"Speaking of Annihilation": Mobilizing for War Against Human and Insect Enemies, 1914-1945

Abstract

In 1944 and 1945, two periodicals with very different audiences published similar images. Both showed half-human, half-insect creatures, talked of the of these vermin, and touted modern technology as the means to accomplish that end. One piece, a cartoon in the United States Marines' magazine Leatherneck, showed a creature labeled Louseous Japanicas and said its breeding grounds around the Tokyo area . . . must be completely (See figure 1.) A month after the cartoon appeared, the United States began mass incendiary bombings of Japanese cities, followed by the atomic blasts that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although the Leatherneck cartoon was surely intended to be humorous and hyperbolic, calls for annihilation of human enemies had, by the end of the war, become realistic. So too with insect enemies. The second cartoon, an advertisement in a chemical industry journal, promoted perfumes to eliminate insecticide odors. (See figure 2.) Tapping the rhetoric that pervaded World War II, the text began, Speaking of annihilation. The accompanying image showed three creatures with insect bodies, each with a stereotypical head representing a national enemy. The Italian creature lay on its back, an allusion to Allied victory over the Italian army. The German and Japanese creatures remained standing, as guns blasted all three with chemical clouds. Like human enemies, the advertisement implied, insect enemies could and should be annihilated. That possibility, too, had come within reach by the end of World War II. The Allies killed disease-bearing lice and mosquitoes over wide areas using a powerful new insecticide called DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), and entomologists called for the extermination of entire species.