
During the course of World War 2, propaganda was a popular method to incite patriotism throughout the populus and convince them that the war was worth the effort.  This particular poster specifically targeted factory workers, essentially saying that if they slack off on their job, the war in Europe and the Pacific will be lost, and the next target would be America.  The intended effect of this poster was to incite patriotism within the factory workers, and to use that to maintain or increase production of goods and tools that were used in the war.  Within the artwork, the spectator can see that the artist uses various subtle features, including the vague depiction of the house and the use of background and text color, to accomplish this.  However, the poster could also incidentally create sympathizers to the Germans and Japanese using the same features.

In the poster, the artist depicts a home that has been demolished, likely by artillery.  In front of this mundane house with no real distinct features is a broken down car with the engine missing.  Similar to the house, this car is plain and indistinct.  Both of these techniques are used to create aspects that any given spectator can look at and relate to his or her own house or car, allowing them to relate to the piece.  Once they relate to the piece and then see the message “This can happen here, unless we keep ‘em firing,” a sense of patriotism would rise up from within and they would keep hard at work.  However, a sympathizer could look upon the same image, seeing the destroyed home and car, and realize that if they were to keep hard at work, then someone else in a different country would experience exactly what was happening in the image.  The techniques that the artist uses here contribute toward and against his or her intended consequences.  

The backgrounds that the artist uses can also be seen as a method of getting his or her message across to the people.  The background of an image is meant to be barely noticed while the spectator focuses on the foreground of the image.  In the larger image, the background is stormy and unnatural looking, as if it was depicting nuclear fallout, whereas the smaller image has a more natural clear blue sky look to it.  This simple technique of creating a negative and positive background for each image allows the artist to subtly plant ideas into the mind of the spectator, without the spectator even realizing it.  The stormy, obviously negative, background, forces the spectator to associate the first image with more negative emotions.  This causes the spectator to think that war is good, because the image of the tank and airplane firing have a positive background, allowing them to associate that image with positive emotions, and that they should do whatever they can to keep the war machine running.   The same technique is used in the color of the text.  The red text, posted over the negative image, causes the spectator to associate that image with negative emotions.  Contrastly, the white text that is posted over the smaller image causes them to feel positive emotions and associate the image of the tank and airplane with positive feelings.  

Most propaganda posters from this era depict some sort of cartoony villain in the form of Adolph Hitler or a stereotypical depiction of either German or Japanese soldiers.  This image, however, has no such depiction.  The airplane and the tank in the smaller image are shooting at some unknown entity that is not included in the image.  The enemy is implied.  Not only the enemy, but the nationality of the airplane and tanks themselves are implied, as well as the nationality of the house.  These implications are what allows people to see both the houses of their own nation and the houses of the enemy nations, accidentally causing them to sympathize with the enemy.    

The image does not necessarily accomplish what the author had intended.  The intended consequences of this image rely on the spectator relating to the image and seeing their home in this fictional depiction of a home.  However, if the spectator sees the home of a German or Japanese citizen instead, then the image actually accomplishes the opposite of what the author was intending, by creating sympathizers for the enemy.  The text in the image attempts to make up for this fatal flaw by saying “It can happen here,” implying the “here” is America.  The text, however, is not the main tool that is used in manipulating the emotions of the spectator.  The image itself plays on the emotions much more than the text, so if a spectator were to view the house as that of a citizen of an enemy nation, he or she would still feel sympathy even after reading the text.

The intention of the author was to incite patriotism through the American workforce through the use of vague depictions of the house and car and colors of the backgrounds and texts in the image.  The vague depictions and background colors, however, could have had the unintended consequence of causing sympathy towards citizens of the enemy nations.  This unintended consequence was most likely of little importance, due to the massive amount of propaganda that Americans were subjected to.  After seeing all of the stereotypical representations of the enemy soldiers, most people would still see them as the implied enemy.