From Cuba, the cover of *Tricontinental* magazine—a publication of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America—designed by Alfredo Rostgaard in 1969.

From Thailand, an anti-gossip poster by the Armed Forces Security Center that reads, “Women, socializing, and liquor often lead to secrets slipping,” 1960s.

From Uganda, an anti-AIDS poster by the Ministry of Health, 1996.

From the United Kingdom, a pro–European Communities poster by the Liberal Party, 1975.

From Ukraine, an anti-U.S.S.R. New Year’s card by the artist Volodymyr Kaplun, 1950s.

From Northern Ireland, a pro-Troubles poster by the Irish Republican Army, circa 1974.

From Angola, the cover of *Tricontinental* on the Angolan civil war, 1995.

From North Korea, *The Liberator of Korea,* a pro–Kim Jong Un painting by the Russian artist Vasily Galaktionov, 2013.

From Peru, an anti–Communist Party comic by the Peruvian government that reads, “Confessions of a Senderista” and “Popular Judgment,” 1989.

From the U.S.S.R., students from the Academy of Arts in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) painting a portrait of Joseph Stalin for the May Day celebrations, 1934.

From Germany, an anti–British Grand Fleet postcard by the U-boat campaign that reads, “Purchase war loans for U-boats against England,” 1941.

From East Germany, an International Women’s Day poster, 1955.

Signs of the Times

From giant Nazi monsters to Mussolini–loving children, a new coffee-table book collects 20th- and 21st-century propaganda used by regimes around the world

The term “propaganda” evokes visions of conflict and control, yet its origins are surprisingly neutral. The word derives from the Latin propagare (to spread) and first appeared in the 17th century during the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholic Church established the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide—an organization dedicated to opposing Protestantism through missionaries and printed materials.

Propaganda began to take symbolic form during the French Revolution. Pamphleteers roamed Paris handing out Republican imagery. A woman in classical robes and a red Phrygian cap symbolized liberty. A bundle of sticks—the fasces—stood for fraternity. And the tri-color flag represented unity.

Its power became crystal clear after the First World War. “The history of the late War shows that modern war must be fought on three fronts,” the American political scientist Harold Lasswell wrote in 1927, “the military, economic, and propaganda front.”

People’s memories were fickle, Hitler wrote almost a decade later in Mein Kampf. Simple messages repeated often enough would become insidious and quietly invade healthy minds. Joseph Goebbels, the infamous Nazi propaganda chief, aimed “to permeate the person without them even noticing.” He had closely read a book, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), by the American public-relations pioneer Edward Bernays, who wrote, “The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda.”

In the recently published book Propagandopolis: A Century of Propaganda from Around the World—a collection of arresting posters from the 20th and 21st centuries, with a foreword by the British historian Robert Peckham—there are predictably dark images, such as a poster that shows a little girl gazing up at Benito Mussolini with the caption “The children of Italy are very fond of Il Duce.” But posters from the other side are often no less manipulative. A British poster warns West Africans that Germans will steal their crops, as if Britain hadn’t already exploited their resources.

Imagery in the modern world, we are reminded, is powerful, ruthless, and created daily. Once out there, propaganda answers to no one. —Elena Clavarino

Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at Air Mail

Posters: Courtesy FUEL Publishing