1947.02.20 “Already Sprouting”
by Max P. Milians (1907-2005)
11 x 14 in., ink of board
Coppola Collection

Milians signed his cartoons with nine zeros (“millions”) as an underline. His work was syndicated across America from the 1930s up until the 1970s.

So-called “International Brigades” were formed during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, made up of large ideological factions that were backing one side or the other. The blueprint for how powers would interfere in other civil wars (Korea, Viet Nam) was laid down in Spain just before WW2.  The Greek Civil War of 1946–1949 echoed the Spanish conflict of a decade earlier. An earlier, left-wing resistance movement (1941-44) had been led by the Greek Communist Party, and it flared up again just after the end of WW2.

In early 1947, there was (as it turns out) wild speculation that an International Brigade would come to fight alongside the communist guerrillas, but it has been imagined as originating from the apocalyptic fears of the Greek government on whose side the United States and Britain were interested. The concern, by waiting around and not acting, was that foreign communists, including Spanish Civil War veterans, might join the Greek guerrillas.

On February 9, a report appeared in Paris about a group of French socialist volunteers who had formed and were ready to take up the cause in Greece. On March 13, US President Truman enunciated the doctrine of containing communism world-wide, starting from Greece. The Truman Doctrine became the metaphor for the containment of communist expansion and the eventual domino theory that dominated the Cold War for 30 years.