Using numerous examples of US and Nazi military heraldry, Gorgeous War compares the way the American and German militaries developed their graphic and textile design in the interwar period. The book shows how social and cultural design movements like modernism altered and were altered by both militaries. It also explores how nascent corporate culture and war production united to turn national brands like IBM, Coca-Cola, and Disney into multinational corporations that had learned lessons on propaganda and branding that were being tested during the Second World War. What is the legacy of apparently toxic signs like the swastika? The answer may not be what we hoped. Inheritors of the post-Second World War world increasingly struggle to find an escape from an intensely branded environment—to find a place in their lives that is free of advertising and propaganda. This book suggests that we look again at how it is our culture makes that struggle into an appealing Gorgeous War.