1941.11.25 “Russia! America! England! … then… Mars!”
by Irvin (Arvid) Hagglund (1915-1982)
9 x 11.5 in, ink on board
Coppola Collection

Hagglund was an American cartoonist who drew the newspaper comic strip Henry Henpeck from 1949 to 1961, and was a prolific gag cartoonist through the 1960s.

Hitler’s top-down leadership style really didn’t help his generals.

According to Hitler, the German General Staff in the World War 1 were most responsible for the failure and humiliation of Germany over the next 20 years. Thus, he himself had nothing but contempt for and no confidence in those professional officers who made up his own General Staff.

The Generals had objected to the attempted invasion of Britain, and on the verge of near-success there, Hitler turned on his neutrality with Russia in mid-1941. In late November 1941, as World War II continued, German troops had besieged Leningrad and had reached the outskirts of Moscow. A great many observers all over the world had expected the USSR to have collapsed under the weight of the attack Hitler had unleashed that June, and it was not yet clear that Germany was not about to defeat the Soviet Union.

1938.05.28 “Frank Advice”
by Silvey Jackson (SJ) Ray (1891-1970)
12 x 14 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

https://kchistory.org/blog/history-cartoons-artwork-s-j-ray

S.J. Ray was a student at the Art Students League of New York and was a World War I veteran. He joined the Kansas City Star in 1915 as an advertising illustrator and became the Star’s editorial cartoonist in 1931. He served in that post until retirement in 1963, drawing an estimated 10,000 cartoons. He received honors from the U.S. Treasury Dept. for his cartoons during World War II in behalf of the National War Savings Program.

Dr. Glenn Frank was a president of the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1925-1937), having previously been The Century Magazine‘s editor-in-chief, which gave his views on education a wide audience.

His public criticism of FDR put him at odds with the La Follette administration, and the UW Board of Regents, mostly appointed by La Follette, requested Frank’s resignation in March 1936. Frank declined, and the Board held public hearings on his presidential competency before narrowly voting to remove him from office on January 7, 1937.

Frank joined Wisconsin political causes and began a bid for the Republican nomination for Senate. He bought Rural Progress, a national magazine distributed to farmers without cost, and became its editor. He considered it a springboard for his political ambitions. He turned the magazine into a success, and it brought his strong political voice to farmers, especially pushing the anti-New Deal stance.

In January 1938, he was elected as chair of the committee in charge of writing the Republican Party rules. During the Spring, Frank gained national attention during the Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of strongly pro-FDR and New Deal Senator and Judge Sherman Minton to the Supreme Court, Frank was accused as a propagandist, and Frank accused Minton and the committee of being terrorists (to the Press). He came to national attention in May 1938, when he appeared in front of the special Lobby Investigation Committee, chaired by Senator Sherman Minton, that was set up to look into questionable lobbyist groups. In practice, the committee’s investigations were politically motivated and directed against groups that were challenging New Deal legislation.

Minton led the committee to target a newspaper with national circulation, Rural Progress, accusing its publishers of improperly accepting large sums of money from corporations and the editors of undue influence from this money. As Frank was answering the questions, Minton and fellow Democratic senators began to shout him down. As he was saying that the money from the corporations was for advertising in the magazine, Minton beat his gavel and yelled, “This committee doesn’t intend to permit you to use this as a forum to air your Republican views.”

Minton did not realize that Frank had been president of the University of Wisconsin, and soon suffered retaliation for the way he had treated Frank. Frank went on NBC radio stations around the country and lambasted Minton for his rudeness. He made lengthy arguments accusing Minton of attempting to violate the Bill of Rights. Minton was outraged, but the arguments had an effect among voters in Indiana. In 1938, he sought funding to launch a massive nationwide investigation of media conglomerates for proof of Republican interference in the press. Democratic Senator Edward R. Burke led an effort to defeat the measure and privately accused Minton of damaging the Democrats’ cause, which led Minton to leave the Lobby Investigation Committee.

In July 1940, Frank announced his run for the Senate seat from Wisconsin. Frank and his son died in a car accident in September, two days before his Senate primary.

Minton survived, and was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1949 by Truman, where he served until 1956. He was replaced by William Brennan.

1943.06.25 “Maybe She Doesn’t Love Me Anymore”
by Gordon Smith
11 x 12 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

This cartoon is attributed to the Boston Post, but I cannot track the artist, yet. At least the signature is clear.

By mid-June, 1943, the war was all but lost for the Italians. The Italian population was alienated, and the Grand Council and the king were pressing Mussolini to negotiate a way out of the war.

Mussolini was completely isolated. He was playing both sides. And although years later, Mussolini’s alienation is notably described in Bosworth’s biography of him as Dickens’s Wilkins Micawber who, despite ‘of being utterly devoid of plans’, obstinately hoped – somehow – ‘that something positive would turn up,’ it’s pretty clear that this was a contemporary editorial position.

On June 24, Mussolini gave his last important speech as prime minister, known as the “boot topping” (Italian: bagnasciuga) speech. The Duce promised that the only part of Italy that the Anglo-Americans would be able to occupy was the shoreline. He was misspoken in his effort to say they would only occupy Italy as corpses, and he used incorrect vocabulary. For many Italians, his confused and incoherent speech was the final proof that something was wrong with Mussolini.

In late June, Mussolini was continuing his psychological contest with Hitler. On July 1, 1943, against the Hitler’s wishes, Mussolini met with the Romanian deputy premier, Antonescu, with whom he agreed to promote the long-debated inter-Axis conference (and a Nazi-Soviet settlement, which was of no interest to Hitler).

The Allies were knocking on the door, and the first invasion of Nazi-controlled Europe would begin on July 10, 1943, when Patton’s army landed in Sicily.  In his last speech before the invasion, Mussolini was still declaring his confidence in being able to repulse the Allies and demonstrate the futility of taking on the Axis. ‘Maybe then’, he said, ‘whoever until now has let himself be slaughtered all to the good of the Anglo-Saxon plutocracy will realize that the game is not worth the candle.’

This is a great saying that we have lost. It refers to playing a game of cards for stakes that are so low that it is not worth the price of the candle being used to light the play.

On the day of the landing, the Italian government secretly agreed to the Allies’ terms for surrender, but no public announcement was made until September 8.

On July 25, 1943, following the agreement, Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council and arrested upon leaving a meeting with King Vittorio Emanuele, who tells Il Duce that the war is lost.

1943.09.12 “Buy a Bond and Hit the Bull’s Eye”
by Al (Abraham Roth) Ross (1911-2012)
9 x 10 in., ink and wash on board
Coppola Collection

One of a family of four cartoonists bothers (Ben Roth, Salo, and Irving Roir), trained at the Art Students League of NY, served on the Committee of War Cartoons, formed by the Society of Magazine Cartoonists and the Office of War Information. Contributed to the Saturday Evening Post, Look, Saturday Review, Collier’s, and The New Yorker (from 1937).

The US did not have an overwhelming presence in the European war until they joined the British for the defeat of Rommel’s forces in North Africa in early 1943. The invasion of Sicily, in July, launched from Africa, the marks the start of the hard-core US efforts on the continent.

This cartoon comes from the third bond drive, which ran from September 9 to October 1, 1943, and was the first to specifically target the build-up in Europe. There is a note on the back with this title.

Addressing the nation during one of his fireside chats, President Franklin Roosevelt called Americans to “contribute your share and more than your share.”  The President continued, “It is not sufficient to simply put into War Bonds money which we would normally save.  We must put into War Bonds money which we would not normally save.  Only then have we done everything that good conscience demands.”

From the kick-off address, on September 8, he said:

“Today, it is announced that an armistice with Italy has been concluded.

“This was a great victory for the United Nations — but it was also a great victory for the Italian people. After years of war and suffering and degradation, the Italian people are at last coming to the day of liberation from their real enemies, the Nazis.

“But let us not delude ourselves that this armistice means the end of the war in the Mediterranean. We still have to (must) drive the Germans out of Italy as we have driven them out of Tunisia and Sicily; we must drive them out of France and all other captive countries; and we must strike them on their own soil from all directions.

“Our ultimate objectives in this war continue to be Berlin and Tokyo.”

With a fundraising goal of $15 billion, individual sales of $100 denomination series E bonds would need to double.  The public’s effort surpassed the goal outlined by Roosevelt, reaching almost $19 billion (1943 dollars) by the drive’s close.

The bonds matured and represented an investment at a time when unemployment and inflation were problems. It’s interesting to think how this bond strategy does not even ping the radar in 2020. Imagine raising $283 billion (2020 dollars), from the country, in a month, towards the local needs of the coronavirus problem, that would return on the investment later.

1938.11.18 “Advice from an Expert”
by William Norman Ritchie (1865-1947)
12 x 16 in., ink on paper
Coppola Collection

Ritchie was a long-time editorialist for the Boston Post.

Let’s crank up the way-back machine for this one.

After WW1, Kaiser Wilhelm exiled himself to Holland.  He settled in a country house in the municipality of Doorn, known as Huis Doorn, on May 15, 1920. And Hitler, a veteran of WW1, like other leading Nazis, felt nothing but contempt for the man they blamed for Germany’s greatest defeat.

FEBRUARY 4, 1938

On February 4, 1938, The Wehrmacht was established in Nazi Germany by decree, putting Hitler himself in complete control of the military. The new command structure abolished the position of War Minister, and twelve senior generals were sent into retirement.

On February 12, 1938, Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg went to see Hitler in Berchtesgaden. Schuschnigg tried to open the meeting with light conversation about the beauty of the view, but Hitler brushed such talk aside and began a tirade of shouting, threatening to invade unless his demands compromising Austria’s sovereignty were met.

On February 22, 1938, by a vote of 330-168, Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy was endorsed by the House of Commons. Winston Churchill was among about 20 Conservatives who abstained from voting.

On March 1, 1938, Hermann Goering was presented with a field marshal’s baton by Adolf Hitler, who made the gesture to placate Goering for not giving him a cabinet position.

In news reports on March 2, 1938, Field Marshal General Hermann Goering, warns that Adolf Hitler’s “protectorate” over Germans of Austria and Czechoslovakia will be backed up by Nazi bombing planes: “We are burning with zeal … to prove to Der Fuehrer and the German people that his air force is invincible.” The Field Marshal didn’t say how the Third Reich proposed to avoid hitting Germans as well as Austrians in Vienna, further saying that his air force would be “terrible in action.”

Burning with Zeal. Locked and Loaded. Fire and Fury.

Kaiser Wilhelm, in Holland, Wilhelm has grown to distrust Hitler: “We have ceased to live under the rule of law and everyone must be prepared for the possibility that the Nazis will push their way in and put them up against the wall!”

On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich.

Wilhelm was also appalled at the Kristallnacht of 9–10 November 1938: “For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German.”

The diplomats from around the world almost unanimously condemned the murders and acts of violence and destructions. The British described the pogrom as “Medieval barbarism,” the Brazilians called it a “disgusting spectacle,” and French diplomats wrote that the “scope of brutality” was only “exceeded by the massacres of the Armenians,” referring to the Turkish genocide of 1915-1916. Nevertheless, no country broke off diplomatic relations with Berlin or imposed sanctions, and only Washington recalled its ambassador.

From a published article by ex-Kaiser Wilhelm on Hitler, December 15, 1938:

“There’s a man alone, without family, without children, without God … He builds legions, but he doesn’t build a nation. A nation is created by families, a religion, traditions: it is made up out of the hearts of mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children … For a few months I was inclined to believe in National Socialism. I thought of it as a necessary fever. And I was gratified to see that there were, associated with it for a time, some of the wisest and most outstanding Germans. But these, one by one, he has got rid of or even killed … He has left nothing but a bunch of shirted gangsters! This man could bring home victories to our people each year, without bringing them either glory or danger. But of our Germany, which was a nation of poets and musicians, of artists and soldiers, he has made a nation of hysterics and hermits, engulfed in a mob and led by a thousand liars or fanatics.”

1945.02.20  “All Cleaned Out”
by Hyman Joseph (Hy) Rosen (1923-2011)
11 x 14 in., ink and crayon on paper
Coppola Collection

Hy Rosen, an Albany native, attended several art studios before enlisting in the army, in 1942, at age 19 (his army record lists him an enlisting on Dec 1). He served in the Army Corps of Engineers Camoflauge Battalion, where one duty was painting anti-Hitler murals in buildings in France. In 1945, after WW2, Rosen sought a job with the Albany Times-Union as a photographer (a job he held while in the military) but ended up as the paper’s editorial cartoonist, a position he held for more than forty years.

He is also listed as working as a comic book artist in the late 1940s, doing ‘Bonnie’ for National/DC and romance stories for St. John Publishing (Hollywood Confessions). Up until the mid 1950s, he worked mainly for Timely/Atlas, drawing both funny and realistic features.

By the signature and its style, the cartoon is clearly Rosen’s. I would be surprised if this was not the earliest known work. In fact, dating this cartoon is an interesting challenge.

After the successful Allied invasions of western France, Germany gathered reserve forces and launched a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes, which collapsed by January, in the Battle of the Bulge. And at the same time, Soviet forces closed in from the east. The bombing of Dresden happened in mid-February. By March 1945, Western Allied forces crossed the Rhine River and the Red Army had meanwhile entered Austria, with both fronts quickly approached Berlin.

During their retreat back to Germany, the Nazis ravaged their occupied lands for resources, and pressed the German people, too. With more and more members of the Volkssturm (Germany’s National Militia) being directed to the front line, German authorities were experiencing an ever-increasing strain on their stocks of army equipment and clothing. In a desperate attempt to overcome this deficiency, street to street collection depots called the Volksopfer, meaning Sacrifice of the People, scoured the country, collecting uniforms, boots and equipment from German civilians. An AP archival image from Berlin on February 12, 1945 shows a Volksopfer site bearing the words “The Fuhrer expects your sacrifice for Army and Home Guard. So that you’re proud your Home Guard man can show himself in uniform – empty your wardrobe and bring its contents to us.”

In the first several months of 1945, Germany put up a fierce defense, but rapidly lost territory, ran out of supplies, and exhausted its options. In April, Allied forces pushed through the German defensive line in Italy. East met West on the River Elbe on April 25, 1945, when Soviet and American troops met near Torgau, Germany. Hitler’s suicide was April 30.

As of now (May 2020), I am trying to find someone with more information about the end of Rosen’s army service and the beginnings of his job at the Times-Union, and how fast he moved from photographer to cartoonist. If this was drawn for the TU, the casual depiction of Hitler and Nazi actions gives less than a 4-month time window in 1945 for Rosen to be discharged, hired, and moved to editorial. If he was still serving at the end of the war and not discharged until after VE Day, locating the history of the drawing gets even more interesting as it predates the time period of his professional work. The quality is high, and seems more of a studio production than the work of an Army Private in the field.