World War 1 Propaganda Posters

Short answer

• World War 1 propaganda posters were large printed notices that governments, charities and military recruiters used to persuade ordinary people to take part in the war effort. They asked men to enlist, asked the public to buy war bonds and war savings stamps, asked households to save food and fuel, and asked workers, donors and volunteers to keep supporting soldiers and their families. The posters worked because they were cheap to print, easy to read at a glance and easy to put up where people already gathered, in streets, shops, stations, schools and workplaces. Britain, the United States, France, Germany and many other countries all used them, but they did not all use the same pictures, words or arguments. Read today, the posters are evidence of what each government wanted its people to feel and do, not a reliable record of what was actually happening at the front. --- A poster does not need a reader to stop and study it. A person walking past a wall or waiting for a train could take in the main image and the main command in a few seconds. That speed mattered in a war that touched almost every part of daily life. Governments needed soldiers, money, food, labor, nurses, donors and patience again and again for four years. Posters let them repeat a simple request in public, day after day, without sending a speaker to every town. Wartime claims in posters are described here as claims made at the time, not as settled facts.

What a Propaganda Poster Was

The word propaganda, in this wartime sense, means material produced to shape opinion and behavior in favor of a cause. That covers official government posters, charity posters such as Red Cross posters, and posters from local recruiting committees. It does not mean that every poster lied. Some gave practical information, such as where to enlist or how to save food. Others used emotion, pride, guilt, fear or humor to push a reader toward one action. Most did both at once: a clear instruction wrapped in a strong feeling.

Before the war, posters were already familiar advertising for soap, travel, theater shows and food. Designers had learned to combine a bold image, a short headline and a single call to action, and wartime makers borrowed those techniques.

Posters had practical advantages over other media of the period. Radio broadcasting for the general public did not yet exist in the form it later took, cinema did not reach everyone, and newspapers required literacy and time. A poster could be understood by a person who read only a little, and it could be translated for different languages and communities. Smithsonian magazine stresses the same point: American posters could be pasted on buildings, put in home windows, tacked up in workplaces, resized for streetcar windows and reprinted in magazines and in several languages.

That reach explains why posters survive in large numbers in museums. The Library of Congress makes available online approximately 1,900 posters created between 1914 and 1920, and the Huntington Library holds approximately 700 such posters and related items dating from about 1914 to 1919, made by more than 200 artists.

Why Governments Turned to Posters

The First World War, which began in 1914 and ended with the armistice in November 1918, was a war of whole societies, not only of armies. Factories had to produce shells, uniforms, ships and food. Farms had to feed soldiers and civilians. Banks and treasuries had to raise money. Families had to accept separation, rationing, extra work and loss. No government could meet those needs by orders alone, especially where citizens voted, read newspapers and could complain in public. Persuasion became part of administration.

Posters served several purposes at once. They recruited volunteers, raised money through war loans and bonds, managed consumption by asking people to waste less and accept substitutes, sustained morale by thanking workers and praising nurses and soldiers, and warned readers to be careful with information and to distrust enemy claims. The order of those jobs changed over time. Recruitment was most urgent before conscription in Britain and before the United States entered the war in 1917. Bond posters returned with each new loan campaign, food posters grew more pressing as shortages grew, and morale posters shifted from early confidence to endurance and care for veterans and bereaved families.

A poster alone could not create a job, feed a family or end a shortage. Historians therefore treat posters as one part of a larger system that also included newspapers, speeches, films, songs, school lessons, church appeals and local committees.

Britain: Kitchener and the Recruitment Campaign

Britain produced recruitment posters from the first weeks of the war. The Imperial War Museums (IWM) describes the best known British image, the Kitchener poster, as perhaps the most famous poster from the war. It shows Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, then Secretary of State for War, appealing for people to join the British Army. IWM adds a qualification that later retellings often drop: the image was first produced in 1914 but took on a more iconic status after the war, when it was not widely circulated outside the London area during the war itself. Fame today is not proof of how widely it was seen in 1914.

Other British posters used different appeals. IWM describes “Women of Britain Say Go” as a clear example of commercial advertising technique applied to recruitment. It appealed to women to encourage men to enlist, while picturing women and children as people in need of protection. That was a claim made by the poster, not a neutral description of British women, many of whom were entering paid work in growing numbers. Another poster, “Are You in This,” showed different parts of society contributing, with a man on the sidelines, hands in his pockets, who had not yet joined in. Its message was social pressure.

British posters also spoke to the empire, with local images from Australia, Canada, India and other territories appealing to local pride, sport and duty to Britain. Women were also recruited directly. IWM notes that the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was established in December 1916, that the first party of 14 women arrived on the Western Front on 31 March 1917, and that eventually 9,000 women served with the unit in France.

The United States: The Committee on Public Information

The United States entered the war in 1917, and its poster campaign was organized quickly and on a large scale. The central body was the Committee on Public Information, led by George Creel, with a Division of Pictorial Publicity led by the illustrator Charles Dana Gibson. Smithsonian magazine reports that Gibson, president of the Society of Illustrators, reached out to leading illustrators and encouraged them to volunteer their creativity. A Library of Congress account gives the scale: in less than two years, its 300 artists produced more than 1,400 designs, including some 700 posters, promoting recruitment, bond drives, home front service, troop support and camp libraries.

The most famous American image was James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam poster, “I Want You for U.S. Army,” dated 1917. Smithsonian magazine notes that Flagg’s inspiration came from the British Kitchener image designed by Alfred Leete, and that Flagg’s stern Uncle Sam pointed directly at the viewer. It did not argue in paragraphs. It singled out the reader, made eye contact through the printed figure, and gave a short command. Later versions were reused in later wars, which helped fix it in American memory long after 1918.

American posters used Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty, soldiers, sailors, nurses, farmers and factory workers. The Huntington collection lists recruitment, food and fuel conservation, aid for soldiers and humanitarian causes, war work, and savings and bond programs among its main themes, including many posters for the Victory Liberty Loan and War Savings Stamp campaigns. Posters were also reprinted in several languages. National Archives material shows the United States Food Administration distributing material in Italian in New York City, in Chinese in Hawaii and in Spanish in California, so readers could act on familiar foods and names.

France: Loans, Sacrifice and “On les aura”

France had been at war since 1914, and French posters reflected a country defending its own territory, mourning heavy losses and raising repeated war loans. One of the most famous French posters was Jules Abel Faivre’s “On les aura,” which translates as “We’ll get them.” The Australian War Memorial describes it as a 1916 poster advertising the Second National Defense Loan, picturing an ordinary French soldier in a pose referencing the sculpture “Departure of the Volunteers” on the Arc de Triomphe, holding his rifle and calling over his shoulder. The memorial notes that the soldier’s call quoted words associated with General Philippe Petain at the battle of Verdun.

French loan posters were part of a series, with new art for each loan: soldiers planting flags, Marianne standing on a globe surrounded by flags, and soldiers in trenches dreaming of home and victory. French posters also covered charity and daily sacrifice, advertising collection days for soldiers’ comfort packages, funds for war orphans and support for liberated regions.

Germany: Plakatstil and the War Loans

German posters looked different, and the difference was deliberate. Much German design of the period used Plakatstil, the poster style, which favored reductive imagery, flat color, bold typography and a single strong symbol rather than a detailed scene. The Australian War Memorial notes that Lucian Bernhard, a leading German designer, made many war loan and charity posters that were purely typographical, and that his 1913 Fraktur typeface, a revival of medieval Gothic script, asserted a defiantly German identity. In Bernhard’s hands, lettering itself became the image.

Bernhard’s war loan posters show how the style worked. One poster for the Eighth War Loan asked people to subscribe to the loan to hasten peace, printed in Fraktur script. Another, “This is the way to peace,” showed an armored arm and hand with the poster claim that subscribing was the way to peace because, in the poster’s words, the enemy wished it so. A poster for the Ninth War Loan showed a mother holding her baby, with her uniformed husband looking back toward their town as he left for war. The memorial notes that the Ninth War Loan raised as much money as the first four war loans put together, while also noting that the campaign did not raise Germany’s birth rate, which did not begin to increase until after the Second World War.

German posters also promoted loans through respected military figures. A poster by Louis Oppenheim showed Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, with text presenting a subscription as a birthday present for Hindenburg. A poster by Fritz Erler for the Sixth War Loan showed a three-quarter portrait of a German soldier. Other German posters asked people to give gold and jewelry for the fatherland and to hand in metals for the army.

Other Countries and Local Campaigns

Canada, Australia, Italy, Belgium and Russia also produced posters, often adapting British, French or American designs to local conditions, while local committees printed posters for specific drives, naming a local hall, date and contact. National posters gave the war a common visual language. Local posters gave it an address.

Recruitment: The Appeals That Were Used

Recruitment posters used several distinct appeals. The first was direct address: Kitchener and Uncle Sam pointed at the viewer and used the word “you.” The second was duty and honor, using flags, uniforms and phrases about country, king, liberty or freedom to frame enlistment as a moral act. The third was social pressure, showing friends enlisting together, families watching, women urging men on, or a man left out while others marched. The fourth was adventure and belonging, showing comradeship, travel, sport, music and the promise of becoming part of a unit.

Those appeals were aimed mainly at men, but they also spoke to the people around men. “Women of Britain Say Go” asked women to persuade men. “Are You in This” asked the whole community to notice who had joined and who had not. American posters asked parents, employers and friends to support enlistment, and asked women to join nursing, clerical and auxiliary services.

War Bonds and Loans: Paying for the War

If recruitment posters asked for bodies, bond posters asked for money. Governments borrowed from their own citizens by selling war bonds and war loans, promising repayment with interest after the war. Posters made that transaction feel personal and urgent, linking a purchase to a result in the poster’s own language: buy a bond and help arm a soldier, feed an ally, build a ship or bring victory closer. Those links were poster claims, not accounting statements, but they turned an abstract loan into a visible act. In the United States, Charles Raymond Macauley’s 1917 poster “You Buy a Liberty Bond Lest I Perish” showed the figure of Liberty appealing directly to the viewer, while Winsor McCay’s “If You Can’t Enlist, Invest” offered a role to people who could not serve in uniform. The Huntington collection notes many posters for the Victory Liberty Loan and War Savings Stamp campaigns, which let people with small savings buy stamps and build toward a bond. The Australian War Memorial notes that war loan posters were extremely prolific, and that loan subscriptions have been estimated to have covered 60 percent or more of the cost of the war in Germany. That figure is an estimate reported by the memorial, not a precise audited figure.

Food, Fuel and the Home Front

Food posters are among the most practical and revealing of all World War 1 posters. The United States Food Administration, headed by Herbert Hoover, urged Americans to voluntarily conserve food, especially wheat, meat, fats and sugar, according to National Archives material. Posters exhorted readers to combat waste, and homemakers and restaurant operators signed pledges to observe “meatless Mondays” and “wheatless Wednesdays.” The National Park Service gives vivid examples. “Be Patriotic” showed a woman in a dress patterned with the American flag, urging viewers to sign a pledge to save food. “Food Is Ammunition” showed a basket of fruits, vegetables and grain, with soldiers in the background, and the caption “Food is ammunition, don’t waste it.” Those posters were not only about nutrition. They were about shipping, farming and fairness, because wheat, meat and sugar were needed for soldiers and allies, and shipping space was limited. Other home front posters asked people to save coal, work in shipyards and munitions factories, donate clothes and money, and support the Red Cross, the YMCA, the Salvation Army and other relief groups.

Visual Techniques: How Posters Persuaded

Poster designers used a small set of techniques again and again. The first was direct gaze and pointing: a figure who looks out and points at the viewer breaks the barrier between image and reader. The second was scale and simplification: large figures, flat color, strong contrast and short text, so a poster worked from a distance. The third was symbolism: flags, eagles, Marianne, Britannia, Uncle Sam and the Red Cross stood for a country, a value or an organization. The fourth was emotion through faces and families. The fifth was repetition of a slogan, color scheme or character until it sounded like common sense. The sixth was the call to action: almost every poster ended with a verb such as enlist, buy, save, give, join, grow or subscribe.

Famous Images and What They Really Show

The Kitchener image, designed by Alfred Leete, began as a magazine cover, not as an official recruitment poster in the simple sense later retellings suggest. IWM notes that it was first produced in 1914 and became more iconic after the war, when it was not widely circulated outside London during the war. It inspired Flagg’s Uncle Sam and became shorthand for wartime recruitment, but a reader should not assume that every British soldier in 1914 enlisted because he saw it on his street. Flagg’s Uncle Sam poster, from 1917, is more clearly a wartime recruitment poster, and Smithsonian magazine notes that it became one of the most iconic American images ever made and was reused in later wars. Faivre’s “On les aura” shows a different hero: an ordinary soldier calling to comrades over his shoulder, echoing a revolutionary era sculpture on the Arc de Triomphe. Bernhard’s armored fist poster shows a fourth approach: no face, no scene, only a symbol and type.

Enemy Images, Fear and the Limits of Persuasion

Enemy posters are the hardest to read today, because they often used caricature, insult and fear. British, French and American posters sometimes pictured German soldiers as brutal or monstrous figures threatening women, children, homes and churches. German posters sometimes pictured Allied soldiers, or later Bolshevik figures, as threats to home, order and nation. Those images were wartime claims, designed to make the enemy seem inhuman and the reader’s own cause seem necessary. They were not neutral portraits, and they should not be repeated today as descriptions of real people.

Historians ask what fear a poster activated, what action that fear was tied to, who was targeted, and who was left out. A poster that pictured an enemy as a single monstrous figure hid the fact that enemy armies were made up of ordinary soldiers, many of them young, frightened and conscripted, just like soldiers on the other side. Effects are harder to prove: a poster may have been widely seen and still not changed many minds. Censorship also shaped what posters could say, so surviving collections are mainly the official side of the argument, not a complete record of public opinion.

Women, Children and the Home Front in Posters

Posters pictured women in contradictory ways. Some pictured women as mothers and wives who needed protection, urging men to enlist to defend them. Some pictured women as nurses, volunteers and war workers, urging women themselves to join services, work in factories, grow food and raise money. Some pictured women as savers and shoppers, urging them to buy bonds, save food and avoid waste. Some pictured women as symbols, such as Marianne, Britannia or Lady Liberty. Those images did not agree, because the war pulled women in different directions: keep homes running, take on new paid work, care for wounded soldiers, mourn dead relatives and support the war effort in public. IWM notes that the war substantially increased the numbers of women in paid work and the range of jobs they undertook. Children also appeared often, as victims to be protected, as helpers recruited for food and savings campaigns, and as symbols of the future.

How Historians Read These Posters Today

Historians do not read a poster only for what it says. They read it for who paid for it, who designed it, where it was displayed, in what language, in what size, and alongside what other posters. They compare a poster with newspapers, diaries, letters, government records and enlistment or bond sale figures, where those figures exist, to see whether a campaign coincided with a rise in action. Even then, they are careful about cause and effect. A rise in bond sales during a bond campaign does not prove that posters alone caused the rise, because speeches, newspapers, banks, employers and peer pressure were also at work.

Historians also read posters as art history, tracing how advertising, fine art and political cartooning fed into poster design, and how wartime posters later influenced advertising, film posters and political campaigns. Museums add another layer, because a poster displayed as art looks different from the same poster displayed as propaganda. Historians also use posters to recover audiences that are otherwise hard to hear about: a poster in a minority language, for a local charity, or for a specific trade or town, can reveal a group that official histories sometimes overlook.

How to Read a Poster Yourself

A reader who wants to read a World War 1 poster critically can use five questions. First, what is the poster asking you to do, in one verb? Enlist, buy, save, give, join, grow or report? Second, who is speaking, and who paid for the poster? A government, a charity, a bank, a local committee or a commercial firm will have different interests. Third, who is pictured, and who is missing? Look for age, gender, class, race, uniform and setting. Fourth, what feeling is the poster using, and what claim is that feeling attached to? Naming the feeling helps a reader separate feeling from fact. Fifth, what would a person on the other side have said? Imagine the same war from the opposing poster’s point of view, with its own soldiers, mothers, children and flags.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why were propaganda posters so important in World War 1?

Posters were cheap, visual, fast to understand and easy to display in public places before radio and television reached most homes. They could reach people with limited reading skills, be translated into many languages, and repeat a simple action day after day. They were one part of a larger persuasion system that also included newspapers, speeches, films and local committees.

What did World War 1 propaganda posters ask people to do?

Recruitment posters asked men to enlist and women to join auxiliary services. Bond and loan posters asked people to lend money to the state. Food posters asked households to waste less, eat substitutes and grow more. Charity posters asked for money, clothes and volunteer time. War work posters asked for factory, farm, shipyard and nursing labor.

Who designed the most famous World War 1 posters?

In Britain, Alfred Leete designed the Kitchener image. In the United States, James Montgomery Flagg designed the Uncle Sam “I Want You” poster, and Charles Dana Gibson led the Division of Pictorial Publicity. In France, Jules Abel Faivre designed “On les aura” for the Second National Defense Loan. In Germany, Lucian Bernhard, Ludwig Hohlwein, Fritz Erler and Louis Oppenheim designed many war loan and charity posters. Many other posters were anonymous.

Did the Kitchener poster really recruit millions of soldiers?

That claim should be treated with care. The Imperial War Museums notes that the Kitchener image was first produced in 1914 but became more iconic after the war, when it was not widely circulated outside the London area during the war itself. It later influenced other recruitment art, including Flagg’s Uncle Sam, and became a symbol of wartime recruitment in popular memory. Popular memory is not the same as wartime circulation.

How did German World War 1 posters differ from Allied posters?

German posters often used Plakatstil, a style that favored a single symbol, flat color and bold typography over a detailed scene. Lucian Bernhard’s war loan posters, for example, were often purely typographical, using Fraktur lettering to assert German identity. Allied posters more often used detailed scenes, faces, families and national personifications such as Uncle Sam, Marianne or Britannia. Those are tendencies, not absolute rules.

Were World War 1 posters all lies?

No, but they were all persuasion. Some posters gave practical information that was accurate, such as where to enlist or how to save food. Others made emotional claims that were exaggerated, one sided or false, such as picturing an enemy as monstrous or promising that a single purchase would bring victory. The safest way to read a poster is to separate its instruction from its argument, and to ask what evidence, beyond the poster itself, supports its claims.

Where can I see original World War 1 posters today?

Original posters are held by major collections including the Library of Congress, the Imperial War Museums, the Australian War Memorial, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Huntington Library, as well as many national, university and local museums. Many of those institutions publish poster images and catalog records online, with artist, date, printer and campaign details where known. Check the catalog record for date, maker and place, rather than trusting a caption copied from social media.

Sources & references

• Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, "Posters: World War I Posters," as summarized by Montana State University Billings Library (approximately 1,900 posters created between 1914 and 1920, from the United States and other countries)
• Smithsonian magazine, "The Posters That Sold World War I to the American Public," 28 July 2014 (Division of Pictorial Publicity formed in 1917, George Creel and Charles Dana Gibson, James Montgomery Flagg's Uncle Sam and its Kitchener inspiration, poster display and reprinting)
• Library of Congress exhibition account, "World War I: American Artists View the Great War," via Grey Area News (Division of Pictorial Publicity, 300 artists, more than 1,400 designs including some 700 posters, themes of recruitment, bond drives, home front service, troop support and camp libraries)
• Imperial War Museums, "WW1 Recruitment Posters" learning resource (Kitchener poster first produced in 1914 and more iconic after the war, "Women of Britain Say Go," "Are You in This," Women's Army Auxiliary Corps dates and service figures)
• Australian War Memorial, "On les aura! [We'll get them!]" collection record (Faivre, 1916, Second National Defence Loan, Verdun association, war loan estimates)
• Australian War Memorial, "Zeichnet die Neunte! (Subscribe to the Ninth War Loan!)" collection record (Bernhard, Plakatstil and Sachplakat, Ninth War Loan comparison with the first four loans)
• Australian War Memorial, "Das ist der Weg zum Frieden (This is the way to peace)" collection record (Bernhard, war loan and charity posters largely typographical, Fraktur typeface)
• National Archives, Pieces of History, "World War I food conservation: Pan de la libertad," 27 July 2011 (United States Food Administration under Herbert Hoover, conservation of wheat, meat, fats and sugar, meatless Mondays and wheatless Wednesdays, multilingual materials)
• National Park Service, "From Iowa to the World: Posters" teaching material (Be Patriotic, Food Is Ammunition, Little Americans, Eat More Eat Less, meatless wheatless sweetless heatless slogan)
• Huntington Library, "Posters and ephemera" collection description (approximately 700 World War 1 propaganda posters and related items, about 1914 to 1919, more than 200 artists, themes and producing agencies)
• Brandeis University, Robert D. Farber University Archives, "World War I Posters: 1918" exhibition list (1918 American bond, Salvation Army, YWCA, Red Cross and United War Work Campaign posters)