Even as rats, the faces of Hitler and Mussolini are obvious in this wartime ad. By contrast, the bottom rat represents not a specific Japanese leader, but "the" Japanese. Why not portray "the Germans" or "the Italians" similarly? Because it would not have been convincing. Most U.S. viewers would have found the claim that all Germans or Italians are identical and evil to be absurd. But it was much easier to deny individuality to Japanese. One reason was that Japan did not have a charismatic leader like Hitler or Mussolini. Another is that Japan was mysterious and relatively unknown to the average American. And the notion that "the Japanese" are all the same was around even before the outbreak of war. For these and other reasons crude racial stereotyping of the entire Japanese people dominated wartime imagery, while in the case of Germany and Italy, U.S. imagery typically distinguished between evil Nazis and Fascists on the one hand, and ordinary Germans and Italians on the other. #Read more on this topic.#