Iconic WWII Propaganda--Great Britain, 1940 ("Careless Talk Costs Lives")

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 2727

I found these images years and years ago, and evidently had forgotten them--they surface yesterday from a long slumber, and immediately put me into mind of the very real hearst and minds campaign and of keeping secrets secret in the terrible and great struggle in the U.K. in 1940.  These are four of eight posters in the very popular “Careless Talk Costs Lives” wartime propaganda series issued by the Ministry of Information and printed in 1940¹. They are the very stylized work of the illustrator "Fougasse", who was Cyril Kenneth Bird, (1887-1965), an illustrator for Punch (from 1937 to 1949) and other journals and magazines, and also a wounded vet of Gallipoli in the First War. 

The series in general depicts people sharing a piece of possibly sensitive information that in the wrong hands and together with other pieces of info could reveal devastating secrets—and in each case there are figures lurking/loitering/disguised in the background waiting to collect the data, and generally a poorly disguised Hitler or Goering or both. Fougasse was able to make his message immediately memorable and understood because I think of his understated over-the-top visual humor. The images were funny, but the message was deadly serious. Also, you really didn't even need to read the text to understand the message. (This is in the same vein as some of Thomas Nast's finest work, conveying social content and a political message to the illiterate, making his devastating (and usually highly textual) cartoons understandable without needing to read them.) 

(1) "Strictly Between Four Walls".  In this poster (made a convenient size to be useful in virtually any small area and also abiding the wartime paper shortage) we see two men in big club chairs about to share some bit while the artwork-ensconced Hitler waits to hear the interesting parts. 

(2) "Be Careful What You Say and Where You Say It!" Here two chaps share suds in a Hitler-infused pub. 

(3) "But of Course it Mustn't Go Any Further!", say two blokes in a 2nd class railway cabin, the feet and legs of Goering and Hitler dangling over them as they share their unsharable war information. 

(4) "You Never Know Who's Listening!". Two ladies on a bus share some wartime news while Hitler and Goering sit aloof and patient, absorbing all. 

 

Notes.

1.32x22cm, color lithograph, and printed on paper (though some were originally issued affixed to cardboard or another stiffer board.