1940.09.14 “Noise Terror Planes Descending on Confused Troop Columns”
by Norbert B. Quinn (1902-1987)
10 x 16 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

Born in Medford, MA, and educated at Boston College High School (1920) followed by taking classes at the Museum of Fine Arts school, Quinn was an artist for the Boston Globe for many years. He retired to Maine in 1967.

Regardless of the topic, this is a really lovely piece of ink and wash art.

Probably the most iconic German aircraft during WWII, the Stuka dive bomber became the symbol of a string of successful campaigns in the early stages of the war.

The Wehrmacht seemed unstoppable in 1939, when Stukas swarmed the sky above Poland.

What specifically made these planes horrific were the two horns attached to the wings which produced a screeching sound once the aircraft was inbound for a strike. As the Stuka descended from the sky to drop its deadly load, the scream which accompanied it had a devastating effect on the morale of anyone who was on the ground.

The haunting horns were dubbed the “Jericho trumpets” by the Germans, who relied on the psychological effect of the noise to give them an edge against their opponents.

It was all for a propaganda effect.

The only problem with the Jericho Trumpets was that they affected the aerodynamics of the planes, causing enough drag to slow the plane down by 20 miles per hour and making them easier targets for defenders. Eventually, the sirens would be scrapped, and whistles were placed on the bombs to create the same psychological effect.

1940.02.05 “He Needs More Than A Cheering Section”
by Cyrus Cotton “Cy” Hungerford (1889-1983)
13 x 18 in., ink on paper
Coppola Collection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cy_Hungerford

Hungerford worked for the Wheeling (West VA) Register before becoming editorial cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Sun for fifteen years from 1912. He joined the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1927 and stayed there until his retirement in 1977.

During the early stages of World War II, the British and French Allies made a series of proposals to send troops to assist Finland against the Soviet Union in the Winter War, which started on 30 November 1939. The war was a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which put Finland into the Soviet sphere of influence. The plans involved the transit of British and French troops and equipment through neutral Norway and Sweden. The initial plans were abandoned due to Norway and Sweden declining transit through their land, fearing their countries would be drawn into the war.

In February 1940, a Soviet offensive broke through the Mannerheim Line on the Karelian Isthmus, exhausting Finnish defenses and forcing the country’s government to accept peace negotiations on Soviet terms. As the news that Finland might be forced to cede its sovereignty to the USSR, public opinion in France and Britain, already favorable to Finland, swung in favor of military intervention.

Finland’s defensive war against the Soviet invasion, lasting November 1939 to March 1940, came at a time when there was a military stalemate on the continent called the “Phony War.”

1944.06.06 “The Pit and the Pendulum”
by Gordon Smith
11 x 14 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

The D-Day landings in June 1944, created a second-front and took the pressure off the Red Army and from that date they made steady progress into territory held by Germany.

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

1943.06.14 “The Triple: Sammie, To Joe, to Winnie”
by Albert Turner Reid (1873-1958)
8 x 11 in., pencil on paper
Coppola Collection

Albert Reid sold his first political cartoon to the Topeka Mail and Breeze in 1896. After this first cartoon, his work began to appear regularly in the Kansas City Journal, Kansas City Star, Chicago Record, the New York Herald, and the Saturday Evening Post.

Reid was a successful businessman, a staunch supporter of the American farmer, a composer, a painter of murals and a teacher of art. The art school which he started with George Stone in Topeka was the beginning of Washburn’s Art Department. If he had been active in larger political centers, he probably would have received even more recognition. A large collection of his work is in the collections of the Kansas Historical Society.

Drawn on the back of some stationary from the Hotel Carteret in NYC (still there, in Chelsea, with $3K/month studio apartments for rent), a lovely sketch of a nice analogy using a baseball diamond to record a triple play. Uncle Sam takes out Tojo, who was on a Sneak Run (Pearl Harbor); Joe Stalin takes out Hitler; and Churchill takes out Mussolini. A cheer to Buy Bonds shows in the stands, with Chinese Nationalist Premiere Chiang Kai-Shek, just before his installation as Nationalist President, yelling out “Belly Good” from home plate.

1945.03.24 “Little Man, What Now?”
by Sy Moyer (1887-1980)
9 x 11 in., pen and crayon on board
Coppola Collection

Moyer was an editorial and sports cartoonist for the Minneapolis Tribune and St Paul Dispatch.

Moyer is listed in a few places as being “1926-2016” but I am skeptical. There is another artist, a painter, named Sy Mohr, who is listed as 1926-2016 in a few places (but who was really born in 1923).

By the 1940s, the cartoonist Moyer seems to have been pretty well established, he was notes for his depiction of the Asian Enemy, and there are images of his well-worn work-desk which are unlikely for a 20-year-old.

This record exists: “SY MOYER was born 13 September 1887, received Social Security number 474-09-0126 (indicating Minnesota) and, Death Master File says, died August 1980.”

The Battle of Manila (Feb 3 – Mar 3 1945) was a brief and major battle of the Philippine campaign. It was fought by American forces from both the U.S. mainland and the Philippines against Japanese troops in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.

The battle ended the almost three years of Japanese military occupation in the Philippines (1942–1945). The city’s capture was marked as General Douglas MacArthur’s key to victory in the campaign of reconquest.

The title (Little Man, What Now?) is an homage to a quite famous novel from pre-war Germany that documents the conditions in a turmoil-filled country on the brink. It was almost inadvertently critical of the rising Nazi ethos, to a degree that the text, well-known and in print, was edited in its later editions to revise references to the Nazis being seen in a bad light. As a colloquial saying, “Little Man, What Now?” took on that sense of impending doom at the rise of history-changing events, here a message to Japan as the war in Europe was on its last legs (this is a month before VE Day).