The controversy surrounding Norman Lindsay’s shocking 1918 recruitment posters

The controversy surrounding Norman Lindsay’s shocking 1918 recruitment posters 

Throughout the Great War, Australia had to rely on volunteers to replenish its divisions on the Western Front. 

With enlistments drying up in 1918, a desperate Australian government turned to artist Norman Lindsay to produce six recruitment posters. 

In early October 1918, aiming to surprise and shock, the posters were distributed at night, one design at a time. 

In this poster, Lindsay suggested that an invading German army could threaten Australia. It plays on visceral themes of marauding ape-like Germans wearing spiked helmets threatening a homestead with a husband unable to protect his vulnerable wife. 

Was Lindsay - who is better known for classics such as ‘The Magic Pudding - really a Machiavellian artist who cravenly preyed on peoples’ primal fears? 

Lindsay had been deeply affected by the war. In 1916, his younger brother, Reg, died on the Somme. His death deeply affected Lindsay, who thereafter acutely felt the war’s horror: ‘one walked the streets to see half the women in black, mothers, wives, sisters in mourning for their dead,’ he wrote. 

It also affected his work: the heroic ANZAC soldier he sometimes portrayed in his war posters began to resemble Reg. Lindsay also turned to spiritualism – he purchased an Ouija board and often attempted to contact his brother.  

Lindsay’s biographer wrote that he did not relish the task of helping with the recruiting campaign and had ‘qualms about exhorting other men to risk their lives in battle’ while he was safe in Australia. Yet, Lindsay also feared that Germany was the ‘only nation fighting with the fixed intention to sacrifice everything to one end’ and had to be defeated. 

Lindsay was undoubtedly a conflicted man.

Ironically, federal parliament opposed some of Lindsay’s bloodthirsty posters.  

The war ended before all six posters were released. 

Excerpt from: The Nameless Names: recovering the missing ANZACs 

Photograph credit: SLV 

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