The poster was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1990.
Rotogravure poster printed on light brown paper with a white linen backing. The center depicts an image of a shirtless man with black pants looking down in forward profile against a square, black background. The man’s left arm is extended back while his right arm, holding up a blacksmith’s hammer, is raised in a swinging motion. He stares down at a three dimensional swastika with two large cracks in the center and its top arm broken and hanging loose. Below are two lines of black, German text. The top line is in a block font and the bottom is in fraktur. The artist’s signature is in the bottom right corner of the black square with publication information below. There are several small creases along the edges and the right edge has two small tears. front, bottom right margin, handwritten, pencil : pI 177 front, bottom left on linen, handwritten, pencil : 16/G
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overall: Height: 28.750 inches (73.025 cm) | Width: 22.000 inches (55.88 cm)
German anti-Nazi political propaganda poster promoting the Social Democratic Party for the elections of 1932. The poster features a man smashing a swastika, the most recognizable icon of Nazi Party. By June 1932, Germany was deep in the throes of the Great Depression, with six million unemployed. This economic distress contributed to a rise in the popularity of the Nazi Party who along with the Communist Party and the Social Democrats, were the most popular political parties in Germany. The Social Democrats ran on a platform of maintaining freedom, democracy and the Republic, honoring Germany’s political and financial obligations, job creation, governmental expenditure cuts to lower taxes, and free speech. When Germany held parliamentary elections in July of that year, the Nazi party won almost 40 percent of the electorate in the Reichstag to become the largest party in German parliament. However Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party failed to defeat incumbent Social Democratic President Paul von Hindenburg in the presidential election. With the backing of his majority party, Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933.
Elect Social Democrats German Social Democratic Party election poster with a man smashing a swastika with a hammer