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Spotted via https://twitter.com/LI_politico/status/692846941034549248 (courtesy of a parody picture in https://twitter.com/Megapope/status/692850205297741827), but described as real by Mother Jones in The Enemy in Your Pants: The military’s decades-long war against STDs.:

Image text, plus capation, described below

Syphilis

All of these men have it

Women: Stay away from dance halls

An English poster used in the lead-up to D-Day with a different take on the dangers of syphilis. This time, it's the gents who are the diseased floozies. British, 1944

Is the above picture a British WWII propaganda poster from 1944?

Andrew Grimm
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    If you examine it closely you can see pretty obvious signs of photoshopping a compressed image. The typography is also a bit off (notice the upper and lower margins, also the font is clearly computer rendered and, lastly, I'm not sure exactly how popular this font would have been in 1940-something) – Tobia Tesan Jan 29 '16 at 09:12
  • This is an interesting read that lists a few ways to tell modern digital typography from actual 1900something typography (or, more frequently, hand-lettering): http://annyas.com/artist-movie-typography-lettering/ – Tobia Tesan Jan 30 '16 at 12:28

1 Answers1

42

A google search for "All of these men have it" "Stay away from dance halls" mainly got web 2.0 user generated content websites such as reddit and pinterest. I came across a thesis, but it gave a different year, saying that it was 1942.

By contrast, doing a search on the image gave a New Hampshire government website, with the following poster, by Montgomery Melbourne in 1943:

Poster

Millions of troops are on the move…

Is YOUR trip necessary?

OFFICE OF DEFENSE TRANSPORTATION

Another page with this poster is the University of North Texas Digital Library which specifies that the Office of Defense Transportation was US, not British (it was an executive agency).

Montgomery Melbourne's name can be seen in the original in the bottom left hand corner of the picture - the same writing can be seen in the "Syphilis" version, although not legible.

In summary, there exists a poster with the same image, but a different message, by the government of another country, from a different year. It's possible that an image was re-used for the syphilis warning, but there's no reason to believe that's the case.

I have to admit it's a fairly good hoax: it talks about a disease which is not commonly talked about nowadays, and a form of socialising that isn't popular nowadays.

Sklivvz
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Andrew Grimm
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    I'd like to point out that the obvious giveaway that is isn't British is the spelling of 'defense'. The correct British spelling is 'defence'. – Pharap Jan 29 '16 at 13:12
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    @Pharap I must be bilingual - I understand British and American English. :) However, only the genuine poster mentions the word "defense" - the fake version doesn't use the word. – Andrew Grimm Jan 29 '16 at 13:43
  • My comment was directed towards the "Another page with this poster is the University of North Texas Digital Library which specifies that the Office of Defense Transportation was US, not British" part of your answer, I did not intend to make any implications about the fake poster. – Pharap Jan 29 '16 at 13:49
  • @AndrewGrimm original research, but: you can see where the photoshop smudge tool was used by zooming in the claim image (OP); you an also see that there is a vertical ripple in the paper in the original image, but that it's erased digitally in the top part of the claim image. – Sklivvz Jan 29 '16 at 13:58
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    Can somebody who knows about period military uniforms identify the nationality of the soldiers depicted here? That might be another useful clue. – Darrel Hoffman Jan 29 '16 at 14:14
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    @DarrelHoffman US Army. – OrangeDog Jan 29 '16 at 15:17
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    I think it's a bad hoax. It disparages the troops, which was quite taboo at the time. That alone makes me doubt it's real. It also is overtly sexual. That was taboo too. –  Jan 29 '16 at 15:39
  • @DarrelHoffman This link won't be around forever, but [someone selling an old uniform is calling it "US Army Air Corps".](http://www.prices4antiques.com/Uniform-WWII-US-Army-Air-Corps-Class-A-Jacket-Cap-Doolittle-Raiders-Identified-D9782426.html) It's missing the undershirts with the tie. [Here's one with the tie on Ebay](http://www.ebay.com/itm/WWII-U-S-Army-Air-Corps-8th-Air-Force-Officers-Complete-Uniform-/261350877068). –  Jan 29 '16 at 15:49
  • @AndrewGrimm I find the thesis you discovered much more amusing than the actual "war" poster. It looks like perhaps the grad student relied heavily on [this poster website](https://web.archive.org/web/20110501122248/http://www.100yearsofsex.org/posters) for sources in her Masters Thesis. I have to wonder if she was able to successfully defend considering the highly dubious nature of some of those posters (including the one in the original Question). – O.M.Y. Jan 29 '16 at 23:38
  • @fredsbend I *think* it's, in fact, parody that no-one expected to pass off as authentic, but then Poe's Law kicked in :) – Tobia Tesan Jan 30 '16 at 12:30
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    @O.M.Y.: Well, I understand that usually once your work is accepted it is hard to actually *fail* the defense. What's more surprising to me is that the almost exclusive reliance on such a non-scholarly resource flew past the advisor. – Tobia Tesan Jan 30 '16 at 12:36
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    @O.M.Y Page 75 in the thesis the author conceded there's limitations of this research because it looks at only one archive. It then mentions a few more for possible study. I personally wouldn't write a thesis with basically only one source, but that's me I guess. –  Jan 30 '16 at 16:09
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    @TobiaTesan Yep, the advisor issue surprises me too. Back when I was a *freshman* student in a community college *every* paper I wrote required at least 3 sources. In fact, the only papers I can recall -- from *all of the college work* I did -- that allowed a single source were ones that were some form of literary or textual analysis, and not even all of those. – O.M.Y. Jan 31 '16 at 14:18