1943 Means Pictorial Persuasive View, United States under Nazi Occupation

'Imagine the tragedy to you and your family if an invader had ravaged America...'

This is Elliott Means' powerful c. 1943 World War II pictorial persuasive map of the United States of America under partial Nazi occupation, produced for the organization Russian War Relief. The poster highlights the effects of the war on the Soviet Union by finding American parallels in terms of area of land occupied, cities destroyed, and industries forced to relocate.

A Closer Look

With an image evocative of Philip K. Dick's dystopian novel The Man in the High Castle, this persuasive piece uses American equivalents for Soviet land and cities to convince the American public to donate to relief efforts for Soviet civilians. In the view, the more heavily populated and industrialized eastern U.S. is shaded grey, indicating occupation by the Nazis, which was actually the case with the more heavily populated and industrialized western part of the Soviet Union. Detroit, Rochester, and St. Louis substitute for Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, respectively, under constant threat but just beyond the reach of Nazi occupation. The U.S. Capitol is shown aflame while a swastika flag flies over the Empire State Building. In the southeastern U.S., here similar to Ukraine, cities burn, but partisans fight on behind enemy lines. The less populated but resource-rich western U.S. mirrors the eastern Soviet Union, including cities where industrial facilities were evacuated following Operation Barbarossa (their equivalents shaded orange here). Text at the bottom further expands on the suffering of Soviet civilians and the effects of a corresponding trauma on the American population and economy.

Russian War Relief

Russian War Relief, Inc., based in New York City, was the largest aid agency for foreign war relief during World War II (1939 - 1945). The organization aided Soviet civilians and informed the U.S. public about the difficulties the Soviet Union was facing while under Nazi assault, including through the production of the 1942 Lewis Milestone film Our Russian Front. At the same time, it was also a Soviet front organization whose members, wittingly or not, aided Soviet intelligence efforts throughout the war. Most of the leading figures of Russian War Relief were prominent intellectuals, entertainers, labor leaders, and leftist public officials, though not necessarily Communists. Many would face scrutiny and investigations in the postwar period, being blacklisted from Hollywood and government positions. Most damningly, one of the organization's employees, Bluma Sax (1895 - 1986), introduced her son Saville Sax (1924 - 1980) to Soviet agents. Saville Sax then recruited his Harvard College roommate, Theodore Hall (1925 - 1999), to work for the Soviets. Hall had been recruited from Harvard to work on the Manhattan Project, and both he and Sax passed information to the Soviets regarding the plutonium bomb and its production.

Publication History and Census

This sheet was prepared by artist Elliott Means for the organization Russian War Relief, Inc. It is undated, but is assumed to be from 1943, given that it appears to present Stalingrad (St. Louis) as relieved and the reference in the text below to 'survivors now… returning to homes recaptured by the Red Army.' The view was printed by the Lithographers' International Protective and Beneficial Association, whose union label appears at bottom-right. The map is held by the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, the University of Miami, the Boston Public Library, the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, and the P. J. Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography at Cornell University.

Cartographer

Elliott Almyr Means, Jr. (March 10, 1904 - July 28, 1962), sometimes identified as Elliot Anderson Means, was an artist, illustrator, and sculptor based in New York City during the most active part of his career. Means was born in Stamford, Texas but moved around the state and New Mexico several times in his childhood and youth, eventually settling in El Paso. As a 12-year-old boy, he lived in Columbus, New Mexico when it was raided by Pancho Villa's forces, the violence of which left a deep impression on him. He worked as an itinerant sign and mural painter in California and the American Southwest during the Great Depression, and moved frequently in the following years, studying at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and later the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. He eventually settled in New York City and worked for a time as a painter and sculptor with the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. During the Second World War, he designed fundraising posters for the organization Russian War Relief, which provided medical and humanitarian supplies to Soviet civilians during the Second World War. He was a member of the Society of American Illustrators (now Society of Illustrators) and exhibited his work at the Grand Central Art Galleries.   Further Details...

Condition

Very good.

References

Cornell University, the P.J. Mode Collection of Persuasive Maps, #2249.01. Rumsey 13286.000. OCLC 351301851.