Destroy this mad brute!

Date Uploaded: 07/05/2024

"DESTROY THIS MAD BRUTE" is the caption of this World War I propaganda poster for enlistment in the U.S. Army. A dribbling, ape-like German wielding a club bearing the word "kultur" and wearing a pickelhaube helmet with the word "militarism" is walking onto the shore of America while holding a half-naked woman in his grasp (possibly meant to depict Liberty). This is a US version of an earlier British poster with the same image. While England and France were depicted as “civilization,” Germany was shown as a “mad brute” — here, a giant, drooling gorilla weilding the club of German kultur (culture) and carrying the limp, half-naked body of a woman. As a result of propaganda like this, German Americans — many of whose ancestors had lived in America for centuries — faced persecution during the war.

Public Domain

Library of Congress

Hoops, Harry R. Destroy this mad brute Enlist - U.S. Army. [1918]. Lithograph poster. Library of Congress. Accessed February 20, 2026.

Public Domain

Public Domain is a copyright term that is often used when talking about copyright for creative works. Under U.S. copyright law, individual items that are in the public domain are items that are no longer protected by copyright law. This means that you do not need to request permission to re-use, re-publish or even change a copy of the item. Items enter the public domain under U.S. copyright law for a number of reasons: the original copyright may have expired; the item was created by the U.S. Federal Government or other governmental entity that views the things it creates as in the public domain; the work was never protected by copyright for some other reason related to how it was produced (for example, it was a speech that wasn't written down or recorded); or the work doesn't have enough originality to make it eligible for copyright protection.

Citation

Hoops, Harry R. Destroy this mad brute Enlist - U.S. Army. [1918]. Lithograph poster. Library of Congress. Accessed February 20, 2026.