# "Amerikas flagga skall icke jagas bort från haven!" (1942), the OWI's battleship launch in Swedish

A Swedish-language Office of War Information poster dated 1942 in the archive. A photograph of a large warship being launched sits in a blue border of white stars beside a captioned portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt and a headline in quotation marks attributed to him, with a paragraph of naval figures.

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      "Amerikas flagga skall icke jagas bort från haven!" [The American Flag is not Going to be Driven from the Seas] (Swedish edition)

      "Amerikas flagga skall icke jagas bort från haven!" (1942), the OWI's battleship launch in Swedish
      An OWI poster in Swedish, dated 1942: a battleship launch, a Roosevelt portrait, and a quoted pledge that America's flag will not be driven from the seas.

## Techniques named on the archive record

TestimonialTransfer
      Date1942Made byOffice of War Information (foreign-language edition; NARA lists no artist or printer)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARARecord Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Foreign Posters , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (US federal government work: Office of War Information, NARA Record Group 44) Office of War Information, c. 1942-1945. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, Office of Government Reports, WWII Foreign Posters
      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

  A Swedish-language Office of War Information poster dated 1942 in the archive. A photograph of a large warship being launched sits in a blue border of white stars beside a captioned portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt and a headline in quotation marks attributed to him, with a paragraph of naval figures.

## A launch and a promise

A warship slides down the ways in the central photograph. Around it the archive describes a blue border of white stars, a flag graphic, and a captioned portrait of President Roosevelt. The headline, in Swedish and inside quotation marks, is credited to him.

"AMERIKAS FLAGGA SKALL ICKE

JAGAS BORT FRÅN HAVEN!"

...PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

Amerika, som redan har världens mäktigaste flotta, är i färd med att fördubbla densamma för att trygga haven för angripare och hålla dem fria för alla folk, både svaga och starka. Bilden visar sjösättningen av ett av de 17 nya slagskeppen på vardera 35,000 ton. Det totala antalet sådana slagskepp är nu 32, dubbelt så många som någon nation i världen äger i samma klass.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked; line breaks in the paragraph are joined here. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. National Archives, Record Group 44, World War II Foreign Posters.

## What the Swedish says

The archive gives an English version that it labels a machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader. In that version the paragraph says America, which already has the world's mightiest fleet, is doubling it to make the seas safe from aggressors and keep them free for all peoples, "both weak and strong." The photograph, it says, shows the launching of one of 17 new battleships of 35,000 tons each, and the total of such battleships is now 32, "twice as many as any nation in the world owns in the same class."

Those are hard numbers, printed for readers abroad. The archive's record does not test them, and this page has no source to test them against. The same goes for the headline: the record shows it attributed to Roosevelt, and does not cite a speech or date for the words.

## One sheet, many languages

The record names the Office of War Information as issuer of a foreign-language edition and says the National Archives lists no artist or printer. Its rights line dates the series "c. 1942-1945," while the record itself dates this copy 1942. The audience field reads "Foreign public" and the purpose field "Persuade or win support." The site's snapshot lists ten rows under this title: Arabic, Azerbaijani, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Icelandic, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish editions, and one blank plate.

The archive tags testimonial and transfer: a named leader's quoted pledge, and a flag, stars and portrait that lend it the nation's authority. The Office of War Information hub indexes the English-language OWI sheets, so this Swedish plate is not in its list. An English sheet from the same National Archives foreign-poster series, also built on Roosevelt and production figures, is "America Will Build 60.000 War Planes". The Roosevelt administration essay describes the OWI's overseas branch.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, "Amerikas flagga skall icke jagas bort från haven!" (Swedish edition), 1942. Office of War Information (foreign-language edition; NARA lists no artist or printer). Rights as recorded: public domain (US federal government work: Office of War Information, NARA Record Group 44).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, Office of Government Reports, World War II Foreign Posters, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/us-owi-american-flag-not-driven-from-the-seas-swedish-1942/