“Lights Out” (February 26, 1945) 11/18
by Milton Rawson Halladay (1874-1961)
14.5 x 15 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

Halladay was a native of Vermont and a noted political cartoonist for the Providence Journal (Rhode Island) for nearly fifty years (1900-1947). His cartoons were published in countless other newspapers and magazines. He has been called “one of the deans of American political cartooning.” His cartoon commemorating the death of Thomas A. Edison was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize.

The War Manpower Commission (WMC), in Washington, instituted a midnight curfew on all entertainment venues around the United States on February 26, 1945.

The main purpose of the curfew was to conserve coal for power, and to help alleviate the manpower shortage and the burdens on transportation.

All public and private establishments were affected: night clubs, sports arenas, theaters, dance halls, roadhouses, saloons, bars, shooting galleries, bowling and billiards, amusement parks, carnivals, circuses, gambling establishments, coin-operated amusements (juke boxes, pinball), skating rinks. All-night restaurants were excluded.

“What a Target” (March 12, 1945)
by Silvey Jackson (SJ) Ray (1891-1970)
12 x 16 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

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.

The Bombing of Tokyo was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of March 9-10, 1945, is regarded as the single most destructive bombing raid in human history: 16 square miles of central Tokyo were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over 1 million homeless.

Over 50% of Tokyo’s industry was spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods; firebombing cut the whole city’s output in half.  Some post-war analysts have called the raid a war crime due to the targeting of civilian infrastructure and the ensuing mass loss of civilian life.

Emperor Hirohito’s tour of the destroyed areas of Tokyo in late March was the beginning of his personal involvement in the peace process, culminating in Japan’s surrender six months later.

“Still the Fulcrum” (February 28, 1944)
by William (Bill) Crawford (1913-1982)
19 x 22 in., ink and crayon on heavy paper
Coppola Collection

Crawford worked as a sports cartoonist and for the Washington Daily News and the Washington Post from 1936-38. He joined the Newark News as an editorial cartoonist and his cartoons were distributed to more than 700 daily newspapers by the Newspaper Enterprise Association. He was an active member of the National Cartoonists Society, serving as its president and vice-president. In 1956, 1957, 1958, and 1963 he was awarded “Best Editorial Cartoon” by the National Cartoonist Society, and in 1973 he received their Silver T-Square Award. Crawford retired in 1977.

“Strategic effectiveness on the modern battlefield in the twenty-first century is centered on the reality that airpower needs landpower to be strategically relevant. Landpower, by contrast, merely desires airpower because it makes both offensive and defensive maneuvers less risky by degrading and disrupting adversarial ground forces. There is a codependence between the two, but it is unequal. That fact is perhaps threatening to some advocates of airpower, but it need not be. Airpower’s decisiveness might be in question— domination in the air domain does not equal domination in the ground domain—but its relevance is unequivocally not.”

Jahara Matisek and Jon McPhilamy (Modern War Institute, November 5, 2018)

The Army’s major commands were given to infantrymen Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Neither had paid much attention to aviation before the war. However, in July 1942, the air power advocate Jimmy Doolittle instituted a critical change in strategic fighter tactics and the 8^th Air Force bomber raids faced less and less Luftwaffe defensive fighter opposition for the rest of the war.

MacArthur had been badly defeated in the Philippines in 1941–42 primarily because the Japanese controlled the sky. His planes were outnumbered and outclassed, his airfields shot up, his radar destroyed, his supply lines cut. His infantry never had a chance. MacArthur vowed never again.

In the highly visible “Big Week” campaign (February 20-25, 1944) American bombers flew 3,800 sorties, dropping 10,000 tons of high explosives on the main German aircraft and ball-bearing factories. Ball bearing production was unaffected, as Nazi munitions boss Albert Speer repaired the damage in a few weeks. Sensing the danger, however, Speer began dispersing production into numerous small, hidden factories.

The need for coordination between ground and air coverage was clear.

“And it was such good reading” (June 17, 1944)
by Jack Lincoln Lambert (1892-1967)
12 x 15.5 in, ink on board
Coppola Collection

Jack Lincoln Lambert was a sculptor and a cartoonist. He received four awards for newspaper cartooning and had served with Medical Corps, United States Army, 1917-1919. His editorial work was for the Baltimore Evening Sun (1938-42), the Chicago Sun (1942-48), the Baltimore News Post (1948-64), and then the New-American, Baltimore.

The Bombing of Yawata on the night of June 15, 1944 was the first air raid on the Japanese home islands conducted by the US Army Air Forces B-29 strategic bombers during World War II.

The raid was carried out by 75 of the Superfortress bombers that were staged from bases in China. Only 47 of the aircraft bombed the raid’s primary target, the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata, and little damage was caused.

While the raid did not achieve its aims, it had other effects. It raised Japanese civilians’ awareness that their country was being defeated and received unduly positive media coverage in the United States. Intelligence gathered by the B-29s also revealed weaknesses in Japan’s air defenses and the raid was the first of many on Japan.

According to the notation on the back, this was gifted to a fan on July 3.

“There’s Your Answer, Adolph.” (November 27, 1942) 11/10
by Wallace Heard Goldsmith (1873-1945)
13 x 15.5 in, ink on board
Coppola Collection

Goldsmith was a Boston institution, working over his long career at the Herald, the Post, and the Globe. This editorial cartoon is from his 25-year period at the Post.

At the turn of the century, the Boston Herald just couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted to run a syndicate. Their homegrown comic section was born and died at least four different times. The Adventures of Little Allright came in the third version of their Sunday section and ran from March 6 to June 26 1904. There really wasn’t much to set the strip apart from any other kid strip — the starring kid saying “all right” a lot seems an almost ridiculously weak hook. Goldsmith took the dubious credit for this stinker. The strip was rebooted as Little Alright (the second ‘L’ was dropped), and ran from November 11 1906 to April 14 1907. He was well known for illustrating Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost.”

After the Fall of France and the Armistice of 1940, France was divided in two zones, one occupied by the Germans, and the “Free Zone”. Officially, both zones were administered by the Vichy regime. The armistice stipulated that the French fleet would be largely disarmed and confined to its harbors, under French control. The Allies were concerned that the fleet, which included some of the most advanced warships of the time, might fall into enemy hands and so the British attacked the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on July 3, 1940, and at the Battle of Dakar on September 23, 1940.

On November 8. 1942 the Allies invaded French North Africa. It is thought that General Dwight Eisenhower, with the support of FDR and Winston Churchill, made a secret agreement with Admiral François Darlan, commander of Vichy Naval forces, that Darlan would be given control of French North Africa if he joined the Allied side.

Hitler responded to the invasion by sending in his forces, with the intent of capturing the French fleet and turning it over to Italy. As the German and Italian troops closed in on the port of Toulon, a plan was already in place: turn them back; and if that did not work, scuttle the fleet.

The French played along, looking like it was strengthening its defenses against the Allies. On November 12, Darlan called for a declaration of defection.

German combat troops entered Toulon early on November 27. By about 5 AM, German tanks rolled through, and the lead French ship immediately transmitted the order “Scuttle! Scuttle! Scuttle!” by radio, visual signals and dispatch boat. French crews evacuated, and scuttling parties started preparing demolition charges and opening sea valves on the ships.

In the final accounting, 77 vessels were scuttled. Another 39 were damaged and disarmed. Some of the major ships were ablaze for several days, and oil polluted the harbor so badly that it would not be possible to swim there for two years.

“Bucking Bronco” (June 3, 1942)
by Paul Frederick Berdanier (1879-1961)
15 x 21 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

Paul F. Berdanier was a cartoonist, illustrator, etcher and painter. He worked as an advertising artist in the 1920s. He illustrated for pulp magazines in the ’30s, while also drawing for the St. Louis Post-Dipatch. He did art on various features for United Feature Syndicate from the 1930s throughout the 1950s. At United Features comic books, he contributed to Tip Top Comics with features like ‘Sparkman’ (1943-45) and ‘The Triple Terror’ (1943-46). Berdanier was also a teacher at Washington University.

In the 1930s, Mexico and the United States were unlikely allies. In 1938, Mexico’s president nationalized the country’s oil industry, which angered powerful U.S. oil companies. Plus, many Mexicans still resented the United States for the loss of 55 percent of Mexico’s territory after the U.S.-Mexican War.

But as the war in Europe began to disrupt trade routes around the world, Mexico and other Latin American countries found themselves in economic peril.

Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 brought the war to the Western Hemisphere for the first time. Mexico cut diplomatic ties with Japan on December 9, 1941; it broke with Germany and Italy by December 11. In January 1942, at the Conference of Foreign Ministers held in Rio Janeiro, Brazil, Mexico’s delegation argued forcefully that all the nations of the Western Hemisphere must band together in mutual cooperation and defense.

That May, German U-boats sank two Mexican oil tankers in the Gulf of Mexico. Germany refused to apologize or compensate Mexico, and on June 1, 1942, President Manuel Ávila Camacho issued a formal declaration of war against the Axis Powers.

“New Deal Arithmetic” (October 14, 1940)
by Milton Rawson Halladay (1874-1961)
15 x 16.5 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

Halladay was a native of Vermont and a noted political cartoonist for the Providence Journal (Rhode Island) for nearly fifty years (1900-1947). His cartoons were published in countless other newspapers and magazines. He has been called “one of the deans of American political cartooning.” His cartoon commemorating the death of Thomas A. Edison was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize.

The US economic recovery from the Great Depression was built upon taxes, and particularly by taxing those who trafficked in greater amounts of money: the high income earners and businesses.

Public, No. 801, Second Revenue Act of 1940, approved October 8, 1940, amends the Internal Revenue Code by increasing the normal corporate tax rate of corporations having a normal tax net income in excess of $25,000.

“Snap Judgment” (May 25, 1939)
by Milton Rawson Halladay (1874-1961)
12 x 14.75 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

Halladay was a native of Vermont and a noted political cartoonist for the Providence Journal (Rhode Island) for nearly fifty years (1900-1947). His cartoons were published in countless other newspapers and magazines. He has been called “one of the deans of American political cartooning.” His cartoon commemorating the death of Thomas A. Edison was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize.

“It is difficult to resist the temptation to form a snap judgment after reading the first reports of a great disaster.”

The armchair-Generals on this train are all reading about the sinking of the Squalus of the New Hampshire coast on May 23, 1939.

The keel of the submarine named Squalus was laid on October 18, 1937 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. It was the only ship of the United States Navy named for a type of shark. The Squalus was launched on September 14, 1938 and commissioned on March 1, 1939.

On May 12, 1939, Squalus began a series of test dives off Portsmouth, New Hampshire. After successfully completing 18 dives, she went down again off the Isles of Shoals on the morning of May 23. Failure of the main induction valve caused the flooding of the aft torpedo room, both engine rooms, and the crew’s quarters, drowning 26 men immediately. Quick action by the crew prevented the other compartments from flooding.

Squalus bottomed out in 243 ft of water. The ship was was raised, renamed, and recommissioned on May 15, 1940 as Sailfish. During the Pacific War, the captain of the renamed ship issued standing orders if any man on the boat said the word “Squalus,” he was to be marooned at the next port of call. This led to the crew referring to their ship as “Squailfish.” That went over almost as well; a court martial was threatened for anyone heard using it.

“Europe’s Big Question” (January 7,1939)
by Milton Rawson Halladay (1874-1961)
15.5 x 18 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

Halladay was a native of Vermont and a noted political cartoonist for the Providence Journal (Rhode Island) for nearly fifty years (1900-1947). His cartoons were published in countless other newspapers and magazines. He has been called “one of the deans of American political cartooning.” His cartoon commemorating the death of Thomas A. Edison was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize.

Although World War II “officially” began in September 1939, with the invasion of Poland, following the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia the previous year, another early shot in the upcoming was Danzig.

Danzig was an ethnically German city located northwest of Warsaw on the Baltic Sea coast that had been part of Germany from the early 1800’s until the end of World War I. Hitler’s interest in Danzig was long-standing, arguably central to the Nazi ideology, which called for the unification of all German people.

Danzig had been stripped from German control after World War I and established as the Free City of Danzig by the League of Nations. Germany had also lost portions of Posen and West Prussia to Poland. In the post WW2 maps, Danzig and the so-called Polish Corridor ensured Poland’s access to the Baltic Sea, but they also separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. This outraged many Germans, particularly Hitler, who saw this concession as temporary. Throughout the 1930s, Hitler called for Danzig to be reunited with Germany.

In the classic treatise “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” the division of Prussia was “to Germans, the most heinous crime of the Versailles peacemakers.”

On January 6, 1939, German Chancellor Hitler told Polish Foreign Minister Josef Beck, “Danzig was German, would always remain German, and sooner or later would return to Germany.” A disingenuous proposal was made to crisscross the “Polish land corridor” with new rail lines and highways, connecting Germany with East Prussia and providing a pathway to de facto control. The proposal was declined.