| August 1944 Official United States Treasury Department War Finance Division poster “Buy That Invasion Bond!” by Madison Avenue advertising agency illustrator Robert A. Moore (July 29, 1910 – ????) was issued to state War Finance Committees (WFCs), the United States Army and Navy, the Office of War Information (OWI), the Inter-Departmental War Bond Committee, retail stores, and other outlets. Total distribution reached 600,000 copies, according to the September 1, 1944, issue of the Minute Man, the War Finance Division’s weekly magazine promoting the War Loan Drive. Note the GI carrying a Thompson M1 submachine gun; Landing Ship Tank (LST)s disgorging men and vehicles on the beach; wrecked and burning landing craft; and invasion-striped single-engined fighters overhead. The invasion of Normandy had just taken place in June 1944, and this poster was clearly inspired by those landings. Poster campaign guidelines for the Treasury’s 6th, 7th and 8th War Loans during 1944-1945 reveal how the procurement process worked. Receiving the Treasury’s poster request, Art Pool chairman Elwood Whitney (May 11, 1904 – November 12, 1992), vice-president and art director of Foote, Cone & Belding, convened a meeting with representatives of the Treasury, participating members of the Art Pool, and their fellow copywriters. The art directors and copywriters discussed the campaign and its stated goal, and exchanged information on posters that the Treasury had found successful in the past. For example, Treasury officials believed that posters conveying a “personal appeal” worked best-such as the image of a soldier throwing a grenade captioned “Let ‘Em Have It” and the image of a GI waving from a porthole, captioned “Till we meet again.” Discussion also focused upon images and copy appeals that the Treasury wished to avoid, such as the theme “Bring him back sooner,” which OWI’s James D. Herbert (December 26, 1896 – March 3, 1970) noted could be misinterpreted by the public as an official “promise” of a loved 1’s safe return. The Treasury also banished casualty images of the kind used in OWI’s own “careless talk” posters. Art Pool member Gordon Aymar (July 24, 1893 – February 12, 1989) of Compton Advertising reported to Herbert, “We were warned not to go to extremes of blood and guts— no mutilation pictures.” “Strange as it may seem,” Aymar wrote, “[the Treasury’s representatives] stated that the American public did not like to face the fact that their bond money was going to kill Jap[anese]. As an example of this, posters showing bloody scenes of an American bayoneting a Jap[anese] soldier didn’t get anywhere. On the other hand American soldiers in danger of being bayoneted by Japs apparently did the trick.” The art directors had their work cut out for them. Herbert replied, “We are forced to establish direct and personal relationship with the boy fighting at the front and not show any scenes of mutilation or death. Perhaps you can find a way to suggest all this and not actually show the ultimate tragedy. If anyone can find a way, you can.” Treasury policy banned battlefield casualty images, but not necessarily battlefield scenes. Posters publicizing the 7th and 8th war loans dramatized the “selfish reasons for buying bonds” and the “inequity of sacrifice between the home front and the fighting front.” The ascension of the Art Pool in OWI affected the appearance of government war posters. Gone was the esthetic of “war graphics.” In its place stood the conventions of commercial illustration. Predicated upon ready accessibility to the lower 3rd of the American population, commercial illustration rejected symbolism and abstract images for literal representation and emotional pull. If, as critics charged, turning over poster design to Madison Avenue art directors made government posters as bland and inoffensive as advertising, in most instances this was in fact what OWI’s poster clients desired: a selective reality of sacrifice and struggle exorcised of troublesome detail. While many advertising specialists had predicted the diminution of their industry with America’s entry into the war, precisely the opposite had occurred. 45 Government information in general and government posters in particular became highly modeled and nuanced. Though not a medium of commercial promotion at the beginning of the war, the poster returned to prominence as a powerful device for the selling of social, economic, and political ideas. Moore was a freelance artist who worked for Look Magazine and contracted for Madison Avenue advertising agencies Ruthrauff and Ryan, Ketchum MacLeod and Grove. After World War II he worked for newspapers as an illustrator. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1973.jpg |
| Image Size | 1.01 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 3000 x 2108 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Office of War Information |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | January 1, 1944 |
| Location | |
| City | Washington |
| State or Province | District of Columbia |
| Country | United States |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-44-PA-519 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database