Unfortunately, the word “propaganda” has come to be regarded as something bad; misleading at best and outright lies at worst. While this is true in too many cases, propaganda as originally intended is employed in various forms simply as a means of persuading its audience.

Between 1914 and 1918 – the period of “The Great War” (World War One, as we have come to call it) – poster art had achieved well-deserved prominence as an advertising and communications medium.

Usually big and bold, with colorful, eye-catching images and compelling words, posters were displayed almost anywhere a vertical surface was available on which to paste them.

So, posters were an obvious choice for mostly ethical propaganda as a means of encouraging a nation’s populace to support the war effort in all aspects. Messages included recruiting, training, honoring battle prowess, soliciting money, spurring greater war production, and certainly to negatively characterize the enemy.

As noted by O.W. Riegel, a propaganda analyst for the U.S. Office of War Information, “In the overall view, posters of the First World War were exhortations that sought to exploit people’s conscious or subconscious vulnerabilities to appeals to basic emotions of self-preservation, tribal patriotic pride, and traditional morality.”

What we’re offering here is a small selection from among thousands of these propaganda posters produced by combatant nations embroiled in the first war of a truly global scale.

And since our focus is, of course, on man portable weaponry, our choices are based on how some prominent examples of these weapons were skillfully and dramatically incorporated in the messaging.

MEN WANTED FOR THE ARMY. When this poster was created in 1914, the war in Europe had just started but America was officially neutral. Foreseeing what would soon become inevitable, the woefully undermanned U.S. Army stepped up recruiting. Here, a stalwart infantry corporal carrying an M1903 Springfield rifle leads his squad running toward their objective. The iconic felt campaign hats would be exchanged in 1917 for British style “tin hats” or French “Adrian” helmets in the trenches. Credit: Library of Congress via Wikimedia

May 18, 1918, Badonviller, France. These “Doughboys” of the American 42^nd Division are snipers, draped from head to toe in formless sack cloth camouflage and armed with M1903 Springfields, the Army’s standard infantry rifle. Highly accurate and very reliable, the 8.7-pound .30-06 caliber, bolt action rifle was sometimes fitted with an optical scope for target identification and longer-range sniping. Credit: US Army Signal Corps, National Archives

“AMMUNITION!” This American soldier has his hand outstretched in a plea for more ammo for his smoking hot French 8mm Hotchkiss Mle 1914 machine gun. Somewhat improbably slung over his shoulder, he has a .30-06 caliber M1903 Springfield Rifle with fixed bayonet. Civilians at home were urged to buy War Bonds to help finance the astronomical costs of war materiel. Credit: Library of Congress

May 10, 1918, France. U.S. 1^st Infantry Division soldiers on the firing range with a French Mle 1914 machine gun on the awkward Omnibus tripod. When serving alongside French forces, shortages of American weapons and ammunition, as well as logistical efficiency, dictated the need to equip American troops with these combat-proven, 8mm, strip fed, air cooled guns with distinctive “doughnut” cooling fins. Note their “tin hat” style Brodie helmets, a holstered .45 caliber M1911 pistol, and sheathed “bolo” knife. Credit: US Army Heritage and Education Center

FIRST IN FRANCE. Deployed to the European battlefields at Verdun in March 1918, American Marines were – along with elements of the U.S. Army’s 2^nd Division – the first U.S. troops to join the fight against Germany and its allies. The artist has portrayed this charging “Devil Dog’s” .30-06 caliber Lewis Gun on ungainly bipod with dead-on accuracy. While not specific in intent, multiple messages are conveyed in this poster including praise for courageous Marines, sparking admiration among civilians at home and inspiring young men to enlist in the Corps. Credit: Library of Congress

1917. No location noted but probably on the range at MCB Quantico, Virginia, the Marine Corps is conducting firing tests of the Lewis Machine Gun. Soon proving quite satisfactory, some 6,000 of these were quickly ordered from Savage Arms. These pan-fed, air cooled, .30-06 caliber Model 1917 guns armed Marines sent to France in 1917. Credit: Library of Congress

MINE MORE COAL. This poster serves dual duty in urging America’s coal miners to increase production because coal fuels war material factories and fires boilers in trains and in cargo ships transporting supplies to soldiers in France. Dramatically posed side by side with pickaxe and Browning Automatic Rifle at the ready, they both fulfill necessary and honorable duty in the war. Credit: Library of Congress

18 February 1918, France. US Army Lieutenant Val Browning, son of prolific firearms inventor John M. Browning, is conducting a demonstration of his father’s Model 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. The 15½ pound weapon was fed by a detachable magazine holding twenty .30-06 cartridges. Although not arriving until very late in the war, these highly reliable and accurate machine rifles were a godsend to Doughboys previously armed with the crude but surprisingly useful French Chauchat. Credit: U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center

THEY SHALL NOT PASS! “Twice I have stood fast and conquered on the Marne,” saving Paris from German occupation. By 1918, French and Allied soldiers had been deadlocked in vicious, savage and increasingly futile trench warfare for four horrific years. With bayonet fixed on his Fusil Modéle 1886/93 “Lebel” rifle, this ragged, battle-ravaged Poilu stands defiantly amid the shell blasted desolation of “no mans land.” Credit: Author’s collection/Library of Congress

1912, France. Two years before the outbreak of war, these well dressed and fully equipped French Chasseurs pause briefly during training maneuvers. An impressively long Modéle 1886/93 rifle in the foreground is readily identified by its straight bolt handle and 30½ inch long barrel. Its tubular magazine holds eight rounds of 8mm Lebel smokeless powder cartridges. Credit: Bibliotheque Nationale De France via Wikimedia

AND YOU? Sign War Loans. Asking his fellow German citizens to give money to support the war, a somewhat forlorn German infantryman clutches a “potato masher” stick grenade, ready to assault enemy trenches. This not so subtle, guilt-inducing appeal to civilians of the Fatherland is seen in similar posters from all the other combatant nations. Credit: Philasearch.com via Wikimedia

STAHLHELM HELDEN (Steel Helmet Heroes). This propaganda postcard image is from a series depicting heroic German soldiers in WWI. Here, Stosstruppen (shock troops) assault French positions with a hail of Stielhandgranaten (stick grenades). Additional grenades are carried in pairs of sandbags draped over their shoulders. This is a late war scene, probably 1917 or 1918 when grenades of all types had become the primary weapons of trench warriors on both sides. Credit: Philasearch.com via Wikimedia

MILITARY WAR LOANS. The Imperial Russian Army was very poorly prepared when it entered the war against Germany in 1914. A rush to mobilization and necessary war production followed, including the need for large numbers of heavy machine guns. This 1916 poster shows a rather idealized and uncommonly clean gun crew in combat action, firing their Pulemyot Maxima PM1910 (Maxim’s machine gun Model 1910) and urges everyone to “aid our glorious troops, and all who can must subscribe to the 5½ percent war loan.” Credit: Baburina N.I. via Wikimedia    

Although this photo was taken a decade or so after the Revolution of 1917 that took Tsarist Russia out of WWI, it’s useful in depicting the similar composition of a typical Red Army heavy machine gun section. Under the watchful eyes of two pistol-packing officers and flanked by protective riflemen who double as ammunition carriers, the gunner and his assistant are prepared to engage the enemy with a torrent of powerful 7.62 mm bullets from their Pulemyot Maxima PM1910. This iconic water-cooled and belt-fed weapon, characterized by its steel shield and wheeled Sokolov mount, has a sustained fire capability of 600 rounds per minute. Credit: Ukrainian SSR via Wikimedia

One of the prime movers behind the scenes in the production of the BAR was Edwin Pugsley. He was a giant of a man and as CEO of Winchester attended to the details of production and experimental firearms. Not much has been written about him except in the book on the BAR, Rock in a Hard Place. In it is described how Mr. Pugsley took the only prototype that Colt had to Winchester to make production drawings over a single weekend. Only a man of Pugsley’s stature could have pulled an entire engineering staff together to accomplish such a massive and precise undertaking. Edwin had joined the staff as an engineer in 1911 and rose through the ranks to eventually become president and CEO of WRA.

A little known but amusing anecdote of Mr. Pugsley is that a neighbor of his, Charles Addams, a noted writer and cartoonist for the New Yorker magazine, immortalized Edwin Pugsley in the campy, creepy classic cartoon The Addams Family. Pugsley became the mundane and morose son of Morticia and Gomez Addams. Though amused, Edwin was far more proud of his award winning design work on a sundial, which today sits beautifully in a garden at Old Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.

Pugsley’s genius in addition to working on difficult production problems was dealing with other design genius’ and their weird and irascible behavior. He ran interference with David Marshall “Carbine” Williams on the M1 Carbine. He also worked with Elmer Keith on the M70 – he was not a problem but a legend in his own time. Pugsley was a man of strong character with genius abilities, but was also an artistic thoughtful man. A true Renaissance man whose guidance of Winchester and their products live in the classic weapons we all know.

One of Mr. Pugsley’s and “Marsh” Williams’ designs did not make it to production, though it should have.

The Winchester Automatic Rifle: the WAR

In 1943, work began on a possible replacement for the venerable BAR. In mid 1944, the army published requirements for the possible replacement. This would be a difficult task since the BAR was such a unique and respected weapon.

Winchester led the way in this program with the T-20 series; the modified M1 Garands. The whole Garand series of T-20s with a BAR magazine was entirely too light for the full auto role, a fact that was rediscovered in the late fifty’s with the M14 and M15. The whole T-20 story is well illustrated and told in WHB Smith’s classic Small Arms of the World, Eighth Edition.

What is glossed over, without photo or explanation, was the “in house “Winchester designed WAR (Winchester Automatic Rifle): a spinoff of the G30R program attributed to David Marsh Williams of M1 Carbine fame. In fact, it looks rather like an M1 on steroids. Utilizing the famous tappet system so successful in the carbine, it also has elements of John Garand’s famous rifle. This is not farfetched since Winchester was a prime contractor on M1 rifles.

The WAR story became reality to this author on July 12, 1996 when Steven Beatty, Curator of the Springfield Armory Museum NHS held one of these gingerly in his hands, serial number 12. He proudly proclaimed, “All the major sources say that ten of these were fabricated. Even Winchester doesn’t have this one.”

From the photos you can see that it has a slightly curved 20-round magazine and a spindly bipod. It utilizes a turning bolt and a cammed operating rod similar to the M1 Carbine. It is selective fire with a lever located on the top left hand side of the receiver – sure to get hot after a few rounds.

Obviously, this rifle would not stand the abuse the BAR will, but it would have made a beautiful sporting rifle. The only good source of information on this fascinating but obscure rifle was written by Konrad Schreier, Jr. for Armax, the Journal of the Cody Firearms Museum in 1990.