1697 07-04 Queen of Hell USAAF B-17: Precision-bombing over Wilhelmshaven 1943-01-271698 07-04 Queen of Hell USAAF B-29: Over Tokyo 1945-03-10 (Operating Meetinghouse)1699 07-04 Blood Avenger RAF Avro Lancaster: Underlit by Hamburg firestorm, 11:59 p.m. 1943-07-27 (Operation Gamorrah)1700 07-04 Blood Avenger RAF Avro Lancaster: Kill marks in searchlight over Nuremburg 1945-01-02 before flak damage1701 07-04 Blood Avenger RAF Avro Lancaster: Repaired repainted departing for Dresden 1945-02-14
I think this series are largely plausible although 1699-1701 contain darker and more deadly-serious elements than those generally present in Allied nose art, which tended to express more hopefulness and playfulness, and tended toward the secular. The series also diverges from history in that most historic nose-art photos were taken on the runway, not in the air; whereas here the ratio is flipped because of its sense of immediacy, especially with 1699. Any online search for “world war two aircraft nose art” should produce a vast universe of historical examples. Subject-matter-wise, attractive women and violence were among the most common themes in nose art. Nose art was more common on bombers than fighters, and perhaps most common on US and UK aircraft; but fighters, Axis, and USSR air forces also occasionally included it. By contrast, the use across combatant air forces and aircraft types of “kill marks” (especially by fighters), “mission marks” (bombers), and “victory marks” (a more general term), was widespread.
In Europe, American bombing units usually focused on precision bombing of targets with identifiable relevance to the war effort. In Japan they began as a propaganda effort (the Mitchell raid), then when bombing began in earnest, on precision bombing at first, which yielded disappointing results, turning to mass incendiary raids later on. Whether the difference between the carpet-firebombing in Japan and the precision bombing in Germany was a result of military requirements (postwar studies concluded firebombing in Japan was militarily effective as intended because Japanese war production was decentralized, including by workers in their own homes), US racism, or the fact they had UK counterparts in Europe, is a matter of debate.
RAF bombers were mainly active in Europe. The RAF quickly concluded precision bombing was ineffective, adopting an Air Bombing Directive on 14 February, 1942 deciding candidly “To focus attacks on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular the industrial workers. In the case of Berlin harassing attacks to maintain fear of raids and to impose [Air Raid Precaution] measures.” Axis propaganda seems to make it clear the strategy encouraged rather than discouraged resistance, just as the German attacks during the blitz had done.
I hoped to capture in these images the darkness and evil of Channah; “Queen of Hell” seemed almost unavoidable and not far off historical examples. “Avenger of Blood” (Hebrew: גֹּאֵל הַדָּם, go’el ha-dam) appears in several Bible passages, including in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. The Avenger of Blood, usually the closest male relative of a person who has been killed, has the duty of searching for and killing the murderer in turn, in accordance with the principle of lex talionis (the law of retribution).
1697 07-04 Queen of Hell USAAF B-17: Precision-bombing over Wilhelmshaven 1943-01-27—2025-07-13. Channah; old private photo. The date referenced was the first B-17 bombing mission with American crews of the war. This image seemed too close to a B-17 to put it convincingly over Japan, but I liked the image.
1698 07-04 Queen of Hell USAAF B-29: Over Tokyo 1945-03-10 (Operating Meetinghouse)— 2025-07-13. Channah; old private photo. The date referenced was the first mass incendiary “area bombing” raid against Tokyo, and one of the deadliest. The resulting devastation and civilian loss of life have been compared to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1699 07-04 Blood Avenger RAF Avro Lancaster: Underlit by Hamburg firestorm, 11:59 p.m. 1943-07-27 (Operation Gamorrah)— 2025-07-13; Channah; old private photo. Choosing to name one of the most-relentless and deadly incendiary raids of the war after a Biblical holocaust, smacks of an operation more focused on bloody revenge than on military efficacy. The Old Testament nature and origin of the Blood Avenger, and its association with Judaism, seemed like a perfect complement to the British bombing strategy, especially in respect to Nazi Germany, which was neck-deep in the capital-H Holocaust by mid-1943. The picture of the evil Channah grinning down, underlit by the glowing light of mass murder, chilled me to the bone the instant it popped up on the AI.
1700 07-04 Blood Avenger RAF Avro Lancaster: Kill marks in searchlight over Nuremburg 1945-01-02 before flak damage—2025-07-13; n/a; old private photo. I initially viewed this image as a failed request for nose art, but I liked the overall composition and it occurred to me although the kill marks are less interesting visually, they have a profound psychological dimension, more so even than the nose art. I therefore decided to include it. The raid on Nuremburg was also a big one, and had the added significance of being directed against a spiritual seat of the Nazi party.
1701 07-04 Blood Avenger RAF Avro Lancaster: Repaired repainted departing for Dresden 1945-02-14—2025-07-13; Channah; old private photo. For the Blood Avenger images, I blended the typical Channah prompts with terms alluding to the Biblical lady in white and something akin to justice; and in terms evocative of the Biblical story of Lot. As mentioned, 1699 absolutely gave me chills; I liked this one a lot, too, although it raises more questions than it answers about her nature (singular or dual? Human or monster? Female or androgenous? Sane or mad?)
1702 07-04 Nurses are Heroes, Nurses are always needed1703 07-04 Batonnoir Sisters USO Camp Shows, Foxhole Circuit, Manila Philippines 1945-02-21 gig poster1718 07-04 For God and Country1725 07-04 London Life 1942 calendar (REGULAR EDITION)1726 07-04 London Life 1942 calendar (SPECIAL EDITION)
The images here are generally closely aligned with the general goals of the original project described in Subsection A, but become more creative and a bit speculative because they are not inspired by specific historical works. Instead, they are images of a type that were made or might have been made during the Second World War, and aren’t critical or subversive of the original subject matter or the party who made it, whether for good (the Allied images) or bad (the Axis image).
1702 07-04 Nurses are Heroes, Nurses are always needed—2025-07-09. Chastity, Hellinore, Penance; recruiting poster; compare https://www.pinterest.com/pin/376472850079087870/. I liked this as a way to use Penny and Chas in a broader and more favorable role than spies or wannabe men, and combine them with Hellinore, who in this incarnation would be a prominent person in British Society and/or a press sensation as a successful minister supporting the war effort with her sermons.
1703 07-04 Batonnoir Sisters USO Camp Shows, Foxhole Circuit, Manila Philippines 1945-02-21 gig poster—2025-07-10. Penance & Chastity; gig poster. I did not find any gig or other U.S.O. event announcement flyers or posters per se online; but it seems reasonable they likely would have had some. There were magazine ads and posters advertising the locations of U.S.O. clubs inside the United States, there were photos of specific U.S.O. events, and there were U.S.O. fundraising posters, which I considered when styling this image. Although the U.S.O. later adopted a more-or-less standard logo, there was no evidence of that in WW2; the initials would be displayed in different fonts, different colors, different positions, with different images, etc. across different images. But there were examples very similar to the U.S.O. initials here. This advertises a show in a part of Manila after the US had taken it back, but while the battle for the city and surrounds continued to rage on nearby. This is consistent with the accounts of U.S.O. shows very close to the front lines and the fact a number of U.S.O. entertainers were killed during the war while involved in entertaining the troops.
1718 07-04 For God and Country—2025-07-11. Hellinore; propaganda poster; compare http://vintageposterblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/ww2-odd.jpg and https://www.pinterest.com/pin/435652963923443375/. This is one that came a bit out of left field, although there are a handful of religious propaganda posters from the US and UK as shown at the links. Since Hellinore’s priesthood is/will be important to her in the story, I didn’t want to minimize it in this project; and I liked this image when it popped up.
1725 07-04 London Life 1942 calendar (REGULAR EDITION)—2025-07-12. Fang; pinup calendar. This is based on a thousand pinup calendars from the 1930s/40s/50s. Search for, e.g., “pinup calendars of the 1940s” for hundreds of hits online. The only rare characteristic of this calendar would be the ethnicity of the pinup. Although there are a few examples on line of 1930s and WW2 era Asian pinups, see, e.g., https://animalia-life.club/qa/pictures/asian-pin-up-art, I could not find any context on them including what countries they might have been printed in. Although, having some knowledge of the male condition, I find it hard to imagine there weren’t at least some underground images serving every interest and population around. Unlike later calendars, most of the 1940s calendars didn’t have different images for each month (Esquire and some magazines seemed to be the exception). Rather, a lot of them were intended as ads promoting largely male-oriented products to male customers, especially B2B sales in the automotive and electrical areas, etc. like the later SnapOn Tools calendars. The intent was for them to be hung on walls in the workplace as a permanent customer advertisement everybody (male) in the shop liked to pause and look at before, say, ordering a new electrical or automotive part. London Life was the title of an early (1920s-1940s) magazine that, although not really a fetish magazine, got into fetish areas especially in the reader letters section. It wound up being an inspiration for several of the pin-up and pulp artists and photographers of the 1940s-1960s. (Not to be confused with a later magazine with the same name that was published in the 1960s.)
1726 07-04 London Life 1942 calendar (SPECIAL EDITION)— 2025-07-12. Fang; pinup calendar. I couldn’t believe the AI gave me an image or two with Fang in black leather—and it even threw in what I’m going to assert is a whip. I had to use this one and decided to make it a special edition honoring the readers because of the readers’ role in the most fetishistic aspects of the magazine.
These images fall into two groups: Western Allied and Soviet. The Western images are unrealistic, in my view, only in the extent to which they bring to the surface, themes that were present but heavily downplayed at the time. Between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the 1930s and 1940s were among the most socially disruptive in European history. Both regimes used forced labor, starvation, the cold, concentration camps, and death camps to kill and incarcerate millions, while shuffling ethnic groups and entire nations back and forth like chess pieces to suit their designs. All of the countries involved mobilized their populations for war, and to a greater extent than in previous wars, that included the mass mobilization of women in military, support, and industrial roles they had previously been discouraged from undertaking. The result was families and friends being taken apart while strangers were thrown together. This combined with longer-term trends and the general sense of “living for today” given the uncertainty of any future to change the ways workers were recruited, and the way romantic and sexual relationships formed and disintegrated. Recruiting posters of the time, sometimes subtly but unmistakably, suggested that men could get laid by demonstrating their masculinity through military service; and that women could meet these masculine warriors by joining auxiliary formations that worked in a support role for (in most countries) male warriors. The subtlety of some of these messages was deliberate because it was subversive: public sentiment generally discouraged women, in particular, from departing from historical norms and expectations; and was alarmed by the disruptions of war. But government propagandists used forbidden messaging anyway, often by remaining indirect and vague enough that their methods could be plausibly denied. The Soviet image is unrealistic because even though it represents a loudly-touted message of international harmony and unity in communist ideology, that ideology was at complete odds with the highly nationalistic and ethnic realities of Soviet propaganda and policy. There was a categorical inconsistency between, on the one hand, egalitarian Marxian and other communist messaging that preached the end of nationalism and racism in favor of class-based cooperation; and on the other hand, the extent to which Stalin used appeals to nationalism and patriotism to rally support within the Soviet Union for the war and for his regime; while simultaneously directing genocidal measures against ethnic groups and nations considered disloyal or risky from the Pacific Ocean to the Elbe river. The fact Stalin, himself a Georgian, relied primarily on Russian nationalism, is just another ironic twist. Western and Soviet propaganda were thus similar in their hypocrisy and cynicism.
1719 07-04 Flying Aces cover July 1940–Britain’s Youngest Ace—2025-06-13; Rivqah, Roger, and Miryam; magazine cover; compare https://www.airplanesandrockets.com/magazines/flying-aces/images/flying-aces-may-1941-cover.jpg. In reality, virtually every “Flying Aces” cover had an airplane on the cover, not people away from airplanes. However, the image struck me as the kind of image gossip magazines would use in reporting on interesting war-related personalities. I had originally had a mock cover of Collier’s magazine in mind; Colliers had several images of serviceman-and-his-wife during the war although having two women might have been a bit much for general-interest mass-circulation media of the time. In the end I went with Flying Aces because, duh, the title complemented the theme; they did in fact have (fictional and factual) articles about fighter aces; and it was a British magazine.
1720 07-04 Volunteer for Flying Duties—2025-06-14; Miryam, Roger, Rivqah; recruitment poster; compare https://www.alamy.com/british-ww2-royal-air-force-raf-recruitment-poster-volunteer-for-flying-duties-1942-1945-image418221186.html propaganda poster), of which there were a number of variants and of similarly-themed and composed posters, for the composition itself; and for the theme of recruitment posters suggesting that joining up is the best way to get laid, see, e.g., https://www.ebay.com/itm/284032713401.
1721 07-04 Take the Road to Victory—2025-06-14; Miryam, Roger, Rivqah; recruitment poster; compare
https://www.alamyimages.fr/la-seconde-guerre-mondiale-affiche-de-propagande-de-l-information-du-public-2-image351137925.html?imageid=3830CED0-63CD-4E2B-8EA0-0F6E32A3E753&p=639688&pn=1&searchId=577cfcdc58da60b6d23b057045f51060&searchtype=0 (for composition and wording generally). And for the theme of women seeking men: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/69031806763099077/ and https://www.alamy.com/ww2-propaganda-recruitment-serve-in-the-waaf-with-the-men-who-fly-british-ww2-recruitment-poster-womens-auxiliary-airforce-war-work-occupation-uk-1940s-world-war-ii-image503759123.html, (the latter of which I found when I was preparing this blurb, long after the image was generated, and even has the same pilot from 1720!) Yes, the base image in 1721 is exactly the same base image as that used in 1720 (although processed differently)! Posters directed at women were more subtle in the relationship messaging than those directed at men. Of course, unlike the male counterpart who is encouraged to be tempted by women, proposing women look for husbands in the services might have gone too far towards suggesting women who joined the supporting services were hussies, given the unequal gender expectations of the time, and the great fears of the time in most combatant countries that the social disruption and rapidly changing norms occasioned by the war were undermining conservative values and putting young women at extreme risk. Nonetheless, I went there with this poster, partly because I enjoyed the idea the same image, and even the same “V-for-Victory” slogan, might hold different messages for male and female viewers; and to highlight the differences between expected gender roles, and questioning what the motives for joining up were for men and women of the time. I thought about having Hellinore’s sisters be more upstanding ladies looking for marriage, instead of slags looking for a good time, but challenging instead of endorsing expectations is always more fun; and I was trying to think of ideas to get Miryam, Roger, and Rivqah in images that was not-inconsistent with the project.
1722 07-04 Be Stooge for Capitalist War (CPUK propaganda printed 1941-06-21 and taken down next day)—2025-06-14; Miryam, Roger, Rivqah; propaganda poster. I’m not a real big fan of communism, certainly not of the USSR, and found it repellant that communists in the Western allies were opposed to the war when Stalin was Hitler’s ally in carving up Europe; and when the war aims were more or less justified in terms of defending innocent people getting attacked, plundered, transported, enslaved, and killed by aggressive brutes (although clearly Britain’s desire for a balance of power, and naked French fear of Germany, were also critical), then suddenly did an about-face when Hitler stabbed Stalin in the back and it became a war about propping up Stalin’s regime in the name of global communist unity. Nonetheless, I found the idea irresistible because the complete about-face in attitudes highlights the antithetical and utterly inconsistent perspectives Western communists of the time were able to reconcile in their own minds.
1723 07-04 Skeevey Aunties welcome youngest Ace back to UK soil 1940-06-29—2025-06-14; Miryam, Roger, Rivqah; old private photo. See comments about posters for 1720-1722 regarding the origin of the image. When the AI gave me this image, it didn’t really tie into any of my planned posters; but I was too entertained by it to let it go to waste.
1724 07-04 Ace and his Aunties at the Officer’s Club the next morning 1940-06-30—2025-06-14; Rivqah, Roger, and Miryam; old private photo. See comments about posters for 1720-1722 regarding the origin of the image, and about 1723 regarding the appeal of the image.
1944 07-04 I’d rather be with them… than waiting–The WAC—2025-06-15; Penance & Chastity; motivational poster; compare https://www.alamy.com/id-rather-be-with-them-than-waiting-the-wac-womens-army-corps-american-ww2-female-war-work-poster-1941-1945-image424727714.html. American recruiters and marketing men seemed to be less subtle on the theme of women looking for men than the Brits. Yes, the slogan could be interpreted as having more of a war-priority meaning than I think it did; but we’re getting pretty out of the closet here. I loved this image because of the way it suggests Penny and Chas are half-dressed practically for foreign military-support duty, and half-dressed impractically for a cocktail party, mirroring the mixed message of the poster.
1942E&R 07-04 Workers of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant Named for F. Dzerzhinsky! Arise and Fight for the Revolution! Make Stalingrad the Graveyard of Fascism! (English & Russian)—2025-06-16; Kadidia; motivational poster; Translation (Russian to English): РАБОТНИКИ СТАЛИНГРАДСКОГО ТРАКТОРНОГО ЗАВОДА ИМЕНИ Ф. ДЗЕРЖИНСКОГО! Workers of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant Named for F. Dzerzhinsky!; СДЕЛАЕМ СТАЛИНГРАД КЛАДБИЩЕМ ФАШИЗМА! Make Stalingrad the Graveyard of Fascism!. I love the completely uninspiring wording of the factory name, which is typically Soviet; as is including turgid language like that in a propaganda poster. The factory named was one of three huge factories at the heart of Stalingrad’s industrial district that became a scene of prolonged and vicious fighting. All three factories were destroyed in the battle but rebuilt, 2 of them before the war ended. To my knowledge, the factory workers themselves didn’t drop their hammers and sickles to pick up rifles when they heard the German tanks approaching their factory; but the idea that they might is such a communist, and especially Soviet, trope I wanted to employ it. There were black workers in the USSR, including for example African-Americans disillusioned by America’s apartheid policies and system and attracted by socialism’s race-neutral language (along with white Americans attracted only by other propaganda messages). More’s the pity the USSR didn’t live up to it, despite their willingness to capitalize on America’s failings on race issues. Having a black woman lead a primarily white-male workforce to the barricades would not have been an alien idea to the leftists fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War three years earlier, and indeed the Anarchist, Syndicalist, and Communist posters portraying strong women and heroic people of color are one of the reasons I expanded the project to include works referencing the Spanish Civil War. But multicultural internationalism, to the USSR, was a cynical means of recruiting foreign agents and causing disruption abroad, rather than a heavy theme in internal Soviet propaganda.
1717 07-04 The Viscountess Fensmere Reminds You to Kindly Keep Calm and Carry On1940 07-04 Wanted for Murder–of English with her smack talk1941 07-04 Set Europe Ablaze!–Anarchy ‘n’ the UK
PLEASE NOTE: Subsections (B), (C), and (E) will be posted out of order, beginning on July 5th, because I began posting the series in reverse order from July 4th until I realized I wasn’t going to have enough time to include everything in order.
The images here start to depart markedly from the goals of the original project described in Subsection A in that it doesn’t seem likely they would ever have been created; and therefore they do not aspire to historical authenticity but are instead editorial in nature, i.e., I am commenting on the times or the subject matter in some way, as discussed in the description of each work.
1717 07-04 The Viscountess Fensmere Reminds You to Kindly Keep Calm and Carry On—2025-06-10; Hellinore; motivational poster; compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On. The very-British, very understated upper-class stiff-upper-lip sterotype reflected by the original propaganda poster (which as noted in the linked article, was hardly used during the war because it was being withheld for use in the most-dire of circumstances, which were never deemed to have arrived) really made me think of a formal upper-crust event like a tea party where people could calmly discuss tea as bombs rained down around them. Or a Monty Python lampoon of the same.
1940 07-04 Wanted for Murder–of English with her smack talk—2025-06-11; Hellinore; motivational poster (Victor Keppler, 1944); compare https://goldenageposters.com/products/1944-wanted-for-murder-her-careless-talk-cost-lives-victor-keppler-wwii. The original was one of numerous posters produced by many combatants, warning their citizens to be careful not to reveal secrets with loose talk. I liked the idea of a wanted poster but frankly found the original a bit boring and lacking in context. I had taken Hellinore, an upper-class character, so far down the path of being loud, eccentric, and independent to the point of offensive, I wanted to take her further toward public enemy territory.
1941 07-04 Set Europe Ablaze!–Anarchy ‘n’ the UK—2025-06-12; Kadidia; motivational poster; compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Operations_Executive#Wartime_commentaries_on_SOE. Churchill was said to have authorized the Special Operations Executive with a mission to “Set Europe Ablaze.” I did not find any reference to when its existence as an organization was made public, but suffice it to say, as a secret organization coordinating secret missions, it did not have any propaganda posters—at least, in its own name, or proclaiming its own purpose; although it may well have been involved in the distribution of propaganda materials without attribution. I chose Kadidia for this imaginary poster because other than 1782, which didn’t really showcase her personality or role, I didn’t find real WW2 posters with black women. In choosing her, I had in mind the SOE agent Noor Inayat Khan. I also like the spirited anarchic defiance of the message, which because it refers to Europe as a whole as the target area for operations, almost seemed to suggest an attack on the contintent’s culture and establishment as a whole by a radical outsider.
1685 07-04 We Can Do It!1686 07-04 LIFE America’s Secret Weapon1687 07-04 Young England Wants to Help1737 07-04 Help China! China Is Helping Us1736 07-04 On Our Side: The Chinese Fighter1738 07-04 This woman is your FRIEND–She fights for FREEDOM1781 07-04 Keep fit to fight1782 07-04 Cadet Nurse: The Girl with a Future1935 07-04 Join the ATS-Women with a will to Win-Apply at any Army Recruiting Centre (UK black version)1936 07-04 Join the ATS-Women with a will to Win-Apply at any Army Recruiting Centre (UK Union Jack version)1945 07-04 Defend them, they could be your mothers, your wives, your sisters, your daughters (abridged version)
The images in this first subset (07-04-A) of the Defend the Constitution! (07-04) project more-or-less represent what I originally set out to do with it: Place the characters from ARP into the context of actual, specific historical propaganda posters from World War Two in a way that both related to their role in ARP, and reflected the original character and intent of the propaganda posters they were based on. Hopefully there is plenty of personality in these images, but I don’t think they contain much tongue-in-cheek mockery of the original images or of the streams of intellectual thought they represented. In a couple of images (1736 & 1738), women are portrayed where women would probably have been outside the contemplation of the original poster makers; but overall, the messages here are generally consistent with the messages in the original posters, whether for good (the Allied posters) or bad (the Axis poster); and the liberties taken in using female characters don’t undermine or attack the source material per se.
1685 07-04 We Can Do It!—2025-06-02; Chava; motivational poster (J. Howard Miller 1943); compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Do_It! This poster actually became better-known as a result of a postwar revival of interest, than it was during the war. I liked its association with female empowerment, and the absence of any traditionalist trappings trying to shoehorn women supporting the war effort into an unequal or subordinate role to men. It’s just a matter-of-fact call to women, encouraging them and asking for their help and support. Chava seemed the obvious candidate for this poster as a physically-strong foundry worker in her own right.
1686 07-04 LIFE America’s Secret Weapon—2025-06-02; Chava; magazine cover (Norman Rockwell 1943); compare https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/07/rosie-the-riveter/. Notes: Deliberately switched magazines and style because I think of Life as iconic for WW2 images and I wasn’t interested in a Norman Rockwell vibe per se. Life had a few color covers although it was very rare in that era; but I liked Chava’s red color too much to make it B&W. As with 1685, I like the fact Rosie the Riveter is taken on her own terms without trying to limit her by proscribing her role or what it might mean; and knew instantly this one was right for Chava. Here we see an everyday moment from her life, that in no way distinguishes her from men in a stereotyping way.
1687 07-04 Young England Wants to Help—2025-06-03; Young Hellinore, Young Pentecost; motivational poster (F.T. Chapman c. 1939-1941); compare: https://go-leasing24.info/practice-areas/bergen-county-dyfs-lawyers/#google_vignette. Based on a poster from a US-based charity supporting Britain in the early years of World War Two urging American children to help in supporting Britain. I changed it to English supporting Dutch because the two characters are English, the English supported the Dutch in WW2, and in the lifetime of the two characters, the English supported the Dutch revolt against the Spanish. Although I generally disfavor children being encouraged to participate in warfare, e.g., being recruited for underage units like the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, excluding them from the sense of community encouraged in wartime would be alienating and devaluing. I think this poster suggests an appropriate route for helping without infantilizing them or emphasizing their undeniable role as particular victims of war.
1736 07-04 On Our Side: The Chinese Fighter—2025-06-04; Fang; educational poster (1944); compare: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/side-wwii-propaganda-posters-russia-1924405148. As indicated at the provided link, this is one of at least four posters in the “On Our Side” series along with British, French, and Russian counterparts. Like 1738, the original seemed to be part of a broader effort to educate Americans about the geography and nationalities involved in the war by explaining who our allies were. This image became a way to use one of the pilot images of Fang I really loved, despite the difficulties of getting accurate insignia on the plane itself (discussed elsewhere). In the original series of images, the flags of each nation were separate from the images with people; and the angle of the image made it plausible no insignia would be visible on the plane.
1738 07-04 This woman is your FRIEND–She fights for FREEDOM—2025-06-04; Hong; educational poster; compare https://www.redbubble.com/i/poster/This-Man-is-Your-Friend-Chinese-1940s-WW2-Poster-by-Lueshis/102507112.LVTDI. I confess, when I first saw the original image on which this one is based, I took it as being of a piece with the wartime Life magazine article indistinguishable from phrenology or Aryan race theory, trying to explain how American readers could tell a Japanese person from a Chinese one just by looking at them. However, like 1736, this was one of a whole series of posters portraying European and Asian allies on an equal footing, presumably as part of an effort to educate Americans about who our allies were. This series was a bit bland artistically, but of the limited historically-authentic options available for portraying Asian characters positively on Allied propaganda, I decided to take it. Handily, the bar at the bottom of the poster also provided an elevated surface for Hong’s left boot without including any background from the underlying image, which would have been inconsistent with the original composition. Like many posters of the time, human figures were isolated from their original backgrounds before being included in posters.
1737 07-04 Help China! China Is Helping Us—2025-06-05; Hong; fundraising poster (James Montgomery Flagg c 1940-1942); compare: https://digitalcollections.hclib.org/digital/collection/p17208coll3/id/1014. This (like 1687) represents one of the numerous US wartime fundraising campaigns for various allied causes. United China Relief (“UCR”) brought together seven different China-relief organizations in the US dating to the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and was later amalgamated with others into an umbrella organization that was an antecedent of the United Way. Given the frustrating difficulty with placing Hong and Fang into historically accurate contexts using the AI discussed elsewhere, I thought about making them actresses in movie posters, but the convention of the time in the US was to have white actors portray significant roles regardless of the character’s putative nationality; and in an effort to avoid attracting more Japanese attention than necessary (and perhaps to keep the left-leaning Chinese film industry more generally apolitical), the Nationalist Chinese movie industry was discouraged from overtly portraying warfare against the Japanese. Because the UCR’s purpose was to raise money for China, UCR images tended to portray the Chinese as sympathetic victims as well as fighters; but the image on which this one was based managed to fully convey the fighting spirit of the Chinese, in a way that to me (from the determined expression on the Chinese mother’s face and the soldier marching instead of recuperating despite being injured and not-quite-uniformed) suggested behind-the-scenes partisan resistance—which is how I imagined Hong participating in the war effort, sending radio reports on Japanese troop movements back to the Chinese army.
1781 07-04 Keep fit to fight—2025-06-06; Lancelot; motivational poster; compare https://www.dpvintageposters.com/posters/war-citizenship-public-causes/world-war-ii/american/heath-and-welfare/keep-fit-to-fight-original-american-wwii-air-force-physical-fitness-poster-no-3_9324. I wanted to find an appropriate but not boring or stereotyped platform for introducing Lancelot, perhaps the most traditionally male hero character likely to appear in ARP; and I decided for symmetry, to avoid diminishing women by comparison given my clearly-revealed preference for pinup, cheesecake, and similar depictions of women, that all of his appearances in this series had to have an aspect of beefcake: The more-unrealistic-while-pretending-to-be-realistic, the better. There are a number of US wartime posters of men that seem to modern eyes, at least, to have an erotic undertone, especially recruitment posters which from context strongly suggest that undertone is homoerotic. There was a fantastically unexpected US poster emphasizing hygiene depicting three hunky soldiers showering naked at a jungle encampment. But unfortunately, the AI wouldn’t let me even get close to doing it justice. This image was as close as I could get to that vibe, and I think it gets the job done.
1782 07-04 Cadet Nurse: The Girl with a Future—2025-06-07; Kadidia; recruitment poster; compare:
https://goldenageposters.com/products/1944-be-a-cadet-nurse-the-girl-with-a-future-jon-whitcomb-wwii-full-size?variant=44536213242136. This poster introduces Kadidia, in the form of the uniformed, determined nurse to the left, but provides only minimal information about who she is or what she represents. (More fulsome introduction of Kadidia to follow in subsections B, D, and F.). The reason for including this poster, despite its fairly uninteresting composition is really because, in the first phase of this project, when I was trying to be very true to historical antecedents, I was surprised by the near-total absence of minorities from any of the US World-War-Two posters I found online. This is notably in contrast not only to images from later US wars, but to earlier ones—at least in World War One and the Civil War, there was a clear and direct appeal to blacks to support the war effort. (Late in my research, after finishing this image, I came across a “Together We Win” image showing people of color fighting alongside a white soldier and I’ve kept that in case the reception for these posters is warm enough to persuade me to do another set.). I also found a US image portraying Japanese-Americans quietly cooperating in their own segregation and detention; and a couple of British images with minorities, one analogous to the US “Together We Win” poster, and another intended to recruit blacks from British colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Apparently before it was ever used, however, the British decided not to recruit black soldiers because they didn’t want to arm and train them given the anti-colonial sentiments gaining traction within the Empire. I would categorize the original of the Cadet Nurse poster as ambivalent on the issue of race; and did not find any online commentary to clarify the artist’s or the program’s intentions. The idea they could be black women is supported by the fact the Cadet Nurse program, apparently quite rarely for wartime government programs, was amended at the insistence of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to prevent racial discrimination, eventually recruiting more than 3,000 minorities including even Japanese-American women recruited from the US relocation (essentially concentration, although not as deadly as the Axis variety) camps.
1935 & 1936 07-04 Join the ATS-Women with a will to Win-Apply at any Army Recruiting Centre (UK black & Union Jack versions)—2025-06-08; Hellinore; propaganda poster; compare: https://www.alamy.com/vintage-ww2-recruitment-poster-with-female-ats-member-in-uniform-union-jack-flag-flies-behind-women-with-a-will-to-win!-join-the-ats-apply-at-any-army-recruiting-centre-1939-1945-image342804140.html?imageid=16439DED-FF10-4602-991A-74F85C0BBF85&p=66052&pn=1&searchId=eecbd4edf63c33347e7f7b028a6f8218&searchtype=0. I was thrilled to find a poster so emphatically directed towards independent female patriotism and personality, showing an assertive woman doing something other than supporting a man or looking for a man, that didn’t go out of its way to allude to traditional women’s roles. [1936 only: It was also a lot of fun pushing the adult-Hellinore in-your-face-bling-priestess image to yet another level, like a professional wrestler and valet rolled into one, in this and a couple of subsequent posters combining religious fervor with patriotism.]
1945 07-04 Defend them, they could be your mothers, your wives, your sisters, your daughters (abridged & unabridged versions)—Explicit version containing fascist imagery at 07-04[X] Defend them, they could be your mothers, your wives, your sisters, your daughters at Patreon.com/TheRemainderman. 2025-06-09; Penance & Chastity; propaganda poster (1944); compare: https://history.blog.fordham.edu/?p=257. Translation (English to Italian): Defend [all-female] them! Difendile!; They could be your mothers, your wives, your sisters, your daughters Potrebbero essere le tue madri, le tue mogli, le tue sorelle, le tue figlie. The original of this poster depicts a rape in progress, more explicitly than I could imply with AI or upload to DA without worrying about being kicked off again; but the image of the enemy menacing women is not at all uncommon in the period. The enemy is represented by a black man in the original, with obvious racist overtones. Nothing subtle or nuanced about the message there. I comment further on the racial issue in 1946; for historical accuracy, I was reluctant to shy away from the racist component; but in addition to worrying about the very real risk of the image being taken offline, and feeling a bit queasy myself about actually implementing the poster, racism among humans is not an overt theme of the first volume of ARP. Ultimately, I decided to execute it this way because it focuses more on the vulnerability and suffering of the women and thus the gender aspect of the underlying poster, which is more relevant to the themes and characters in the first volume of ARP.
