# This Is the Enemy (1943), the swastika and the Bible

This Is the Enemy is a 1943 Office of War Information poster, number 76. A hand with a swastika armband drives a bayonet through a Bible under the words "This is the enemy"; the plate shows Nazi Germany, not a Japanese person and not a Japanese American.

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      This Is the Enemy

      This Is the Enemy (1943), the swastika and the Bible
      OWI Poster No. 76, 1943, shows a swastika armband and a bayonet through a Bible. It depicts Nazi Germany. It is not a Japanese caricature.

## Techniques named on the archive record

ScapegoatingTransferFear appeal
      Date1943Made byU.S. government home-front campaignMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), via Wikimedia Commons , retrieved September 25, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, World War II Posters series (1942-1945).
      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

  This Is the Enemy is a 1943 Office of War Information poster, number 76. A hand with a swastika armband drives a bayonet through a Bible under the words "This is the enemy"; the plate shows Nazi Germany, not a Japanese person and not a Japanese American.

## What this plate shows

Readers looking for a Japanese face under the title "This is the enemy" will not find one on this sheet. The archive's description of the only object it holds under that title is specific: Office of War Information Poster No. 76, a hand in a sleeve with a swastika armband, a bayonet driven through a Bible, and the words "This is the enemy." No face. No racial caricature. The enemy the label points at is Nazi Germany, reduced to an armband and a religious book.

Holy BIBLE

THIS IS THE ENEMY

OWI Poster No. 76. Additional copies may be obtained upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information, Washington, D. C.

U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1943

Transcription in the FRAME record. The archive marks the printing-office line as partly illegible. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. The tombstone does not print a separate NAID.

## Not the Tokio Kid, and not a second object

The same wartime phrase was used on other sheets this site does not invent. If the archive has no separate anti-Japanese object under this title, this page does not manufacture one. This 1943 sheet is the object this site uses for the poster title. US posters that do draw a Japanese caricature, and that do use a slur, are collected at US anti-Japanese posters, starting from the records that actually say so. Tokio Kid is a different campaign: Tokio Kid.

The hub that compares the two habits, symbol against slur, is anti-Japanese propaganda. The US anti-Nazi set that starts from this sheet is anti-Nazi propaganda. The two hubs link each other so the shared title is not silently reassigned.

## What the label does

The sheet tells the viewer the name of the enemy and shows one emblem. That is a closing of argument: the swastika stands in for a government, a party, and a war. Nazi Germany's armband is a fair symbol of Nazi Germany. The overreach is the flatness. "This is the enemy" does not say what the enemy did, which office printed the proof, or what a citizen is supposed to do besides hate the sleeve. The Bible under the bayonet is there to borrow sanctity for the label. A reader can reject Nazi persecution of churches and still notice that a poster is not an indictment.

The maker line in the archive is "U.S. government home-front campaign." The imprint itself names the Office of War Information and the Government Printing Office, 1943. Rights as recorded: public domain, U.S. government work, from the National Archives World War II Posters series (1942–1945), via Wikimedia Commons.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, This Is the Enemy, 1943, OWI Poster No. 76. Source line: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia Commons, retrieved by the archive September 25, 2026. Rights: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/this-is-the-enemy-1943/