10 - John Heartfield, Photomontage and Anti-Nazi Propaganda.

In mid 1939, World War Two spread across the globe, centring in Europe. The War had the allies, being mainly Great Britain, France and Poland, with other countries joining later, against the Central Powers, being mainly Germany and Japan. In Germany at the time, Hitler and his party had anti communist views and wanted a 'Master', or 'Aryan' race, meaning an idea and pure white race. Many people in Germany disagreed with these views, but censorship was high at the time meaning Germans only heard what the Nazi Party wanted them to hear, and they many German's did not speak up.

John Heartfield - The Meaning of Geneva -
AIZ - November 1932
Photomontage - Thames & Hudson - 1991

However, some Anti-Nazi Propaganda was created, even for magazines. One example is AIZ or Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitun (The Workers Pictorial Newspaper) and an artist who designed a lot of the illustrations for the magazine, John Heartfield.
One magazine cover, to the left, shows a dove, the symbol of peace, dead and pierced through a bayonet on the end of a rifle. This suggests that the Nazi's have killed the peace and have started war, and that they are in the wrong. The killed dove is in front of the League of Nations, which was an intergovernmental alliance formed at the end of World War One to keep peace among countries. This suggests that peace has ended and the fight is against this organisation. The League of Nations was based in Geneva, Switzerland, which was a neutral country in both the First and Second World War. The flag on top of the building shows the Switzerland Flag, however it has been warped into a Swastika, suggesting that the Nazi's had some control or were trying to take control over Switzerland, even though it was never attacked throughout the war.

John Heartfield -
Adolf the Superman -
Used for an AIZ cover - 1932
Photomontage -
Thames & Hudson - 1991

The image to the right, of Adolf Hitler has a direct attack on him. The use of photo-montage in this is powerful as it suggests Hitler was swallowing money up left, right and centre running up to and during the war, by building things like the Atlantic wall, an long spread line of defence built by Germany along the Western Coast of Europe and Scandinavia, against the mainland continent of the United Kingdom. Examples like this left the public of Germany left in poverty without any food or other supplies.