The article deals with analysis of the images of the Nazi Germany women created by the Soviet propaganda during the Great Patriotic War by means of satirical graphics. The base of the research is the caricatures published in the "Crocodile" magazine in June 1941 - May 1945. The author demonstrates that the comic images of the German women were considered as an important part of forming the enemy image and effective weapon of war propaganda. The "Crocodile"s representations of the German women were ambivalent. On the one hand, the magazine represented them as victims of the Nazi regime that deemed to be misogynous in its essence. On the other, forming the image of total otherness of the Nazi Germany, the caricaturists assigned responsibility for the Nazi crimes at least to a part of female population. The negative image of the German women was produced as an antipode of the Soviet woman. That is why, apart from typical for war propaganda representations of the enemy women as deviating from the canons of traditional womanhood, the German women were attributed with the characteristics that juxtaposed them to the ideal of the Soviet woman: the lack of self-esteem, courage, and intellect. The German women were endowed with cruelty, the lack of compassion, greediness, egoism, inability to love, cowardice, and profl igacy; the poverty of their worldview in which anti-Communist and racist prejudices dominated was emphasized. The specifi c feature of the "Crocodile" representations of these traits was that they became the object of not only condemning but mocking as well.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)84-92
Number of pages9
JournalUral'skij Istoriceskij Vestnik
Volume64
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2019

    Scopus subject areas

  • History

    Research areas

  • Caricature, Enemy image, German women image, Great Patriotic War, Imagology, Propaganda, Satirical magazine "Crocodile"

ID: 48632087