---
title: Someone Talked!
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/someone-talked-koerner-hoe-1942/
description: A giant hand made of a newspaper page, its headline reading 'U.S. Ship Sunk By...' and 'Lives Lost Aboard Torpedoed Transport'.
section: Collection
---

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3. Someone Talked!

[![Someone Talked!, 1942 US poster: A giant hand made of a newspaper page, its headline reading 'U.S. Ship Sunk By...'](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/someone-talked-koerner-hoe-1942.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/someone-talked-koerner-hoe-1942.jpg)

# Someone Talked!

A giant hand made of a newspaper page, its headline reading 'U.S. Ship Sunk By...' and 'Lives Lost Aboard Torpedoed Transport', points a finger down at a small man in a suit and hat walking below under the title 'Someone Talked!'. The oversized finger puts blame for a ship loss on an ordinary civilian's talk, a fear-appeal about careless speech.

## 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

```
Someone Talked!
[newspaper hand] ...NEWS / NO. 257—DAILY.
U.S. SHIP
SUNK BY
[...]00 LIVES LOST ABOARD
[T]ORPEDOED TRANSPORT
THREE SUNK / Losses in We[...] Now Tot[...]
[newspaper body columns: partly legible, not transcribed]
[signature: KOERNER]
WINNER R. HOE & CO., INC. AWARD—NATIONAL WAR POSTER COMPETITION
HELD UNDER AUSPICES OF ARTISTS FOR VICTORY, INC.—COUNCIL FOR DEMOCRACY—MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
REPRODUCED THROUGH COURTESY OF R. HOE & CO., INC., NEW YORK, N. Y.   © R. HOE & CO., INC.   LITHOGRAPHED IN U. S. A. ON HOE SUPER-OFFSET PRESS BY GRINNELL LITHOGRAPHIC CO., NEW YORK, N. Y.
```

[← Someone Talked!](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/someone-talked-1942/) [Destroy the Enemy's Tanks Like the Brave Rifleman Nikita Likhanov! (Russian War Poster \[2\]) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/soviet-destroy-enemy-tanks-like-nikita-likhanov-1942/)

## 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)