This poster was published in 1978 by the Kommunistischer Bund Westdeutschland (KBW), the West German Communist League, as a tool for a nationwide coordinated rally on 7 April of that year.

The KBW was a Maoist organisation active in West Germany between 1973 and 1985, the strongest of the country's communist groupings between 1974 and 1981. The poster is articulated in two superimposed vignettes, each with a world map over which looms a monstrous skeletal hand. In the upper cartoon, Jimmy Carter, Bible under his arm, spreads his fingers over the planisphere. In the lower one, Leonid Brezhnev holds up a flag with the inscription Entspannung (distension) while doing the same. The two hands are visually almost identical.

The title of the poster, Die beiden Supermächte bereiten den Krieg vor! («The two superpowers are preparing for war!»), condenses this symmetrical accusation. To this is added a quote from Mao Zedong in the middle: “As far as the question of world war is concerned, there are only two possibilities: either war provokes revolution, or revolution prevents war“. In the face of the bipolar logic of the Cold War, the Maoism of the K-Gruppen Germans argued that both superpowers were equally imperialist. The Entspannung The Soviet Union was not a path to peace, but a screen.

Sources

• Kommunistische Bund Westdeutschland