“Liberators”
A famously cryptic piece of propaganda
To the untrained eye, the famous Nazi poster “Liberators” or “Kultur-Terror” might look a sorry mess of vaguely anti-America imagery (anti-America by Nazi measures at least). From head to toe you can see symbols of America as interpreted through the prism of Nazism: boorish self confidence, unfettered capitalism, Judaism, race-mixing, slavery, big bombs, big guns, topless Native Americans, airplane wings, drums, flags, nooses, manacles and capirotes, all of which adds up to … what exactly?
The word is Seelenlosigkeit — or “soullessness,” an affliction that the Nazis attributed to America as a cause and consequence of her degeneration and cultural malaise. The poster was designed by Harald Damsleth, a Norweigan artist whose sympathies for the National Socialists earned him two years of hard labour for treason once the war was over. Damsleth had been a longtime member of Norway’s homegrown fascist party, Nasjonal Samling, and was, during their brief tenure in power, their most enthusiastic propagandist. As is to be expected of a fascist propagandist in wartime Europe, he produced a good deal of anti-Soviet propaganda (see below). He produced his “Liberators” poster in 1944, and this handy quote explains the whole thing quite well I think:
In the image, the great creature is composed of wildly incongruous body parts, each of which represents some facet of American culture that was anathema to the ideals of National Socialism. From the waving Old Glory, to the [Indian] chief headdress to the figure of the Statue of Liberty in the background and the textual label in the foreground, the monster is unmistakably a visual amalgamation of all things American.
So the poster’s purpose was to give viewers a portrait of all the mess and bloody horror (and Seelenlosigkeit) that America was bringing to Europe with its “liberation” — but what about the Ku Klux Klan imagery? Given their broadly similar worldviews we tend to presume a degree of kinship between Nazism and the sort of racism practised by the Klan, but that presumption might be ill-founded (the New Yorker published an article on a similar topic a few months ago with the title How American Racism Influenced Hitler).
Down at the bottom amid the ruins of European civilisation the man with the funny Bioshock-style headpiece is holding a sign that says “The USA shall save European culture from destruction”.
