Introduction | Art and Politics | Images of the Heads of State | Images of the Individual and Society
Images of Work and Development | Images of War | A Difficult Heritage
The Second World War began on 1 September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. Each political system worked to justify its military actions and to mobilise the population, drawing on the imagery of the First World War and deploying all possible means of agitation. The latest communication technologies allowed the population to share in events at the front.
Visual propaganda grew increasingly strident during the course of the war, its content ever more aggressive.
Nazi Germany attempted to portray the war as an inevitable ‘war of defence’. The Italian Futurists’ enthusiasm for technology led easily and directly into the glorification of war and the Fascist government’s military parades.
The ultimately victorious Allies also used the visual media as weapons of psychological warfare – whether this was for America’s ‘defence of the free world’ or the Soviet Union’s ‘Great Patriotic War’.
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360° Panorama
