---
title: 'Fire Slogan Contest: 1st Week''s Winner'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/fire-slogan-contest-1st-week-1941/
description: A grinning officer in an Army Air Forces uniform points at a shield bearing the winning slogan 'Fire is... Hell, let's keep it there'.
section: Collection
---

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3. Fire Slogan Contest: 1st Week's Winner

[![Fire Slogan Contest: 1st Week's Winner, 1941 US poster: A grinning officer in an Army Air Forces uniform points at a shield](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/fire-slogan-contest-1st-week-1941.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/fire-slogan-contest-1st-week-1941.jpg)

# Fire Slogan Contest: 1st Week's Winner

A grinning officer in an Army Air Forces uniform points at a shield bearing the winning slogan 'Fire is... Hell, let's keep it there', with the winner's name and unit below and a black footer reading 'Carelessness causes fires'. The fear-appeal rests on the slogan's word 'Hell'; naming an ordinary fellow serviceman as winner is the plain-folks element.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Plain folks](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/plain-folks/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
FIRE SLOGAN
CONTEST
"FIRE IS...
HELL
LET'S KEEP
IT THERE"
1st. WEEK'S
Winner!
DAVID B. ZAMUDIO
SHIPPING BRANCH
CARELESSNESS CAUSES FIRES
```

[← Fire! Keep it away from our National Parks](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/fire-keep-it-away-from-our-national-parks-1941/) [2nd week's winner! Mary F. Pigg. Fire slogan contest →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/fire-slogan-contest-2nd-weeks-winner-1941/)

## More propaganda examples that use the same techniques

- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers.
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Kingdom of Great Britain · Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [Proclamation de Sonthonax en créole, Cap-Français (Proclamation of Commissioner Sonthonax in Creole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sonthonax-proclamation-creole-1793/) (France · Aug 29, 1793 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating). Content note: Colonial-era proclamation on slavery and emancipation in Saint-Domingue; speaks of slaves, whips and 'Nègues' in period terms.
- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
- [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)