The years of World War II have been one of the periods in which propaganda, which is a tool used to shape ideas and influence behaviors to achieve certain political goals, was used most intensely in the history of humanity. Motivating the people and getting their support was of vital importance for the governments during the war, so propaganda was used by all the states participating in the war in various discourses and media. In this period, governments used radio, newspapers and magazines, billboards and posters to convey their propaganda messages to the public. Among these channels, poster was one of the most important mass media tools during the war, and used as a propaganda tool to support the war materially and morally, such as influencing the feelings of the people, encouraging people to join the army, selling war bonds. The images created on the wartime posters depicted feelings of nationalism, tensions between countries, fears and racist discourses. Within the scope of the research, certain propaganda posters produced in the USA and Germany during the World War II period were examined by semiotic analysis method. In this direction, the connotations of the signs in the propaganda posters and which myths they reproduce were analyzed with the semiotic approach of Roland Bathes.

Keywords: World War II, propaganda, poster, semiotic analysis