Soon after the Bolshevik Revolution wall newspapers were hung up around Moscow to distribute ideological thoughts and to (dis-)inform the people. As many people were illiterate in the beginning of this century, posters were the most effective tool for propaganda in the USSR. The ways of production and their design were so special that they reach high prices today, as pieces of art.
However, German posters were produced without any aesthetic idea behind, but to manipulate by using open disinformation and propaganda. Several motives existed, each fitting to a certain political topic.
- Very often they turned out extremely racist.
- The motive could be PR for
- The fight for each other, to work together in war times was another motive. In this case the presentation of different generations working together on the same project was important.
- Other posters were produced to make everybody save materials of daily life. The "Kohlenklau", the figure of an ugly thief of coal, was so popular that finally comics about him were sold. Everybody new the toon figure; a perfect and successful propaganda.
- A mixture between warning and propaganda were the posters talking about the enemy being everywhere and listening. In the beginning the enemy was portrayed as a shadow wearing a hat; a hostile person, hard to recognize. Later the figure seemed to fade away, was no longer really visible but still there, by then more mystic and frightening national security.
What is true for German propaganda posters can also be said about other political powers. And also today propaganda posters are used in pre-election periods. Style has changed, but the idea of presenting something simple that can't get forgotten easily, is still the same.
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After World War II the importance of propaganda still increased, on the commercial level as well as on a political level, in the era of the Cold War. The propaganda institutions of the different countries wanted their people to think the right way, which meant, the national way. In the USA the McCarthy-era started, a totalitarian system in struggle against communism.
Cold War brought the era of spies with it, which was the perfect tool of disinformation. But the topic as a movie-genre seems still popular today, as the unchanged success of James Bond-movies show.
A huge net of propaganda was built up for threatening with the nuclear bomb: pretending that the enemy was even more dangerous than the effect of such a bomb.
And later, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, disinformation found other fields of work, like the wars of the 1990s showed us.
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In 1994 the U.S.-Republicans demonstrated how parties tend to manipulate people instead of standing for certain political thoughts: The Republican party contracted a consultant to find out the most-wanted topics of the U.S.-population, and afterwards the same consultant wrote a paper, called the Contract with America. Out of this, Republican Politicians all received a positive list of words they were told to use in speeches about themselves and a list of negative words for political competitors.
This kind of thought control plays with the issue that words with negative/positive connotations go deeper than neutral words. They get integrated into the listening person's way of thinking. Even if someone understands the strategy, it will still be difficult to forget the black-and-white-images, as soon as they have been listened to.
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The Council for Mutual Economic Aid (COMECON) was set up in 1949 consisting of six East European countries: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR, followed later by the German Democratic Republic (1950), Mongolia (1962), Cuba (1972), and Vietnam (1978). Its aim was, to develop the member countries' economies on a complementary basis for the purpose of achieving self-sufficiency. In 1991, Comecon was replaced by the Organization for International Economic Cooperation.
Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero († 1980) was elected archbishop because he was very conservative. But when he saw how more and more priests and definitely innocent people were murdered, he changed his attitudes and became one of the sharpest critics of the government. He gave shelter to those in danger, never stopped talking against violence and his Sunday sermons on the radio where moments to tell the truth to the Salvadorians, also mentioning the names of the disappeared or killed persons. As Romero got extremely popular and dangerous for the population he was killed by death squads, while reading a sermon.
Black propaganda does not tell its source. The recipient cannot find out the correct source. Rather would it be possible to get a wrong idea about the sender. It is very helpful for separating two allies.