"Totes Meer (Dead Sea)" was submitted to WAAC in 1941 and shows a 'dead sea' of wrecked German plane wings and fuselages based on sketches, and photographs, made at the Metal and Produce Recovery Unit at Cowley near Oxford in 1940. The painting recalls a series of bleak sea and coastal paintings Nash made in the 1930s. Although the aircraft dump at Cowley contained many British planes, Nash only depicted German aircraft because he wished to show the fate of the 'hundreds and hundreds of flying creatures which invaded these shores'. He used the German title for the picture as he wanted it included in a series of postcards of crashed German planes he suggested be dropped over the Reich as propaganda. To this end Nash even created a postcard of the painting with Hitler's head superimposed on the wrecked aircraft. Kenneth Clark stated that "Totes Meer" was 'the best war picture so far I think' and is still considered among the most celebrated British paintings of World War II.