Save Waste Fats for Explosives is OWI Poster No. 63, signed H. Koerner and printed in 1943. A hand tips a frying pan so a thread of fat falls into a burst ringed by shells and bombs, and the sheet tells the reader to take the fat to the meat dealer (NAID 513832).
The image and the instruction
The picture is one gesture. In the archive's description a hand tilts a skillet and a fine stream of grease runs down into a flash of light. Around that flash, shells and bombs point inward like spokes. The words are a slogan and a practical line telling the cook where to go.
Save waste fats for explosives
TAKE THEM TO YOUR MEAT DEALER
[signature: H. KOERNER]
[imprint: OWI Poster No. 63. Additional copies may be obtained upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information, Washington, D. C.]
[imprint: U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1943—O—527285]
Who issued it
The Office of War Information numbered it 63 in its poster series and offered extra copies through its Division of Public Inquiries. The catalog credits the artist as H. Koerner. The same archive credits Henry Koerner with OWI's United We Are Strong sheet; this page names him in the heading on that basis and does not add biography.
How to read it
This is salvage propaganda at its plainest. It ties a kitchen chore to a weapon in a single picture, so that pouring off bacon grease becomes a contribution to the front. The archive tags the method as transfer: the gravity of munitions is lent to a household habit.
What the sheet asks is small and voluntary. It names the place to bring the fat and stops there. It does not claim a quantity, a yield in explosives, or a penalty. That restraint is worth noting, because the poster could have made a number up and did not. Whether a given pan of grease mattered to the war is a question the sheet leaves alone, and this page does too.
Related sheets: Use It Up, Wear It Out, OWI Poster No. 39, and the OWI poster index. The OWI domestic branch case study covers the office that numbered these sheets. The essay on the Roosevelt administration sorts the period's posters by what they asked; this one asked for kitchen fat.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Save waste fats for explosives, 1943. Office of War Information (OWI Poster No. 63), artist H. Koerner.
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 513832, local id 44-PA-380, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
