Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms

Wartime sacrifices were justified as necessary to protect liberty, which often became identified with Franklin Roosevelt’s concept of “The Four Freedoms.” Norman Rockwell, a master of the storytelling form of artistic illustration, tried to “take the Four Freedoms out of the [President’s] noble language and put them in terms everybody can understand.” Rockwell’s illustrations—conceived during the summer of 1942, published in consecutive issues of The Saturday Evening Post in early 1943, and adapted to government-produced war posters—provided familiar images of why Americans needed to fight the Second World War. They tapped deeply held values and prompted more than 60,000 people to write to Rockwell with their reactions.

Some of Rockwell’s correspondents, critical of Roosevelt’s leadership and suspicious of social changes that the war effort seemed to be encouraging, disliked his paintings. One New Yorker complained that only Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship really grew out of the American past, and that Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear seemed “the invention” of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Another critic wondered how Rockwell “could have gone so completely wrong,” especially by including so many “foreign-looking” characters, in his Freedom of Worship picture.

Most of the letters, though, praised Rockwell’s paintings. “For your noble and human and deeply stirring series interpreting the Four Freedoms, I want to send my warmest appreciation,” wrote a person with three family members serving in the armed forces. Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech painting drew special acclaim for its nostalgic depiction of a venerated smalltown tradition, the town meeting. “Thank you, Mr. Rockwell, for your reassurance!” wrote a person from Pennsylvania. Rockwell’s images seemed to reassure millions of Americans that the Second World War was a struggle to preserve and protect basic American liberties, not a crusade to change the world.