Ve Vant Var [We Want War] - Propaganda Sticker -

[German-American Bund?], 1941. A small sticker featuring a Star of David with an accentuated 'V' and the slogan 'Ve Vant Var'. These stickers were distributed by Bundists, fascists and isolationists in opposition to the "V is for Victory" campaign, which they believed was a plot by the international bankers (Jews) to capitalize on another world war. One group who distributed the stickers was the Friends of Progress, a Los Angeles-based anti-Semitic organization founded by Robert Noble and Ellis Jones. In a 1945 court case against members of the group for for violating the Subversive Organization Registration Act, witnesses stated that the stickers were sold by the bundle at Friends of Progress meetings, that member James McBride had distributed them, and that the sticker had been seen on the desk of West Coast Bund leader, Hermann Schwinn. In the Nov., 1941 issue of The Beacon Light, American fascist, William Kullgren, published a long article on the V campaign and explained it thusly: "This 'V' symbol stands for getting America into war, and all that implies: staggering taxes, strikes, suppression of free speech, free press and civil liberties, along with panics, depression, investment losses, bank failures, etc., all punitive measures to either bring on war or revolution or both. When the storm breaks, somebody will wish they lived in Madagascar." This latter threat was in reference to the early Nazi plan to forcibly relocate the European Jewish population to the island of Madagascar. Kullgren mentions the 'Ve Vant Var' slogan in his article. The sticker measures 2 ½" x 3 ¼" with gummed back and appears never to have been applied. Fine. No record found in OCLC, although copies exist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum & the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. A scarce surviving remnant.