There was nothing subtle about the propaganda used by the warring countries during World War Two. I was looking at some of the posters from that time, and they were racist, crude, downright scary, and I think darn effective. They hit you right in the stomach and brought out the fear for your family members.

You can read an article on just this subject at: http://www.msu.edu/~navarro6/srop.html

The article was written by Anthony V. Navarro and goes into greater depth on the subject.