“Somewhere in Germany” (March 24, 1947)
by Vaughn Richard Shoemaker (1902-1991)
13 x 16, ink and wash on board
Coppola Collection

Shoemaker was an American editorial cartoonist. He won the 1938 and 1947 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning and created the character John Q. Public. He spent 22 years at the Chicago Daily, and subsequently worked for the New York Herald Tribune, the Chicago American, and Chicago Today. He retired in 1972.

The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in 1947 in order to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union. It was originally called the “Brother Plan” in the Soviet Union. It can be seen to be the Soviet Union’s version of the Marshall Plan, which for political reasons the Eastern European countries would not be able to join without leaving the Soviet sphere of influence. Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov rejected the Marshall Plan, proposing instead the Molotov Plan.

On March 18, 1947, TASS (the Russian news agency) published the text of a secret agreement made at the Yalta Conference in 1945 on the matter of German reparations, in order to back up Molotov’s demand for them. The question then turned to whether the Yalta text was supplemented or superseded by the Potsdam Agreement.

This is a rather elegant piece of art from Shoemaker.