"Whatever the weather we only reach welfare together", Economic Cooperation Administration poster
A poster shows a ladder-framed windmill whose sails are the national flags of the Marshall Plan countries, lit against a dark stormy ground, with the US flag at left, over the English line 'Whatever the weather we only reach welfare together'. The tell is the transfer of a familiar rural object, the windmill, onto a diplomatic programme: the flags turn as one machine, so aid and cooperation read as shared weather-proofing, and 'welfare' and 'together' are left as general goods (glittering generalities). The issuer was a US Government agency and the audience was European.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1950
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- Economic Cooperation Administration (U.S. Government); designer E. Spreckmeester
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Theme, Event, Source, Rights
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Truman Administration
- Leader
- Harry S. Truman
- Audience
- Foreign public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Theme
- Economy and finance
- Event
- Marshall Plan
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 11, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. Government agency publication; Commons PD tag)
Economic Cooperation Administration (U.S. Government), poster by E. Spreckmeester, 1950, via Wikimedia Commons
Text on the object
Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked
Whatever the weather We only reach welfare together
