I 15 paesi della NATO: a 1957 Rome poster built from flags and totals

An Italian poster printed in Rome in April 1957 as a supplement to the review Documenti di Vita Italiana and filed with U.S. Information Agency posters, catalog date 16 April 1957. Member flags spell N-A-T-O over a map, and the text cites 435 million inhabitants and two thirds of world production (NAID 6948882).

What the sheet shows

Member flags spell out N-A-T-O along a diagonal rope, over a grey map of North America and Europe on a blue ground, according to the archive; a compass-rose emblem completes the picture. One long line of capitals gives the argument, and the small print gives the publisher and printer.

ORGANIZZAZIONE R. P. TOMEI

i 15 PAESI della NATO

435 MILIONI DI ABITANTI - CON UN POTENZIALE ECO-NOMICO PARI AI DUE TERZI DELLA PRODUZIONE MON-DIALE - UNITI NELLA NATO PER LA DIFESA DELLA PACE E LA SALVAGUARDIA DELLA CIVILTÀ OCCIDENTALE

[...] Supplemento al N. 64 di marzo 1957 della Rivista "DOCUMENTI DI VITA ITALIANA" | Vecchioni & Guadagno Via Casal de Merode, 8 - Roma - Aprile 1957

[Archive's English translation:] the 15 COUNTRIES of NATO. 435 MILLION INHABITANTS - WITH AN ECONOMIC POTENTIAL EQUAL TO TWO THIRDS OF WORLD PRODUCTION - UNITED IN NATO FOR THE DEFENCE OF PEACE AND THE SAFEGUARDING OF WESTERN CIVILISATION [...]

An Italian imprint in an American file

The imprint is Italian throughout. It names an R. P. Tomei organization, calls itself a supplement to issue 64, March 1957, of the review Documenti di Vita Italiana, and gives the Rome printer Vecchioni & Guadagno and the date April 1957. The National Archives files it in Record Group 306 with the U.S. Information Agency's posters distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, under a catalog date of 16 April 1957, and the maker line names the agency and its State Department predecessor. No American office is named on the face, and FRAME classes the source as blurred.

An argument by size

FRAME tags it bandwagon and glittering generalities. The totals are the bandwagon: 435 million people, two thirds of world production, fifteen countries. "Peace" and "Western civilisation" are the virtue words. The archive files the theme as war and the military.

The figures carry no source on the sheet, and the reader is given no way to check them. A defensive alliance among free countries is a reasonable thing to argue for; an argument made of size alone asks the reader to join the bigger side because it is bigger.

The sharper point is the label. A poster arguing for a military alliance was issued to Italian readers as a supplement to an Italian review, with only Italian names in its imprint. The record does not say what part the American agency played in it. If the agency had a hand in the sheet, the reader was owed that fact.

Another Italian sheet in the agency's file, Siamo tutti stalinisti, was printed for Oltrecortina in Milan the same year. The USIA posters abroad hub sets out the program behind the file.