Question

What purpose did these images serve?

Answer 1

The correct answer is D. They appealed to people to enlist, contribute money, and conserve resources.

Indeed, the first poster is an image of the War Gardens. Since the armed forces needed to be fed, a great percentage of agricultural produce was directed to consumption of the military. This in turn threatened financial resources since the lesser offer of agricultural produce inevitably provoke a spike of its prices which meant that the government needed to pay more money for food for the troops. The repercussion was that the government would have much less money to buy other types of supplies and/or weapons which would hurt the overall war effort. Therefore, to keep the food prices stable and to mitigate food rationing, War Gardens were actively encouraged so that Civilians would grow their own agricultural produce to feed themselves.

The second image is quite clear. It is encouraging male citizens to enlist in the armed forces massively and fight the enemy.

The third image is economic in nature. It aimed to encourage the general population to buy war bonds in order to prevent and/or contain inflation and to finance the war effort (contribute money). Americans would buy bonds that promised them a return of ten percent after a given time period. The American government was able to raise 132 million dollars thanks to these financial securities.