# We French Workers Warn You (1942), Ben Shahn's poster A-25

We French workers warn you... defeat means slavery, starvation, death is a 1942 War Production Board poster, A-25, signed Ben Shahn. French workers in caps raise their hands before a red wall notice headed "Official Vichy Decree," partly hidden (NAID 513688).

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- We French Workers Warn You (1942), Ben Shahn's poster A-25

      We French workers warn you... defeat means slavery, starvation, death

      We French Workers Warn You (1942), Ben Shahn's poster A-25
      Ben Shahn's 1942 War Production Board poster A-25: French workers raise their hands before a Vichy decree, warning that defeat means slavery. NAID 513688.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appealTestimonial
      Date1942Made byWar Production Board, War Production Drive Headquarters (artist Ben Shahn)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 513688; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) War Production Board, War Production Drive Headquarters (artist Ben Shahn). National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-246 (NAID 513688).
      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

  We French workers warn you... defeat means slavery, starvation, death is a 1942 War Production Board poster, A-25, signed Ben Shahn. French workers in caps raise their hands before a red wall notice headed "Official Vichy Decree," partly hidden (NAID 513688).

## What the sheet prints

A crowd of French workers in caps raise their hands, in the archive's description of Ben Shahn's sheet. Behind them is a red wall notice headed "Official Vichy Decree." Hands and the poster's edge hide part of the notice, so the archive's transcription marks the missing letters as illegible. The headline speaks in the workers' voice.

We French workers warn you...

defeat means slavery, starvation, death

OFFICIAL VICHY DECRE[illegible]

[illegible] ages of 18 and 50 and unmar[illegible]

persons of fo[illegible]ex betw[illegible]

be obliged to [illegible] any wo[illegible]

necessary [illegible] in the super[illegible]

inter[illegible] o[illegible]nation

[signature: Ben Shahn]

[imprint: GPO 1942 O-491777]

[imprint: Poster A-25. War Production Drive Headquarters, WPB, Washington, D.C.]

As transcribed by the archive from the image, unchecked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 513688, local id 44-PA-246, Record Group 44.

## Who made it

The imprint names War Production Drive Headquarters of the War Production Board in Washington and numbers the sheet A-25. The Government Printing Office number dates it to 1942. The signature is Ben Shahn's. The record lists the audience as the domestic public and the purpose as mobilizing or securing compliance, under the home front, labor and war. The archive lists no print run and does not name the plants where it hung.

## How to read it

Fear appeal and testimonial are the archive's two tags. The fear is in the three nouns of the headline. The testimony comes from the French workers, who speak to American workers as witnesses. The poster's argument is that a lost war is not abstract: it ends in a decree that places obligations on working people.

The decree is the strongest part of the sheet, because it is a document rather than a slogan. Even in fragments, the visible words include "ages of 18 and 50," "unmar" and "be obliged to." A worker reading it could see that the threat on the wall was compulsion: an official order telling people what they must do.

The same argument cuts both ways, and a careful reader can hold both. A poster that warns against forced labor abroad sets a standard for production drives at home: they should stay voluntary. Production Lines Are Battle Lines is another 1942 War Production Board sheet. Charles Alston's Labor Day 1942 uses the phrase "free labor." The anti-Nazi propaganda hub collects more.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, We French workers warn you... defeat means slavery, starvation, death, 1942. War Production Board, War Production Drive Headquarters (artist Ben Shahn).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-246, NAID 513688, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/we-french-workers-warn-you-1942/