Saboteur (1943), the U.S. Public Health Service's rat poster

Saboteur is a 1943 U.S. Public Health Service poster of the Federal Security Agency. A large rat looms over the wartime word "Saboteur," and six panels say rats spread plague and typhus, destroy food and property and start fires, ending "Combat the rat" (NAID 515320).

Six panels and a rat

A large rat, seen close up, looms over a single word. Six panels run underneath: five name a harm, and the sixth tells the reader what to do. The sheet also carries agency text and a sales line.

SABOTEUR

Rats Spread Plague . . .

Spread Typhus . . .

Destroy Food . . .

Destroy Property . . .

Start Fires . . .

COMBAT THE RAT

ASK YOUR

LOCAL HEALTH DEPARTMENT

FOR DETAILS

Federal Security Agency

U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE

CHP 2

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.

GPO O - 43 - 529049

Who issued it

The sheet names its issuer: the U.S. Public Health Service, under the Federal Security Agency. It carries a code, CHP 2, and a line saying copies were for sale through the Superintendent of Documents. The GPO number dates it to 1943. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 44 with the World War II Posters. No artist is named, and the record gives no print run.

A war word for a pest

FRAME files this sheet under name-calling and fear appeal. The name-calling here is unusual: a wartime label for a human enemy is pinned on an animal. The health service borrows a word from the vocabulary of war to make a message about pests feel urgent. The fear appeal is the list of harms, from disease to fire.

As wartime labels go, this one is easy to defend. The target cannot be wronged by the label, the claims are specific, and the action asked for is ordinary: get details from the local health department. Nobody is told to watch a neighbor. The poster does lean on the mood of the war to sell sanitation.

The Public Health Service used a cartoon pest in the same year on Keep Out Malaria Mosquitoes. Security posters that turned the enemy into a hidden ear or eye include All the Ear-Marks of a Sneaky Jap! and He's Watching You. The Roosevelt administration essay sorts the period's posters by what they asked.