Advertising and Propaganda in World War II: Cultural Identity and the Blitz Spirit

The ‘blitz’ – the period of Nazi bombing campaigns on civilian Britain during World War II - was a formative period for British national identity. In this groundbreaking book, David Clampin looks at the images, slogans and campaigns which helped to form the fabled ‘blitz spirit’ – powerfully echoed in Winston Churchill’s speeches. Because advertisers attempted to capitalise on war-time patriotism, Clampin’s unique focus on advertising provides a visually-rich seam of new information on the everyday war, and makes an enormous contribution to the debate on people’s experiences of war and nationalism. Using a remarkable and hitherto unseen range of primary source material - advertisements in the press, slogans and posters - this work will reshape the contested meanings of the ‘Home Front’, opening up cultural history discourses on gender and nationalism and becoming essential reading for historians of World War II and students and scholars of Media Studies and Communication Studies.