Books cannot be killed by fire (World War II poster)
About this poster
Published by U.S. Government Printing Office. Distributed by Division of Public Inquiry, Office of War Information, 1942.
- Date created
- 1942
- License
- This work is believed to be in the public domain. Users are advised to make their own copyright assessment and to understand their rights to fair use.
- Source
- Original image housed by Northwestern University Library
Related media
Learn more
- Search LEARN NC for books, posters, and World War II.
In the classroom
- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
This World War II propaganda poster published by the U.S. government depicts enemy soldiers setting fire to a book that looms over them like a building. The book’s cover reads:
Books cannot be killed by fire.
People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.Franklin D. Roosevelt
The bottom of the poster reads “Books are weapons in the war of ideas.”
