Someone Talked!

Why it works

A drowning sailor, only his head and one huge outstretched forearm above black water, points straight out of the poster at whoever let the secret slip. The design is by Frederick Siebel, an Austrian-born artist who had settled in the United States in 1936; according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum it won a competition run by the paint company Devoe & Reynolds and judged by Eleanor Roosevelt, before the Office of War Information issued it in 1942 as its poster no. 18. Its two words leave the viewer to supply the story, and the foreshortened finger turns the familiar pointing gesture of recruitment posters into an accusation. The National Archives places it in the government's effort to convince civilians that small snippets about troop or ship movements could help enemy agents, a theme the Holocaust Memorial Museum traces back to Britain's careless-talk posters of 1940. It is studied as a stark fear appeal, and for how much a minimal headline leaves to the audience.