“Russia! America! England! … then… Mars!” (November 25, 1941)
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.