This striking, anti-British propaganda map was published to give support to Vichy French forces and turn the French public against Britain. The design focuses on a 12-tentacled octopus bearing a grotesque version of Winston Churchill's face, holding a cigar between his blood-red lips. The tentacles reach out to seize French colonial possessions and Axis territories, with bloody, severed tentacles signifying sites where Britain had faced defeats in the early years of the war. These defeats included Operation Menace in Dakar, Operation Catapult in Mers-el-Kébir, and Britain's campaigns in Norway. The title translates as: "Have confidence... the amputations are continuing methodically." This was intended to reassure pro-Vichy supporters that not only had Britain already been defeated in multiple instances, but would continue to be defeated by the Axis powers. However, the map is not entirely forthcoming, as the situation in Syria was actually a British success due to its Syria-Lebanon Campaign in 1941, so that severed tentacle was misleading.

The map poster is signed at top right "SPK" (or "PSK"), however the author has not yet been identified. Also undetermined is the publisher of the poster. The two most likely creators are either the Vichy government itself or the Propaganda-Abteilung Frankreich, a Nazi propaganda service of the German military command in occupied France. Regardless of the original source, this propaganda poster is an excellent example of the power of visual imagery.

See also lot 742 for Curtis & Pedersen's War Map - Pictorial Conflict Maps 1900-1950 that describes this map.

References: Curtis & Pederson (War Map) pp. 136-39; PJ Mode #2123.01; Rumsey #9750.

Condition: B+

Issued folding, and now flattened and professionally backed in archival tissue to repair a few short fold separations and tears, tiny holes, and a 1"x0.5" hole in South Africa with the color reinstated. There are several abrasions in the image and extraneous creasing along the right edge of the sheet.