What Nazis Think of German-Americans (1943), a bilingual OWI sheet
OWI Poster No. 48 (1943) quotes, in German and English, a Berlin spokesman calling German emigrants "uprooted creatures." NAID 513827, Record Group 44.
Techniques named on the archive record
Card stackingName-calling
Date
1943
Made by
Office of War Information
Medium
Poster
Country
United States
Regime
Roosevelt Administration
NARA
NAID 513827; Record Group 44
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026
Source
Public domain (U.S. government work) Office of War Information. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-375 (NAID 513827).
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.
What Nazis Think of German-Americans is OWI Poster No. 48, printed in 1943. In German and English it quotes a spokesman for Goebbels, on 28 October 1942, calling German emigrants to America "uprooted creatures," under a red caricature head marked "LIES" (NAID 513827).
What the sheet prints
The audience is in the title. The archive describes a red line drawing of a head in profile, the word "LIES" on its cheek and a pen marked with a swastika for a mouth. Under it, the sheet quotes a Berlin press conference in two languages, set in typewriter strips.
WHAT NAZIS THINK OF
GERMAN-AMERICANS
Braun von Stumm, spokesman for Joseph Goebbels, at a press conference held in the Ministry of Press and Propaganda, Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin, on October 28, 1942, described German emigrants to America as follows:
= OKTOBER 28 15:33 NACHMITTAG BERLIN
OCTOBER 28 3:33 P.M. BERLIN
DEUTSCHE EMIGRANTEN SIND VOELLIG / GERMAN EMIGRANTS ARE COMPLETELY
ENTWURZELTE KREATUREN DIE DIE BEZEICHNUNG "DEUTSCH" NICHT VERDIENEN = / UPROOTED CREATURES WHO DO NOT DESERVE TO BE CALLED GERMAN
Who issued it
The Office of War Information numbered it 48 and printed it in 1943. The record names no artist. The quotation is attributed on the sheet to Braun von Stumm and dated; this page repeats that attribution as the poster gives it and has not checked it against a German source.
How to read it
The archive tags it as card stacking and name-calling. The card stacking is the choice of one insult, from one press conference, to stand for the whole regime's view. The name-calling is the poster's own: the red head stamped "LIES" answers an insult with a cartoon.
The aim, though, is worth noticing. This is a government sheet that addresses German-Americans as an audience to be persuaded, not as suspects. It tells them Berlin despises them and invites them to draw the conclusion. That is persuasion by contrast, and it respects its audience enough to quote the other side. Compare the treatment of Americans of Japanese ancestry in the same war, covered on the site's internment propaganda page; the difference in tone between the two is part of the record.
FRAME object record, What Nazis think of German-Americans, 1943. Office of War Information (OWI Poster No. 48).
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 513827, local id 44-PA-375, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
