Railway Poster • STO poster • France • WW2

This French WW2 poster was made to remind workers to return from their work in Germany.

The Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO) was a forced-labour scheme initiated by Germany to deploy French workers, especially within the engineering and construction sectors, into German war production.

The scheme was a classic example of the human resource extraction associated with servicing the military-industrial economy of total war. The administration of the STO was entirely French staffed and their message was based on an appeal to patriotism, coercion and false-promises. Some French military prisoners-of-war were returned in exchange for workers.

I found an academic paper about the propaganda posters of Vichy France by Fabiola Loko

https://tinyurl.com/232fjsv4

And a French radio broadcast about the story, here

https://tinyurl.com/kwyw6ecy

The poster is unsigned, but quite well designed.

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