"Der Jude (The Jew)"

This poster, issued in 1943 or 1944, was intended to perpetuate the Nazi myth of "the Jew" as "inciter of war, prolonger of war." As German fortunes in the war begin to decline, myths of a "Jewish conspiracy" made a convenient scapegoat for failing military policies in a war started by Hitler's desire to create a racially "pure" German empire. In the artist's rather crude rendering, a corpulent Jewish stereotype gazes disdainfully down on a crowd of raised fists, a scene of wartime destruction in the background. Anti-Semitic imagery and ideology had been part of the Nazi program from the earliest origins of the party, finding their ultimate expression in the systematic murder of approximately six million Jews.

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