Has anyone written about how these messages about how women are loose, immoral, disease-vectors worse than Hitler might have contributed to the generation of sexism that was the postwar period?
Because you know, women just spontaneously get VD. Also, notice the one where the guy was holding the picture of his sweetheart and parents, and the message wasn’t “Hey, don’t cheat!” but “Hey, if you are going to cheat, cool, just wrap it up?”
i always assumed that was projection on innocents. - victim blaming, if you will.
My hypothesis would be that the endless generations of sexism in the pre- and during-war period contributed to messages about how women are loose immoral disease-vectors.
Oh, surely. I’m wondering about the messages being so standardized and uniformly presented to a generation of men on the cusp of adulthood from the authority they’ve sworn to obey. It might be one of the first times that’s happened at that scale. Like, did it take the existing backdrop of sexism and condense certain narratives in the mind of that generation. I dunno, but it’s what hit me as I browsed the gallery.
You’d be paranoid too, if you had uncovered the enemy’s plan to attack your nation’s heroes with promiscuous women and their weaponised VD.
I’d imagine the rationale was to take something attractive to soldiers (available sex with women) and psychologically associate it with disease, the enemy, death etc. Most don’t actually seem to depict women at all, but rather show VD as an enemy tactic or a source of shame. It’s not difficult to imagine people associating these posters with the message that these bad, loose women are dirty, dangerous and shameful, and that associating with them will destroy your life, although I can also imagine this not being explicitly intended. The army was losing significant numbers of active men to VD, so they used very vivid messages to try to dissuade soldiers from sleeping around.
struggling here…
Bareback chubs sink subs.
Don’t be Hitler’s fool, jacket your tool.
Bare members reduce ships to embers.
Make love and war.
Bare Tips Sink Ships
There we go.
I think that was actually a pragmatic approach for the people running the PR campaign. Countless studies have shown that the “abstinence only” campaigns don’t work. Many a soldier sent to fight overseas slept around or patronized prostitutes whether or not they already had someone back home, but it’s easier to convince horny soldiers to wrap up their junk than to go without entirely.
Well you can’t shoot V.D. Or I guess you could, but your junk would be even worse off than it was before.
I love the idea that Hitler and Hirohito were having threesomes with a zombie though.
That’s no zombie – it’s Mussolini doing his famous drag-zombie cosplay character.
I’ve always liked this one:
But now I kind of like this one more - appeals to the kids, don’t ya know…
Shame there isn’t one that says “keep it in your bloody pants, Tommy”
Pro tip.
I think it’s Tojo?
We must keep our boys safe from the dangers of venereal disease… so they’ll be healthy enough to go get shot and blown up.
Won’t work for poster #2 – Donald doesn’t wear pants…
