---
title: Destroy This Mad Brute — Enlist
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/destroy-this-mad-brute-1917/
description: A rampaging ape wearing a German 'militarism' helmet carries off a half-naked woman while stomping onto American shores holding a club labeled 'kultur.'…
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

**Content note:** Dehumanizing caricature of Germans as an ape, implied sexual violence and partial nudity. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![Destroy This Mad Brute — Enlist](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/destroy-this-mad-brute-1917.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/destroy-this-mad-brute-1917.jpg)

# Destroy This Mad Brute — Enlist

A rampaging ape wearing a German 'militarism' helmet carries off a half-naked woman while stomping onto American shores holding a club labeled 'kultur.' The enemy is compressed into a single bestial figure so the viewer feels imminent, personal danger rather than weighing the actual war aims.

- **Date:** 1917
- **Period:** [First World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=wwi)
- **Made by:** U.S. Army (recruitment); artist Harry Ryle Hopps
- **Region:** [North America](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=north-america)
- **Country:** [United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=united-states)
- **Medium:** [Poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=poster)
- **Issuer type:** [Military](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=military)
- **Regime:** [Wilson Administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=wilson-administration)
- **Leader:** [Woodrow Wilson](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=woodrow-wilson)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Recruit](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=recruit)
- **Themes:** [War and the military](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=war-military), [Home front](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=home-front)
- **Event:** [World War I](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#event=world-war-i)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/)
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Source:** [Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons)](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harry_R._Hopps,_Destroy_this_mad_brute_Enlist_-_U.S._Army,_03216u_edit.jpg), retrieved September 25, 2026
- **Rights:** Public domain (author died 1937; term expired) Harry Ryle Hopps, 1917. Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-4696.

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
DESTROY THIS MAD BRUTE

MILITARISM [on the ape's helmet]

KULTUR [on the club]

ENLIST

—Copyright Applied for—

H. R. Hopps [artist's signature]
```

A faint diagonal watermark reading approximately 'U.S. ARMY–YOU MARKET...' runs across the lower portion of this particular digitized copy; it is a stock-photo/reproduction watermark added to the scan, not part of the original 1917 poster, and is not transcribed here.

[← 'Buy Your Victory Bonds' Canadian Victory Loan poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/buy-your-victory-bonds-canada-1917/) [Die Fahnen flattern hoch im Wind! (The Flags Flutter High in the Wind!) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/die-fahnen-flattern-1917/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)
- [時局圖 (The Situation in the Far East / Map of the Present Situation), newer version with English labels](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/situation-in-far-east-tse-tsan-tai-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)