Ben Shahn's 1942 Protest Against "Nazi Brutality"

During WW2, the Office of War Information employed well-known artists to design posters to stir up American sentiment against the Nazis as part of the war effort. The most powerful of these images was Ben Shahn’s poster, “This is Nazi Brutality,” alerting the American public to the atrocity of the massacre in Lidice, Czechoslovakia in June of 1942. Be forewarned; while it’s not graphically violent, it’s very disturbing.

I owned a copy of this poster for years. It came from a local factory, which had received it in 1942. Knowing its history, it didn’t seem untoward to use it in Motor City at War, where it brings two anti-fascists together as comrades and later as friends.