1943.02.02 “Adolf Ought to be Along Any Day”
by Jacob (Jake) Burck (1907-1982)
13 x 17 in, pencil on board
Coppola Collection

Active in the Communist movement from 1926 as a political cartoonist and muralist, Burck quit the Communist Party after a visit to the Soviet Union in 1936, deeply offended by political demands there to manipulate his work.

Upon his return to the United States, Burck drew political cartoons for two large mainstream dailies, the St. Louis Post Dispatch and then, starting in 1938 and going for 44 years, the Chicago Daily Times (later as the Chicago Sun-Times). Burck was awarded the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. Burck of injuries sustained in a fire in his home caused by a smoldering cigarette.

The Battle of Stalingrad fought in 1942 and 1943 has been called Hitler’s Waterloo. At Waterloo in Belgium, Napoleon Bonaparte suffered defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington, bringing an end to the Napoleonic era within European history.

With the Battle of Stalingrad, it brought the surrender of the huge German Sixth Army under Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus and the failure of Hitler’s invasion of Russia. The Battle provided Stalin with 91,000 prisoners, including 22 German generals. It was a decisive battle that pointed to Germany’s ultimate downfall. All told, Hitler’s Germany assembled more than four million men to invade Russia. But, in late January 1943 Hitler’s army, just like Napoleon’s, would retreat from Russia in defeat.