Propaganda is an ugly art. History is full of distorted and racist imagery of one nation’s enemies during times of war. Looking back on them now we can chuckle at the absurd lengths people went to in an effort to instill hate in one another, but they often remain shocking nonetheless.

This series of paintings from North Korea surfaced on the internet around 2010, but it’s uncertain exactly when they were created. Judging by the American uniforms they’re most likely Korean War era. We can also see this by the one where US soldiers are depicted sawing open a guy’s head (they got lasers to do that nowadays).

Here’s the series of gruesome North Korean propaganda posters. It’s interesting how they combine the subject matter of the Saw movies in the style of old Harlequin Romance book covers.

It took a couple tries before they found better ways to get information.

At first I was troubled by this image, but then I thought about it. That hole is huge! The baby has lots of time to get away before those two guys can cover it up.

It looks like the T-Virus has set in on this platoon.

Stop looking at me like that!

And just to show that America was no stranger to misrepresentation either, here are some gems from the WWII era.

“Authentic US Marine Corps Picture Stories”

Of course, Japan wasn’t above making grotesque cephalopod monsters out of the enemy either.

This last one has me puzzled.  I can’t figure out if this is pro or anti Japanese.

Although these images were once used to sway public opinion away from sanity, they now serve as valuable reminders illustrating how ridiculous blind hatred of a group of people is anywhere, any time. So let’s all learn to get along, or the next generation will mock us too.

Source: Trinixy (Russian) via Chihhylove (Japanese)