Speaking of Pictures... Russian War Posters Are Colorful and Forceful (Life, 1942)

A Life magazine page marked by hand "Life - Aug 24, 1942" reproduces Soviet war posters for American readers, with English captions: Nazis drawn as cows and pigs, and Hitler, Goering and Goebbels mocked as the "perfect Aryan type." The National Archives holds it as 44-PF-877a.

What the page prints

Life reproduced Soviet war posters on this page with English captions, as the archive describes it. Nazi figures are drawn as cows and pigs. Hitler, Goering and Goebbels are labeled "blond," "well built" and "handsome," a reversal the caption explains.

SPEAKING OF PICTURES ...

... RUSSIAN WAR POSTERS

ARE COLORFUL AND FORCEFUL

[Russian captions on the reproduced posters:] БЕЛОКУР / КАК ГИТЛЕР. / СТРОЕН / КАК ГЕРИНГ. / КРАСИВ / КАК ГЕББЕЛЬС. / БЕРЛИН / НА ВОСТОК

Cows are used by the Russians to symbolize the Nazis. They use "cow" as a term of opprobrium much as Americans use "louse." [caption continues]

The perfect Aryan type, according to the biting cartoon humor of the Russians, is blond like Hitler, has a perfect figure like Göring and is handsome like Goebbels.

Two-way traffic in Germany is the subject of this two-part poster. [caption continues]

[handwritten:] Life - Aug 24, 1942

44-PF-877A

The archive gives an English version of the Russian captions: "Blond / like Hitler. Well built / like Goering. Handsome / like Goebbels. Berlin. To the East."

Who made it

The record credits Life magazine, published by Time Inc., and dates the page from the handwritten note "Life - Aug 24, 1942." The archive classes the issuer as media and the audience as the domestic public. The National Archives holds it among the World War II foreign posters as 44-PF-877a. No federal office made this page.

How to read it

The archive tags name-calling, and it puts the tag where it belongs: on the reproduced Soviet posters, which caricature named enemies as animals. The magazine's own text describes the posters as Russian cartoon humor and explains the captions. One government's propaganda sits inside an American magazine's report on it.

Life does more than reprint: it explains the jokes in English ("much as Americans use 'louse'") and calls the posters "colorful and forceful" in its headline. That is admiring language for another government's propaganda. The transcribed captions explain what the pictures mean, not who made them or why. The record notes that some captions continue beyond what it transcribes, so this page claims no more than that.

A private magazine was free to run the page, and readers were free to judge it. Compare the Office of War Information's The Nazis Burned These Books, a government sheet. The anti-Nazi propaganda hub collects American sheets aimed at the Nazi state.