---
title: 'Forest fires aid the enemy: put your ashes in earth'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/forest-fires-put-your-ashes-in-earth-1943/
description: A hand holds a pipe upside down while a boot grinds the ashes into leaf litter, under 'Forest Fires Aid the Enemy' and 'Put Your Ashes in Earth'.
section: Collection
---

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3. Forest fires aid the enemy: put your ashes in earth

[![Forest fires aid the enemy: put your ashes in earth, 1943 US poster: A hand holds a pipe upside down while a boot grinds](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/forest-fires-put-your-ashes-in-earth-1943.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/forest-fires-put-your-ashes-in-earth-1943.jpg)

# Forest fires aid the enemy: put your ashes in earth

A hand holds a pipe upside down while a boot grinds the ashes into leaf litter, under 'Forest Fires Aid the Enemy' and 'Put Your Ashes in Earth'. The headline links careless fires to the enemy without saying how, a fear-appeal that asks one specific act of the reader.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

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

## Text on the object

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

```
Forest Fires
Aid the Enemy

Put Your Ashes
IN EARTH

U. S. DEPT. AGRICULTURE, FOREST SERVICE     STATE FOREST SERVICE
[imprint:] U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1943--O-513708
```

[← Forest Fires Aid the Enemy: Crush out your cigarette](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/forest-fires-aid-the-enemy-crush-out-your-cigarette-1943/) [Fresh Food Vital for Victory! Invest part of every sale in War Bonds →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/fresh-food-vital-for-victory-war-bonds-1943/)

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- [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.
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- [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)