The British Library, as part of its continuing drive to promote the most impressive things that literature has to offer, has focused on some popular, rare and never-before-seen leaflets from the Second World War, highlighting the lengths that participating superpowers went to in order to support – or spook – regular citizens.

This battle to influence the minds of those fighting the battle – or staying at home as part of the total war effort – is being demonstrated through these fascinating printed artefacts, which are part of the British Library’s Propaganda: Power And Persuasion exhibition.

Alongside the leaflets – of which many have been mimicked countless times in a wide range of other printed media – are a large number of radio broadcasts and films from the past 100 years. Nonetheless, the backbone of the exhibition includes literature dropped over Nazi Germany by Allied Forces, as well as other efforts to undermine the efforts of the Japanese and Italian armies who had allied with Adolf Hitler.

However, those with a keen advertising eye may be privy to new insights into marketing in the modern age; much of the later years of the exhibit accentuate the ways that governments cleverly used similar approaches to influence their citizens.