by: Herbert A. Friedman

Warning! These historical wartime images are sexually explicit.

This is a military reference site for adults only.

Note: Portions of this article on wartime sexual propaganda first appeared in the magazines: Sir - September 1967 ; Soldier of Fortune - May 1981 and Oui - September 1983 . At the time, many publishers were seeking articles about the use of sex in war propaganda. I turned down a half-dozen others because I got tired of writing articles on the same subject. I was later interviewed and my material was depicted in the long-running British Channel Four television documentary series Secret History on two occasions. In 1999, it broadcast Sex and the Swastika, and in 2004, Sex Bomb . In 2006 I took part in the Canadian Chum Limited TV documentary Sex and PSYOPs . In 2013, parts of the article were used for reference by the Talkback Company on the popular BBC quiz show QI (Quite Interesting). In addition, the information in this article has been used as source material in a number of books such as Professor Dagmar Herzogs Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century. In 2015, I was contacted by Zagreb Pride , an NGO based in Croatia that wanted to publish Sexuality in Europe in Croatian. Permission was granted to use my data.

To the average person, the connotations of the word "Pornography" have always brought forth a mental picture of a depraved person leering at filthy pictures. To the scholar, the word meant simply "The description of prostitutes and their trade". Later, other definitions were added, attempting to encompass the term "obscene". We now consider Webster's "Writing and pictures intended to arouse sexual desire" as an appropriate statement of meaning. Would it surprise you to know that all the major combatants involved in World War II used pornography as part of their psychological operations (PSYOP) strategy?

Professor Paul M. A. Linebarger stated the justification for this effort in his book Psychological Warfare (Infantry Journal Press, Washington D.C., 1948).

Young human beings, especially young males, are apt to give considerable attention to sex. In areas of military operations, they are removed from the stimuli of secondary sex references, which are (in America) an accepted part of everyones daily life: bathing beauty photos, magazine covers, semi-nudes in advertising, etc. Our enemies tried to use the resulting pin-up craze for propaganda purposes, hoping that a vain arousal of oestrum would diminish morale.

In German Psychological Warfare (Arno Press, New York, 1972) Ladislas Farago states:

Since young soldiers are in a state of hyperactive bodily development, their immediate problems are related to appetite and sex....Sexual deprivation may be a motive for a soldiers suicide attempt.

Both the Axis and the Allies printed aerial propaganda leaflets using sexual themes in an attempt to demoralize enemy soldiers at the front. Did these leaflets work? Did the finders become emotionally crippled and unable to carry on their duties and responsibilities? Just the opposite occurred. The "pin-up" pictures became collectors items sought after by the troops who greedily collected and swapped them. If anything, the leaflets raised morale. There is no doubt that they were the most heartily appreciated propaganda leaflets used in World War 2. We can probably state that they were the most widely read and circulated enemy documents of any war.

A member of the 10th Mountain Division points out the reason that the sex leaflets increase rather than decrease morale. They clearly fail in their mission. The comment is found in Climb to Conquer, Peter Shelton. Simon and Schuster , NY , 2003. Bud Winter, who had returned to his outfit, wounds healed, in late March, noted in a letter to his mother that at least some of the enemy doggerel was appreciated:

The Jerries shell us with leaflets with a picture of a beautiful girl on one side and a skull and cross bones on the other. One side says Life and the other Death Well, anyway, it seems to raise the morale of most of the fellows because they hang the side up with the beautiful girl for a pinup say to Hell with the other side.

More evidence is found in Beyond the Beachhead  the 29th Infantry Division in Normandy, Joseph Balkoski, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg , PA , 1989:

The enemys leaflets were nothing more than appeals to the American soldiers sexual instincts. A typical leaflet featured a sketch of an attractive and scantily clad woman in the arms of a happy male civilian. The caption asked what the G.I.s though they would be doing if they were home instead of in the army. The 29ers chuckled and hoped the Germans would send more over the lines. The leaflets were a lot safer than real artillery shells, and the sketches were fairly interesting.

The same sort of things was happening on the Japanese front where sex leaflets were being dropped by the enemy on Allied troops. Some comments from Prisoners of the Japanese, Gavan Daws, William Morrow and Company, NY, 1994, on the subject:

The Japanese were dropping propaganda leaflets And for the friendliest of friendly persuasion, pictures of a beautiful blonde stripper, private parts and all: You too can enjoy this is you surrender. The propaganda bombers came droning over every day. It was like having the paper delivered. Some of the troops started trading the leaflets like baseball cards.

So, why were they used? Edward Donnerstein says in The Journal of Personality and Social Behavior (Vol. 39, 1980, p. 269-277) :

When males have not been angered or have been exposed to mild erotica, aggressive behavior has been reduced In summary, the present results suggest that highly arousing nonaggressive-erotic stimuli can be a mediator of aggressive behavior by males toward other males under certain condition.

Could it be that our enemies believed that the sexual leaflets would take the "fight" out of the American soldier?

I once interviewed the top British forger of the war. He was the man in charge of printing the black British leaflets. He said about the sex leaflets:

They did nothing to the enemy, but they were popular among the "adolescents" working for me. They did not demoralize the enemy, but they were excellent for the morale of the British agents who handled and distributed them.

An American propagandist once told me that he did not like to disapprove these strange and exotic concepts because it tended to stifle the creativity of his artists. It seems that on the Allied side at least, sex leaflets were produced mostly because the bosses thought it was a good way for their people to stretch their imaginations and remain creative.

For the purposes of this article, we are interested only in the propaganda leaflets built around a sexual message. Of course, they only make up a small percentage of the millions of leaflets that were dropped during the Second World War. Probably less than one percent of all the leaflets produced by the opposing powers were of a sexual nature. For that reason they are scarce today, highly collectable, and only rarely seen at auction.

Professor Linebarger noted that obscene pictures showing naked women, designed to make the celibate troops so desirous of women that they surrendered was a Japanese idea that did not work.

The troops kept the pornography and despised the Japanese as queer little people for having sent it.

One American soldier assigned to the 35th Infantry Division in February of 1945 told of receiving pornographic leaflets in an artillery barrage. He told me:

We used the leaflets for toilet paper.

This is a telling statement and seems to bolster a comment once made by Sir Arthur Harris, Air Marshall of the Royal Air Force during WWII.

My personal opinion is that the only thing achieved (by dropping leaflets) was largely to supply the continents requirement of toilet paper for the five long years of the war.

Who first used sexually themed leaflets in WW2? Author Leo J. Margolin says in Paper Bullets (Frozen Press, New York, 1946):

In the briskness of the winter air on 1939-1940, the French soldiers will to fight evaporated like his breath. The Germans asked, "Where are the British troops?" Millions of leaflets showing a vivid drawing of tired and dirty French soldiers in forward positions while a French woman lay in the arms of a British soldier was the answer that Goebbels provided.

He points out that German loudspeakers constantly repeated that message that The British troops were not in the Maginot Line and that they were instead back in Paris with French women.

Sefton Delmer, a reporter with the French Army who would later become an official of the British wartime propaganda agency, recalls his visit to the French front in 1939. He was shown a leaflet:

...Which consisted of a small picture on a thin piece of paper showing a French soldier doing his duty at the front. However, if one held the picture to the light, the scene underwent a complete change. In place of the Brave poilu one now saw in minute salacious detail, a British Tommy fornicating with what the caption told us was the Frenchmans fiancée.

The Germans loved these "divide and conquer" themes. They often attempted to drive a wedge between the American and British troops, soldiers and civilian "slackers" at home, Christians and Jews, and even African-Americans and Caucasians.

We find many written references of these campaigns. John Baker White tells us in The Big Lie (Pan Books Ltd., London, 1958) that:

Goebbels had a wonderful theme for the bitter winter of 1939-1940. The British forces were back, well away from the Germans, on the Franco-Belgian frontier. He was not slow to paint to the French a picture of drunken soldiery living in comfort, seducing their wives and daughters. Many French soldiers were found to be passing from hand-to-hand a postcard which was the photograph of the then Secretary of State for War, sitting between two scantily-clad cabaret artistes in a Paris nightclub. Actually it had been taken months before the war started, but all the Germans had to do was print on the back: While you sit in the line this is what the British are doing with your wives.

German Sexual PSYOP

Where is Tommy Staying?  First Type

We will first discuss and illustrate German sexual propaganda leaflets. There are a number of different variations of the see-through type leaflet. The best-known types are a series produced on cardboard about the same size as a postcard (11 x 15 cm).

All of these see-through cards were produced by German military propagandists. I first wrote about these cards in an article entitled Postcards to the Enemy, the Society of Philatelic Americans Journal, July 1971.

In April 1940, French soldiers along the Maginot Line received a German airdrop of thousands of colorful cardboard leaflets, which showed brave troops fighting and dying in front of a barbed-wire emplacement. Above the men is a clear area of the sky and the words "Ou le Tommy est-il Reste?" ("Where is Tommy staying?"). When one holds this card to the light, a second scene appears. It shows British officers and soldiers cavorting behind the lines with French women. There are six known varieties of this card. The see-through sexual scenes depict a soldier and woman in a salon; three women and 5 soldiers on a street (all fully clothed); four women and 4 men in a cabaret; four women and 3 soldiers on a staircase; four women and 3 soldiers in a cabaret; and five women and 5 soldiers in a cabaret. The initial printing at the beginning of April 1940 was about 133,000 of each card. On 5 April 1940, an additional 1,000,000 of each were ordered. The cards were airdropped on the French troops from early April to early June 1940.

Bernard Wilkin and Maude Williams say in German Wartime Anglophobic Propaganda in France, 1914–1945 published in Wartime History:

On 3 September 1939 France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. The following eight months would see no major offensive on the Western Front, a period known as the phony war. There was little violence but German propaganda aimed at French soldiers and civilians was in full swing, using radio broadcasts and launching more than 90 million leaflets. German psychological warfare was produced by various military and civilian units competing against each other: the Reichsministerium fur Volkserklarung und Propaganda (the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda), the Auswartiges Amt (the German Foreign Office) and the Propagandakompanien (propaganda companies inside the German army). For the next eight months, Anglophobia would feature prominently in German psychological warfare. Sexual references were also extremely common in 1939–40. The ‘Tommies’ sought out married French women, especially those who had a husband in the army.

Where is Tommy Staying? - Second Set

A second set of six see-through cards depicts French soldiers dying of wounds, with one soldier holding a photo of a woman. The initial printing was about 400,000 of each card and they were dropped from early May to early June 1940. The see-through sexual scenes depict a soldier and a nude woman sitting on a bed; a soldier and nude woman lying on a bed; a smiling soldier and a crying woman sitting on a bed, both partially clothed; a soldier sitting on a couch with a woman on his lap; a soldier standing and nude woman sitting in a salon; and a soldier, nude girl, and angry mother standing in a room.

A third set of six German propaganda see-through cards for French troops were inscribed Les mylords a letape (Gentlemen at rest ), and depicted dead or dying French soldiers on the ground, with hidden pictures showing nude or partially nude women when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated.

A fourth set of five Les mylords a letape see-through cards depicted three French soldiers crushed under rubble and the usual scenes of French women with British soldiers when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated. A sixth card might exist but has not been found as yet.

In Sefton Delmers article HMG's Secret Pornographer, published in The Times Literary Supplement, 21 February 1972, Delmer, head of a special section of the British Political Warfare Executive suspects these leaflets might have been a waste of time. He points out that:

The walls in the underground corridors of the Maginot forts were covered with so many erotic graffiti that I unkindly denounced the Maginot line as "a fortified urinal Unquestionably the morale of the troops in most of the Maginot forts I visited was poor They just lounged and sulked But I would not put this sulkiness down to the effect of the German transparencies. The German propaganda pornography, as I saw it, was merely exploiting a situation which already existed, not creating it. I therefore doubted whether the transparencies prepared with such zeal by Dr. Goebbels pornographers repaid in subversive effectiveness the substantial production costs involved .

Frenchmen!

Another divide and conquer leaflet depicts a British Army officer holding the breast of a semi-naked French woman while her husband is shown in a front-line trench peeping out from behind barbed wire. These leaflets were produced during the Phony War of 1940 in an attempt to convince the French that they were being sacrificed at the Front while the British vacationed with their women behind the lines.

Frenchmen! Distrust the enemy  who claims to be your friend!

Colored Soldiers! Throw down your Weapons!

Courtesy of Klaus Kirchner: Erotic Leaflets in Europe in the 20th Century

The Germans also prepared sexual-themed leaflets for the French territories of North Africa . The uncoded leaflet above was dropped about June 1940. It depicts French colonial troops marching off to war closely watched by a French soldier. In the next panel a soldiers wife or girlfriend watches the ship sail away. In the third panel she is grabbed by the French soldier and dragged into a building to be raped. In the final panel the soldier is shown in the middle of an enemy bombardment. The text is:

Colored soldiers! Throw down your weapons!

You are being shipped as cannonfodder

They take you away from your beautiful country, to the slaughter house!

Your wives are at your oppressors mercy, who

To save their blood, will poor out yours!

The Germans produced another two sets of see-through leaflets in 1940. The first consisted of seven cards and the text "Les mylords a letape," ("Gentlemen at rest."). Once again, the cards show dying French troops and British soldiers with French women. A second set of five cards shows three French soldiers crushed under rubble while the British officers play with the French women.

Two ways of spending the war see-through leaflets

The Germans produced similar see-through leaflets by rocket for use against the Americans advancing near the Siegfried Line about December 1944. The front of the 10 x 14cm leaflet depicts a dead American corporal in the foreground and a second soldier draped over the barbed wire in the background. The text at the top of the leaflet is Two ways of spending the war and at the bottom, Fighting. The back of the leaflet is blank except for text at the lower left which reads and? and the series number, for instance; No. 1 Series: Rich mans war, poor mans fight. Only four numbers have surfaced in the past 50 years. We know that number 1, 3, 4 and 9 exist. There may be others that have never been found, or the Germans may have just used some random numbers hoping to confuse the Americans and make them search for leaflets that were never printed.

The use of the propaganda slogan Rich mans war, poor mans fight by the Germans is very interesting because it was first used by the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. At that time, any southerner with 20 slaves or more was allowed to return to the plantation while those with less than twenty or none at all had to stay and fight. The poor southerners who were forced to remain on the front lines were the first to say Rich mans war, poor mans fight.

There are two major differences between the leaflets aimed at the Americans and those aimed at the French. The American leaflets are much cruder and the pictures not nearly as well drawn. The second difference is that while the leaflet to the French showed British soldiers with the women, thus attacking an ally, the leaflet aimed at the GIs showed American civilians with the wives and girlfriends, so the propaganda theme might be considered more anti-slacker or anti-draft-dodger.

The Germans also produced see-through pornographic leaflets for use in Poland to reinforce anti-Bolshevik feelings. Considering the German treatment of the occupied Poles, the success of these leaflets is doubtful. Could the Russians mistreat or murder the Poles to a greater extent than the Germans?

"Carefree youth  or cruel fate?"

Two leaflets are known. The first shows a beautiful smiling polish girl, lying on her stomach in an open field with a flower in her mouth. Text at the top of the leaflet is, "Carefree youth  or cruel fate?" When held to the light a beast-like Russian soldier is shown ravishing the nearly naked girl.

"Beginning of success - or forbidden future?"

The second leaflet depicts a wedding scene with a bride and groom kneeling at the altar in church before a priest. Text at the top of the leaflet is, "Beginning of success - or forbidden future?" When held to the light, an ape-like Russian soldier is seen tearing the young bride's clothes off.

A Small Donation

Courtesy of Klaus Kirchner: Erotic Leaflets in Europe in the 20th Century

Off course, the Poles retaliated in kind. Klaus Kirchner says in Erotic Leaflets in Europe in the 20th Century that the Polish Underground produced several leaflets using sex in their anti-Nazi propaganda campaign. This uncoded leaflet believed to have been produced sometime in 1942 depicts a semi nude woman sitting on the lap of a man I assume is a Nazi official. A poor widow is begging for alms and the Nazi is very annoyed at the disturbance. The widow says:

I beg for a small donation. My husband fell in the World War, my son near Stalingrad

The Nazi answers:

 Damned, Kätchen, these old women should be sent to the factories; then they will not bother us any longer. Card AW-33d front Card AW-33d back

German See-through Card AW-33d