American Propaganda
Don't Strip Tease for Anopheles, 1946 US poster: Malaria-control poster for troops

Don't Strip Tease for Anopheles

Don't Strip Tease for Anopheles (1946), a malaria warning

A July 1946 War Department poster, WD GTA 8-24, uses a striptease pun to tell troops to keep covered against the malaria mosquito. NAID 514166.

Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appeal
Date
1946
Made by
U.S. War Department (WD GTA 8-24)
Medium
Poster
Country
United States
Regime
Truman Administration
NARA
NAID 514166; Record Group 44
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026
Source
Public domain (U.S. government work) U.S. War Department. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-686 (NAID 514166).

Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

Full record at propagandaarchive.org

Don't Strip Tease for Anopheles is a 1946 War Department poster for troops, WD GTA 8-24, dated July 1946. A shirtless soldier clutches a towel while a cartoon mosquito hovers beside him, and the text tells troops the anopheles mosquito carries malaria. NAID 514166.

The joke and the warning

A soldier in a helmet and boots, stripped to the waist, holds a towel against himself. Next to him hovers a cartoon mosquito with its stinger out. The headline is a pun, and the facts follow in smaller type.

Don't strip tease

for Anopheles

The anopheles mosquito

is a carrier of

MALARIA

KEEP COVERED

[imprint:] U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1946-O-703234

WD GTA 8-24, July 46. Don't Strip Tease for Anopheles. Distribution: Continental: Special distribution. Overseas to Pacific and Caribbean Areas only: [...]

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image. The distribution formula after "Areas only:" is cut here. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 514166, local id 44-PA-686, Record Group 44.

Who it was for

The fine print answers that better than most posters do. The sheet is numbered WD GTA 8-24 and dated July 1946. Its distribution line gives it special distribution at home and sends it overseas to the Pacific and Caribbean areas only, under a distribution formula that the sheet says FM 21-6 explains. It was an instruction to soldiers, not a sheet for the general public.

Is it propaganda?

Barely. The archive tags it as a fear appeal and says the technique is faint. The fear comes from naming one disease, and the advice is concrete: keep covered. The sheet makes one claim of fact, that the anopheles mosquito carries malaria, and asks for a small act a soldier could do for himself.

That makes it a good control case for the rest of the collection. A government poster can inform without inflaming. The joke softens an order rather than hiding one, and the reader is told what the danger is and what to do about it. Compare the 1943 Public Health Service sheet Keep Out Malaria Mosquitoes, which aims a similar message at anyone with a torn window screen, and the 1946 Navy poster Penicillin for Gonorrhea Works 95 Times Out of 100, another health sheet for servicemen from the same year.

Sources

  • FRAME object record, Don't Strip Tease for Anopheles, 1946. U.S. War Department (WD GTA 8-24).
  • U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 514166, local id 44-PA-686, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).