Two figures share one outline. Above, a worker in a cap and goggles drives a riveting gun; below, a soldier in a steel helmet crouches behind a machine gun. Their two barrels point the same way across a burst of bright yellow, and blue lettering spells out the message: Give ’Em Both Barrels.
Production as a weapon
The poster was issued in 1941 by the Division of Information of the Office for Emergency Management, the agency Franklin Roosevelt set up in 1940 to run defence mobilisation before the United States entered the war. America was rearming and supplying Britain as the “arsenal of democracy”, and the government wanted factory workers to see their jobs as part of the fight. Carlu’s answer was to fuse the riveter and the gunner into one image: the factory and the front line firing together.
The designer
Jean Carlu was born in Bonnières, France, in 1900. He trained in architecture, but after losing his right arm in an accident at eighteen he turned to graphic design, and by the 1920s he was one of the leading poster designers in Paris. He was a founder of the Union des Artistes Modernes and in 1932 opened an Office of Propaganda for Peace. In 1939 he came to New York to design for the French pavilion at the World’s Fair, and when France fell to Germany in 1940 he stayed. His poster America’s Answer! Production won a medal from the New York Art Directors Club, and he worked on American defence and war posters until he returned to France in 1953.
Modernism goes to war
Most American war posters were painted by magazine illustrators in a realistic style. Carlu brought the flat shapes, bold diagonals and few colours of European modernism, and government art directors recruited him alongside advertising professionals to sharpen the defence message. The Library of Congress dates its record to 1942, but Poster House and the Cooper Hewitt museum date the poster to 1941, before Pearl Harbor.
The restored edition
Our edition was restored from a photograph of an original print. The colour was cleaned and brought back, with folds, stains and wear removed, and the lettering and printed credit line kept from the original. It is a landscape poster, wider than it is tall, available as a paper print in three sizes or framed in black, white or natural wood, printed to order in the USA.
Frequently asked questions
Who designed Give ’Em Both Barrels?
Jean Carlu (1900 to 1997), the French modernist poster designer, who stayed in the United States after France fell in 1940.
Who issued the poster?
The Division of Information of the Office for Emergency Management, Washington, D.C. It was printed by the Government Printing Office in 1941.
What does the poster mean?
The factory worker and the soldier are drawn as one figure, their barrels aimed together, to show that production at home was as important as fighting at the front.
What sizes are the prints?
The poster is landscape. Paper prints are 16.5 × 11.7, 28 × 20 or 33.1 × 23.4 inches; framed prints are 17 × 12, 28 × 20 or 33 × 23 inches.
Historical sources
- Library of Congress: Give ’em both barrels
- Poster House: Give ’Em Both Barrels
- Cooper Hewitt: Give ’Em Both Barrels
- Cooper Hewitt: Jean Carlu biography
- FDR Library: Give ’Em Both Barrels poster