# Death to Fascism! Liberty to the People!, E. McKnight Kauffer's Tito poster for a New York committee Death to Fascism! Liberty to the People! is a 1944 poster signed E. McKnight Kauffer for the United Committee of South-Slavic Americans in New York. A profile photograph of Josip Broz Tito sits among black and red arrows above the words "Fighting vanguard of democratic Europe." - Home - Archive - Death to Fascism! Liberty to the People!, E. McKnight Kauffer's Tito poster for a New York committee Death to Fascism! Liberty to the People! (Yugoslav People 1941-1944 Led by Tito, Fighting Vanguard of Democratic Europe) Death to Fascism! Liberty to the People!, E. McKnight Kauffer's Tito poster for a New York committee A 1944 poster signed E. McKnight Kauffer for a New York committee of South Slavic Americans calls Tito's Yugoslavs a "vanguard of democratic Europe." ## Techniques named on the archive record Glittering generalities Date1944Made byUnited Committee of South-Slavic Americans, 1010 Park Avenue, New York; artist E. McKnight Kauffer (lithographed in the U.S.A.)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARARecord Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Foreign Posters , retrieved October 3, 2026SourceHeld by NARA, Unrestricted; hosted by owner decision United Committee of South-Slavic Americans, New York; artist E. McKnight Kauffer. National Archives and Records Administration, 44-PF-890. 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 Death to Fascism! Liberty to the People! is a 1944 poster signed E. McKnight Kauffer for the United Committee of South-Slavic Americans in New York. A profile photograph of Josip Broz Tito sits among black and red arrows above the words "Fighting vanguard of democratic Europe." ## The design The archive describes a photograph of Josip Broz Tito, seen in profile, set inside a pattern of black and red arrows. The lettering is in capitals and stacked in short lines. At the foot are the artist's signature, a lithography line, and the name and street address of the committee that issued it. YUGOSLAV PEOPLE 1941-1944 LED BY TITO FIGHTING VANGUARD OF DEMOCRATIC EUROPE DEATH TO FASCISM! LIBERTY TO THE PEOPLE! E McKnight Kauffer [signature] Litho'd in U.S.A. THE UNITED COMMITTEE OF SOUTH-SLAVIC AMERICANS 1010 PARK AVENUE NEW YORK 28, N.Y. Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. National Archives, Record Group 44, World War II Foreign Posters, 44-PF-890. ## A private voice, not a federal one No federal office appears on the sheet. The issuer is a committee of Americans of South Slavic descent with a Park Avenue address, and the archive classes it as a non-governmental organization speaking to a diaspora or minority audience. It was printed in the United States. The National Archives now keeps it in its series of World War II foreign posters. The record does not say how many were printed or where they hung. That matters for how to read it. This is a private committee in New York, with a signed artist, arguing for a cause abroad. A free country lets people do that without asking the government's leave. It also lets anyone else answer them. ## The words doing the work The archive tags the sheet as glittering generalities, and the text bears that out. "Democratic Europe" and "liberty to the people" are attached to one named leader. The poster gives no program, no election, and no account of what that liberty would mean in practice. A reader is asked to accept the virtue words on the strength of the face and the arrows. A fair test for any such sheet is the same whether the leader is admired or not: does the poster give the reader something to check? This one does not. It offers the word "democratic" as a credential, not as a claim with evidence. For posters the federal government itself put out in the same war, see the Office of War Information hub and the Roosevelt administration essay, which sorts the period's posters by what they asked. ## Sources - FRAME object record, Death to Fascism! Liberty to the People! (Yugoslav People 1941-1944 Led by Tito, Fighting Vanguard of Democratic Europe), 1944. United Committee of South-Slavic Americans, 1010 Park Avenue, New York; artist E. McKnight Kauffer (lithographed in the U.S.A.). - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Foreign Posters, 44-PF-890, catalog record 44268303, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: held by NARA, unrestricted; hosted by owner decision. Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/us-death-to-fascism-liberty-to-the-people-tito-1944/