When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Hitler

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Part of a series on War Propaganda Parodies. [View Related Entries]

About

When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Hitler is an anti-Nazi propaganda poster created and widely distributed by the United States government during World War II to encourage carpooling among American citizens to conserve gasoline for the war. The image has inspired various propaganda parodies online, mocking its use of hyperbole and Godwin's Law.

Origin

Illustrated by American painter Weimer Pursell, the original poster was commissioned and distributed by the U.S. Government Printing Office for the Office of Price Administration in 1943 as part of domestic efforts to encourage rationing and conservation of resources. The image depicts a suited man driving a car with a phantom-like silhouette of Adolf Hitler in the passenger seat, captioned with “When you ride alone you ride with Hitler! / Join a car-sharing club today!” (shown below).

Spread

In October 2002, American political commentator and comedian Bill Maher published the non-fiction book When You Ride Alone You Ride with bin Laden, featuring a parody of the original poster with Osama bin Laden substituted for Hitler as the cover illustration (shown below, left).^[3] On June 3rd, 2010, FunnyJunk^[7] user MrShake submitted a poster parody of a woman sleeping with an outline of Hitler and the caption "When you cuddle alone / you cuddle with Hitler!" (shown below, right).

On July 19th, 2012, the original Pursell poster was submitted in a post titled "Wow, it's that serious?" to the /r/WTF^[5] subreddit. On October 22nd, Redditor Danteros posted a mock propaganda poster featuring a young man seated at a computer neat to a communist devil with the caption "When you pirate MP3s, you're downloading communism" (shown below, left). Prior to being archived, the post gained over 1,400 votes (87% upvoted). On August 8th, 2013, Redditor mitigateaccomp submitted an edited version of the original Pursell poster with a caption urging readers to ride bicycles to the /r/bicycling^[6] subreddit, which received more than 2,000 votes (87% upvoted) before it was archived (shown below, right).