1944.12.07 “War Birthday Cake”
by Cyrus Cotton “Cy” Hungerford (1889-1983)
13 x 16 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.

On the second anniversary of the US entry into WW2, things had been moving in favor of the Allies. On June 6, the D-Day invasion ultimately led to the liberation of Paris in late August.

Hitler’s June troubles were compounded by a Russian counterattack, which drove 300 miles west to Warsaw, and killed, wounded or captured 350,000 German soldiers. By the end of August, the Russians had taken Bucharest. Estonia was taken within months, and Budapest was under siege by the end of the year.

One glimmer of light for Germany came in the Ardennes, in France, where the December 16 German counteroffensive – the Battle of the Bulge – killed 19,000 Americans and delayed the Allies’ march into Germany.

1942.06.17 “Well?…”
by C Berger (unknown)
13 x 22 in., ink and crayon on textured paper
Coppola Collection

No luck to date tracking down the artist “C Berger”… the art is nice with deep darks and big, bold lines.

Between June 16 and November 4, 1942, Maxwell had been commanding general of United States Army Forces in the Middle East, one of two U.S. Army commands in the Africa-Middle East Theater. Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews superseded him on November 4. A month later Andrews told the chief of staff that Maxwell had “done a fine job” and that he had “vision and executive ability. . . The fly in the ointment is his morale which suffered a serious blow by reason of his loss of command of our forces in the Middle East.

On June 16, 1942, General Russell L. Maxwell was placed in command of the newly formed U.S. Army Forces in the Middle East (USAFIME), a unified program that was created to replace both the North African Mission in Cairo and the Iranian Mission in the Persian Corridor. American air troops arrived on June 25, after which time missions began against the Axis forces, particularly against the weakened supply lines into the region.

The U.S. Army’s Egypt–Libya Campaign ended in February 1943, when the Allied forces finally succeeded in driving all Axis forces out of Libya.

1939.07.29 “The Stargazers See an Omen in the Comet”
by Max P. Milians (1907-2005)
11 x 15 in., ink on 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.

The 35P/Herschel–Rigollet is a periodic comet with an orbital period of 155 years. The quasi-mystic and mythic stories of a comet that was easily visible with field glasses, in late July of 1939, is combined here with the emerging trouble in Europe.

A sense of destiny is a clear part of the dictatorial spirit. They are not only sure they are on the right side of history; they are fated to be history, fulfilling a master plan and its duty.

In January 1936, Mussolini told a German envoy of how Nazi Germany and fascist Italy shared “a common destiny.” Mussolini described them as the ‘axis’ around which Europe would revolve.

The Pact of Steel (May 1939, also recorded as the “Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy”) was the formalization of the military and political alliance between Italy and Germany.

There is another full drawing on the back of this (see elsewhere), that comes from the same time period.

1939.07 “No Wonder They Hate Dictators”
by Max P. Milians (1907-2005)
11 x 15 in., ink on 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.

A schoolboy’s remorse during the action of land-grabbing, power-mad dictators: you cannot keep up with your geography lessons because these guys keep redrawing the maps.

In the lead-up to WW2, the German-Italian alliance started moving their pieces around on the chessboard. Danzig and Czechoslovakia starting in March, Italian threats against Greece and the invasion and appropriation of Albania in April.

This piece was probably not published. It is located on the backside of a July 1939 drawing commemorating the fate and destiny of the alliance between Hitler and Mussolini.

1943.03.11 “African Dodger”
by Norbert B. Quinn (1902-1987)
8 x 11 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.

The campaign of 1943 opened strongly for the German army. Profiting from that temporarily favorable turn, Rommel was set up to utilize his central position between the two converging Allied armies to strike and cripple them separately and successively. If he could neutralize the First Army, he would have both hands free to tackle the Eighth Army, which had become thinned out as its lines of supply had lengthened.

The US, which included a French division, was confident, but at the end of January the Panzers overwhelmed the French garrison before American support could arrive. On Valentine’s Day, 1943, Rommel’s forces made a strong hit on the American forces and destroyed more than 100 tanks. Three days later, the German’s captured a set of American airfields. The tables started to turn thanks to some reserve strength on the side of the Allies, and Rommel broke off his attacks on February 22 and started to withdraw.

On March 6, when Rommel attacked again, his chance of striking with a superior force had vanished. The Allied reinforcements had nearly quadrupled their strength, and Rommel’s attack was brought to a standstill. And by March 17, 1943, the Allied offensive initiated a strong and coordinated attack, now under Patton’s direction.

1941.12.08 “The Pacific Dragon Shows Its Teeth”
unattributed
11 x 13 in., ink on paper
Coppola Collection

A series of events led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

War between Japan and the United States had been a possibility that each nation’s military forces planned for in the 1920s, though real tension did not begin until the 1931 invasion of Manchuria by Japan.

Over the next decade, Japan expanded slowly into China, leading to the Second Sino-Japanese war in 1937. In 1940 Japan invaded French Indochina in an effort to embargo all imports into China, including war supplies purchased from the U.S. This move prompted the United States to embargo all oil exports, leading the Imperial Japanese Navy to estimate it had less than two years of bunker oil remaining and to support the existing plans to seize oil resources in the Dutch East Indies.

The Philippines, at that time an American protectorate, were also a Japanese target. The Japanese military concluded an invasion of the Philippines would provoke an American military response. Rather than seize and fortify the islands, and wait for the inevitable U.S. counterattack, Japan’s military leaders instead decided on the preventive Pearl Harbor attack, which they assumed would negate the American forces needed for the liberation and reconquest of the islands.

Later that same day [December 8th local time], the Japanese indeed launched their invasion of the Philippines.