United We Are Strong, United We Will Win (1943), Henry Koerner's flags on the guns

Henry Koerner made this 1943 Office of War Information poster of gun barrels flying Allied flags, the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes and the Soviet flag among them, against a fiery sky. Its only legible words are "UNITED we are strong" and "UNITED we will win." The copy described is in the Library of Congress.

Eight words over a bank of guns

The archive describes a bank of gun barrels flying the flags of the Allied nations against a fiery sky. It names three of the flags: the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, and the Soviet flag. It does not list the others. The archive reads two headlines, each opening on the same word.

UNITED

we are strong

UNITED we will win

A Library of Congress copy, not a National Archives one

The FRAME record cites the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-12529, and gives no NAID. The archive calls it a lithograph by Henry Koerner for the Office of War Information. Because the foot lines are illegible in the scan, the issuer and artist come from the catalog, not from text this page can quote.

A 1942 security poster on this site, Someone Talked!, is signed Koerner.

What "UNITED" leaves out

The archive tags two techniques. Transfer: the flags ride on the guns, so national symbols lend themselves to firepower. Glittering generalities: "UNITED" is offered as a good in itself, with no policy attached.

That second point matters most for a reader now. The sheet asks Americans to feel one cause with every flag on the line, the Soviet flag included, and it says nothing about what the partners wanted after the war or how they governed at home. A poster cannot carry a foreign policy debate, and this one does not attempt it. The only claims are "strong" and "win," and both are about force.

For a different OWI use of the same word, see United We Win, OWI Poster No. 18, where two riveters work beneath one flag. The Office of War Information hub covers the agency, and the OWI domestic branch case study covers the branch that issued posters at home.