WASHINGTON: Joseph Stalin’s signature was bold and forceful, Harry Truman’s was unaffected and readily legible, while Winston Churchill’s was formal and unflappable. The autographs of World War II’s Big Three leaders — etched on a programme to a string orchestra concert during a break from their conference in Potsdam — are on display at the US National Archives in a new exhibition that aims to look at history through penmanship.

The exhibition, which opens Friday and runs until January 2015, taps into the National Archives’ collections to show more than 100 signatures of figures as diverse as pop legend Michael Jackson and the first US president.

In perhaps the most chilling section, the National Archives has put out the marriage licence of Adolf Hitler signed on April 29, 1945 as the German dictator and Eva Braun eloped one day before they committed suicide. The licence, seized by US troops, testifies that Hitler and his longtime girlfriend were “of pure Aryan descent” and asks Braun, “Are you willing to take Our Fuehrer Adolf Hitler as your husband?” Hitler signs with a scrunched scribble and Braun begins to write “Eva B-”before crossing out the “B” of her maiden name and writing Eva Hitler.

“Signatures tell us a lot about their owners and the circumstances under which they were made,” said David Ferriero, archivist of the United States.The exhibition’s signatures show Abraham Lincoln to be “decisive”, anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman as “determined” and Hollywood legend Katharine Hepburn as “fearless,” he said.

The exhibition highlights the unexpected turns and what-ifs of history. A 1989 card signed by Saddam Hussein thanks new US president George H. W. Bush for his “kind greetings”; two years later, the United States would attack Iraq after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.

Jennifer Johnson, the exhibition’s curator, said that the one historical figure she felt obliged to include was the US revolutionary John Hancock, whose signature is on display in a document as governor of Massachusetts. Hancock’s conspicuously large signature on the 1776 Declaration of Independence from Britainwas so famous that his name has become synonymous with an autograph in American English.

Shifting to the contemporary era, the exhibition demonstrates an autopen. Barack Obama has become the first president to use an autopen, authorising his signature remotely on urgent legislation when he is away from Washington.

Johnson said she expected children at the exhibition to have trouble reading cursive writing. “We’re certainly ticking that way in how we sign things. When I think about it, I don’t put pen to paper that often when making a transaction,” she said. “As a historian, I’m terribly sad about it... but I think it’s inevitable.”—AFP