U.S.+Propaganda+during+World+War+2

=“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”-Adolf Hitler =

Propaganda today is often viewed as a negative thing and often gets bad press. However, in World War 2, the United States made use of propaganda in a very constructive way. At the start of World War 2 the United State's economy was still weak from the Great Depression. This and other factors left the American people unwilling to enter the war in Europe and the Pacific. There was some propaganda urging the public that the U.S. had to act, such as the above picture(picture not yet added), but these were not effective. Then came the attack on Pearl Harbor. Once it was obvious that America could not avoid the war it also became obvious that the economy needed to be strengthened to power America's war machine. To do this the government started a propaganda campaign to encourage citizens that could not fight like women and the elderly to go to work in factories and to conserve and recycle everything they could. This campaign was one of the most successful of the war.

Having succeeded in reviving the U.S. economy, the government turned it's attention towards gaining public approval for the war. Propaganda campaigns were launched with the purposes of painting the Nazis and Japanese as great evils and their actions as crimes against humanity. These campaigns also told the American people that they were fighting for liberty and justice. These campaigns were highly effective, as they picture true Americans as people who worked together to do everything they could to help their country and their troops. They also showed anyone not doing their part as helping the enemy. Strategies like this made the American propaganda campaigns during World War 2 some of the most successful in history and help to win the war.

=Annotated Bibliography =

__Quote__ "Adolf Hitler Quotes." //Find the Famous Quotes You Need, ThinkExist.com Quotations.//ThinkExist. Web. 10 Jan. 2012. . The source from which I got the quote at the top of the article.

__Sources__ "American Propaganda in WWII." //ThinkQuest//. ORACLE, Aug. 2001. Web. 10 Jan. 2012. . This was my main source of information. The format is helpful as it explained how propaganda changed through the war and the effects the propaganda had on America.