"I await your next ‘inspiration', mein Fuehrer" by Reginald Mount, 1943

Catalogue ref: INF 3/1324

The catalogue entry reads: “I await your next ‘inspiration', mein Fuehrer”. The sombrely coloured image, relieved only by the bloodstains and Nazi swastika, shows Death, performing a ‘Heil Hitler', awaiting Hitler's next orders. Hitler, looking haggard, is poring over maps to decide where next, whilst the mountains of bodies increase from previous campaigns, including the Tunisian campaign of May 1943, and Stalingrad.

Despite the everyday risk of death throughout the war, graphic images of death were not expected to be well received in posters, although soldiers, presumed to live far closer to the subject than civilians, were subjected to harsher and more direct images. In many posters, the victim is rarely visible or, if he is, it is the risk of death that is suggested, with the human cost rarely visible.