Content note: Nazi swastika and violent imagery. This object is shown as it was published. Why
This Is the Enemy
Office of War Information Poster No. 76: a hand in a sleeve with a swastika armband drives a bayonet down through a Holy Bible, above the words 'This is the enemy.' This plate shows no face and no racial caricature (other posters under the same title are not described here); the enemy is reduced to a single symbol of Nazi Germany attacking a religious one, under a flat label the viewer is told to fear and oppose without further distinction.
- Date
- 1943
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- U.S. government home-front campaign
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Themes
- War and the military, Religion
- Event
- World War II
- Techniques
- ScapegoatingTransferFear appeal
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), via Wikimedia Commons, retrieved September 25, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work)
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, World War II Posters series (1942-1945).
Text on the object
Holy BIBLE THIS IS THE ENEMY OWI Poster No. 76. Additional copies may be obtained upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information, Washington, D. C. U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1943—O [illegible]
'Holy BIBLE' is the gold-stamped title on the book's cover in the illustration. The final job/print number after '1943—O' in the bottom-right credit line is too small and low-contrast in this scan to read with confidence.
