Ww1 Propaganda Poster Analysis

This investigation will explore the question: How does the propaganda during WW2 differ from the propaganda of WW1? Further investigation based on comparing and contrasting the changes between the two and for what reasons changes occurred as well as determining its effectiveness.

The title of the first article was “Propaganda Posters” by Jennifer D. Keene, written in 2016. Keene is a history professor as well as a chairman of the history department at Chapman University. She has a PhD and is a specialist in the US military experience during World War I. She has written three books on the subject. One useful characteristic about this source is that it uses specific examples of propaganda posters in order to explain the different aspects of them.

While there is a lot of information on the psychology of it, the styles, the media formats and other general things about the nature of propaganda there is not an easy way to measure it’s effectiveness in context. It would be wrong to claim that the allies won World War II because they had new animated propaganda, there is no way to prove that has anything to do with it. But that does not change the fact that the allies both had animated propaganda and won World War II. Another difficulty is much of the information on propaganda is just explaining what it is and why it is. Why specific colors, images and fonts were used on posters, why animated propaganda was so effective and what the idea behind different types of propaganda is. One method I used for this investigation taking a look at many different kinds of sources. My primary sources were images, but my secondary sources were everything from casualty records to magazine articles. I think this subject in particular was very open to many different sources because a lot can be learned from propaganda when it is not targeted at you. Taking a step back can have quite an impact on basically every historical event but something about propaganda (because it is very psychological) is far easier to understand and pick apart when looking at it from afar. I also learned a lot about studying the reliability of sources during this investigation, specifically in my evaluation of sources and even more specific my second evaluation. The source was from a modern magazine, admittedly not typically considered the most reliable but the information was from an interview with a historian who works in a national museum. Two things on far ends of the reliability scale came together for that article and I think that makes it more useful and in some ways, more