Ruthlessly destroy and destroy the enemy! (Kukryniksy) Soviet Posters (1917-1941)

Description of the Soviet poster "Mercilessly Defeat and Destroy the Enemy!"

The Great Patriotic War greatly influenced poster art in the Soviet Union. Naturally, the main theme then was to confront the enemy in the form of the hated Nazi Germany. However, it is very interesting to trace how the enemy was portrayed in the posters of that time.

Our generation, raised and brought up more than half a century after the end of the Great Patriotic War, is used to seeing Hitler’s troops as vicious, strong, treacherous and mean enemies. In the postwar period, images of the Germans were still imbued with hatred for them, but there was a tendency to portray the enemy as an intelligent, calculating, and therefore - a very dangerous and difficult opponent.

It is not difficult to guess what this portrayal of the Nazis had to do with it. It was done to emphasize the merit of the Soviet people in the victory over the German invaders. Only a truly strong and worthy contender could defeat such a difficult and powerful enemy, which was the Soviet Union. However, during the war, Hitler’s Germany was portrayed differently.

The focus was on the enemy’s guile, meanness and cowardice that pushed him to violate the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on non-aggression between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, signed back in August 1939. The Soviet people had to know that on the other side of the front line against them fights a very cunning and cowardly enemy, who is not as invincible as he thinks he is.

This is exactly how Germany was portrayed in the poster "Mercilessly Defeat and Destroy the Enemy!" This masterpiece of Soviet poster art was created in 1941 by a group of poster artists Kukryniksy consisting of M. Kupriyanov, P. Krylov and N. Sokolov. The poster depicts a Red Army soldier preparing to fatally strike the enemy - the Führer of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler. Hitler is depicted in the poster as a small, hunched-over little man, shrinking before the Soviet warrior’s strike. The idea of the poster was simple: the enemy is already afraid of us, and therefore victory is coming, moreover, victory is near.