“Benito Goes Back to Italy” (December 1940)
by Charles (Chuck) Werner (1909-1997)
12.5 x 16 in., ink and crayon on textured paper
Coppola Collection

Charles (Chuck) Werner won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1939 for a cartoon he did for the Daily Oklahoman titled “Nomination for 1938” which allowed for the transfer of the Sudetenland to Hitler’s Germany (October 6, 1938). At age 29, Werner was the youngest person to win the Pulitzer. Werner left the Daily Oklahoman to be the Chief Editorial Cartoonist at the Chicago Sun in 1941 before leaving for the Indianapolis Star in 1947. Throughout his nearly sixty-year career, many U.S. Presidents expressed interest in Werner’s cartoons, including Lyndon B. Johnson and Harry Truman requesting cartoons for their presidential libraries.

In June 1940, Italy declared war on the Allies. By September, having finally joined forces with the Nazis, he had invaded France, British Somaliland, and Egypt, after having annexed Albania in 1939, prior to the German invasion of Poland (September 1939) that officially marks the beginning of WW2.

The Italians invaded Greece on October 28, 1940, penetrating only barely, and by December 1940, they had been pushed back into Albania. The Greeks held their ground through the spring.

Hitler was concerned that the inability of the Italians to make progress opened up a threat to Germany’s southern border, and sent in troops to offset the British forces arriving in Greece in early 1941.

The arrival of the German army was all that was needed, however On April 20, 1941, Greece surrendered to Germany.