Silence means security is a 1942 War Department color photographic poster labeled a "WAAC" security poster. A woman in Women's Army Auxiliary Corps uniform, with the eagle badge on her hat, raises a finger to her lips and looks at the viewer (NAID 515420).
What the sheet prints
It is a color photograph, not a drawing. A young woman in the uniform and hat of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, eagle badge on the hat, meets the viewer's eye with one finger raised to her lips. A short caption sits between two stars. The imprint at the bottom is cut off in the archive's copy.
* SILENCE MEANS SECURITY *
"WAAC" Security Poster
U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFF
Who issued it
The FRAME record credits the War Department. The sheet labels itself a WAAC security poster, which points to its intended audience: members of the women's auxiliary. No photographer or model is named. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 44.
How to read it
The poster does two jobs. The first is the stated one: people serving with the Army should not discuss what they learn. For members of a military organization, that is an ordinary rule of the service, and the poster says it in three words.
The second job is quieter. Putting a uniformed woman in the frame, composed and serious, presents her as a person entrusted with secrets, which is to say, as someone the Army takes seriously. That can also be read as a recruiting message folded inside a security one, though the record does not say it was meant that way.
Unlike many security sheets of the year, this one has no enemy in it. There is no listener in the shadows and no caricature. The rule is presented as part of the job, carried by the person who keeps it. Whether a reader takes the choice of a woman for this message as respect or as a lesson aimed at women in particular is open; the poster itself does not say.
For other security posters of the year, see Pipedown Soldier and Someone Talked!. For women in war production rather than uniform, see Women in the War and We Can Do It!. The Office of War Information index lists more. The rumor clinics case study treats the newspaper columns that answered rumors as a separate campaign from security posters like this one, which warned against talk of any kind.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Silence means security, 1942. War Department (WAAC security poster). Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1748A, NAID 515420, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
