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War Bonds explained | How children helped pay for both world wars - YouTube
Channel: Imperial War Museums
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These are posters advertising war bonds,
public saving schemes that allow
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ordinary people to chip in for the war
effort. As you can see there are a lot of
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them in our collection.
This one says 'lend to defend the right
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to be free' and shows a female factory
worker whose shadow takes the form of a
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Red Cross nurse. In this image we see
that same poster behind four-year-old
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Heather Scott, she's sticking one of
those saving stamps into her booklet so
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she can save up for a war bond.
It was savings day at her school in
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Oxfordshire and this week Heather and
her classmates managed to raise two
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pounds six shillings and five pence. But
these images raise an important question
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why were children paying for the war
effort?
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Well, wars are really, really expensive.
That's Alan Wakefield head of the First
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World War team at Imperial War Museums.
In the first world war a single tank in
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1918 cost about half a million pounds in
today's money and the same for Spitfire
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in 1940 1/2 million pounds and that's
just for one aircraft and you got to
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remember you don't need one Spitfire you
need hundreds, possibly thousands of them
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to actually fight a war. In order to pay
these exorbitant costs governments did
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many things. They raised taxes, they
introduced rationing and other personal
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restrictions, and most importantly they
borrowed heavily from other countries.
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But after all of that, they still had to
raise yet more money and they did that
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through war bonds. Well a war bond is
just individual citizens lending the
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government money. You know, you give your
money to the government and in six to ten
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years time they pay you back plus
interest. That six to ten year term was
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really important it meant that
governments could shift these huge costs
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of war further down the line, when the
war hopefully was over. The main
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condition of course you're investing in
the government, you'll get your money
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back, but you really only get your money
back if your side wins a war. If your
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nation happens to be on the losing side
there's really little chance of you
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getting your money back. But wait a minute, how did the government
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get away with that? With increased
taxes, reduced personal freedoms, and
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constant shortages people were really
suffering. So how did they get citizens
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to give what little they have left to
the government?
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The main way they actually got people to
put their hand in their pocket and buy
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war bonds was by using propaganda. It's for you.
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This is a personal call to everyone in this theatre.
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To remember to keep on saving through your group.
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The propaganda they used here was really
twofold. One is to show that this is an a
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national effort. people on the homefront
are standing side by side with the
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people at the front actually doing the
fighting. The other way is to basically
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vilify the enemy. You know if we lose
this war
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it's going to be terrible our
country's going to be destroyed
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civilization is going to be destroyed.
And it really gets in people's minds
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after two or three years of this
everybody really believes.
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That's right, keep on saving.
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If we go back to
those war bond posters in the IWM
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collection we can see these efforts very
clearly. During the First World War 'feed the
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the guns' was a popular refrain. The
advertising made a direct connection
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between your cash and the bullets and
bombs that would win the war. Another
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tactic was the use of national
iconography to evoke a feeling of
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patriotism. Sir Lancelot,
William Wallace, and Uncle Sam were used
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amongst many other nationalistic icons
to sell war bonds. Meanwhile this German
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poster from 1917 makes an appeal direct
from the frontline trenches 'help us to
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gain victory'. This imagery is typical of
German and Austro-Hungarian poster
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design, where the soldier, sailor, or
airman is depicted as a hero who those
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at home should be proud to support. In
complete contrast countries like Britain
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and the USA whipped up fear by
demonizing those very same servicemen.
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By making the enemy seem ghastly they tried
to depict the war as a fight between
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civilization and barbarism, this poster
shows the illegal sinking of
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hospital ship Llandovery Castle by a
german u-boat. But buying one war bond
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wasn't enough, governments needed
citizens to keep investing in the war
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and to do that they had to show the
public the impact of their investments.
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The Battle of the Somme film, which is in
the IWM collection, for example, has a lot
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of emphasis on the artillery bombardment
at the beginning of the Battle of the Somme
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in 1916. And a lot of the audience would
have been people who worked in munitions
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factories or bought war bonds so they could
see the direct link between their
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contribution and the contribution of the
fighting soldier. Yeah, they also used
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iconic weapons, so weapons have captured
the public imagination. So a tank would
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turn up in a town in Britain for a week,
it would drive into the town square,
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crush some obstacles. Thousands of people
would gather to get a close look at this
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tank and of course once you've got close
to it somebody would pop out of the
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hatch and say 'would you like to buy a
war bond?' and of course there's a lot of peer
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pressure on you to buy a war bond and
they raise millions. And it wasn't just
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on the British Isles. During the Second
World War the Commonwealth played a huge
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part in something called the Spitfire
fund, so much so that some Commonwealth
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nations had entire squadrons named after
them. The Spitfires were broken down by
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constituent parts, from a tail fin down
to a single rivet and that meant that
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anyone could contribute. These
standardized posters were altered to
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thank each Commonwealth nation for their
contribution. If you capture somebody's
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imagination like this and get them very
excited they're more likely to put their
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hand in their pocket and give the
government some money. Fast-forward to
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today and we don't get asked to pay for
wars in the same ways, taxes don't go up
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and I don't remember ever having to save
my pennies for the war in Iraq. But
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that's because war is different now, the
First and the Second World Wars were
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threats to many countries very existence
and thus governments were able to ask
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far more of their citizens. The other
problem is, of course, there is no
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national consensus. Modern wars are quite
contentious, there's a lot of politics in
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modern wars and it's very hard to
message them
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as you could message the First and
Second World War which was a fight for
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civilization. And that's why despite
everything thrown at her, four-year-old
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Heather Scott was still willing to save
her pennies. Because it was expected of her
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Thanks for watching there's a lot of good
posters in this episode, please let us
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know which is your favourite by entering
a comment below. As you're aware the
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museum is closed at the moment, but we
still have lots of great stories to share like
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this one. We need your help to do this, so
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