Date1945Made byU.S. Office of War Information (OWI)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceLibrary of Congress , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work, OWI Collection) Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
      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.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  An untitled 1945 graphic credited to the U.S. Office of War Information shows a huge patched and bolted green figure with a red swastika on its chest, worked on by two small caricatured figures, one on a stepladder with a toothbrush moustache. It carries no printed text.

## A picture without words

Content note: the image includes a swastika and caricatures of enemy leaders. They are described here as the archive records them.

There is no slogan on this sheet, no caption, and no imprint to transcribe. The record describes the whole of it: a large green figure, patched and held together with bolts, with a red swastika on its chest. Two much smaller figures work on it. One stands on a stepladder and wears a toothbrush moustache. The other is at the lower right.

The archive's web address for the record names Hitler and Mussolini. Its catalog title and its description name no one, and say only that the small figures are caricatures of enemy leaders. This page follows the description. A reader can recognize the moustache; the sheet itself does not spell out a name.

## Who made it

The record credits the U.S. Office of War Information and gives the date as 1945. The copy is at the Library of Congress, and the archive's rights line calls it a U.S. government work in the OWI collection. The record lists the audience as the domestic public and the purpose as to demonize. It gives no artist, no print run, and no sign of where it was shown.

## How it argues

Two techniques appear in the record. One is name-calling by drawing: the enemy leaders are shrunk to toy size beside a patched, bolted machine. The other is transfer, with the swastika as the mark that tells the viewer which side is which.

The joke is that the giant is not strong at all. It is held together with bolts, and one of the small men assembling it has to stand on a stepladder to reach it. That is a fair kind of ridicule. It aims at a regime and its leaders, not at a people, and it needs no slur to make its point. The Roosevelt administration essay draws the same line for the period's posters: some aimed at a regime that had earned it, and others at a race. The second kind are gathered on the anti-Japanese hub.

More sheets aimed at the German regime are on the anti-Nazi hub, among them He's Watching You. The Office of War Information hub covers the agency named in this record.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Small Figures Assembling a Swastika-Marked Mechanical Giant (untitled), 1945. U.S. Office of War Information (OWI).

- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, loc.gov/item/2015646607, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work, OWI Collection).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/hitler-mussolini-puppet-masters-1945/