“Under Paid is Right” (December 16, 1941)
by Will B Johnstone (1881-1944)
11 x 22 in., ink on board

Johnstone studied at the Chicago Art Institute, after which he became an artist with the Chicago Interocean. He illustrated the daily news events, and Johnstone was the first person to diagram football games showing every play for each team. He eventually moved to New York City, where he began doing illustrations for William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers. Later on, he moved to The World, which was later renamed to The New York World-Telegram. He did a comic strip based on the news of the day. This feature had a recurring character that depicted a victimized tax payer. The man in question had been literally stripped down in the nude after paying his taxes and therefore walked around wearing nothing but a barrel. This has become a stock image in many humoristic cartoons and comics.

Johnstone and his brother were playwrights, and co-wrote ten musicals that were produced on Broadway. For his play, “I’ll Say She is,” he recruited Groucho Marx and then rewrote the play to bring in all the Marx brothers. Johnstone was a co-writer on “Monkey Business,” “Horse Feathers,” and “a Day at the Races.”

Before the direct involvement of US troops in WW2, privates in the US Army earned $21 a month. US soldiers were stationed in the Philippines in late 1940, in anticipation of US involvement in the war. The day after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese made their first landings on Philippine soil, and the action in the Pacific Theater was underway. The first weeks were active, but the US soldiers were using old munitions and the supply lines began to be cut off.

Things moved fast. The main attack took place December 22, 1941, and by March, the Japanese had taken the main island and occupied Manila.

“Winter Sport Fans” (December 14, 1941)
by William “Bill” Crawford (1913-1982)
18 x 22 in., ink and crayon on Glarco Illustration Board
Coppola Collection

This is one of my favorites.

A frequent contributor to the sport’s page, Crawford’s editorial cartoons often mixed the effect of WWII on professional sports issues.

“General Winter” was a substantial contributing factor in the military failures of both Napoleon’s and Hitler’s invasions of Russia (mid 1941). Hitler’s Wehrmacht had already suffered nearly 750K casualties and was running low on supplies by November 1941, even before the arrival of winter proper. Temperatures hit -40 in December-January, and the Germans were unprepared for this even as they advanced on Moscow.

“Things to Come” (December 12, 1941)
by William “Bill” Crawford (1913-1982)
19 x 21 in., ink and crayon on Glarco Illustration Board
Coppola Collection

A frequent contributor to the sport’s page, Crawford’s editorial cartoons often mixed the effect of WWII on professional sports issues.

In 1927, Babe Ruth captivated the country by swatting home runs out of ballparks. In Popular Science Monthly, with his typical prescience, Thomas Edison’s warned that the country would face a “rubber famine” in a second world war since America’s enemies would cut off supplies. “Lacking rubber, we would have to revert to balls stuffed with feathers or cork.”

The Japanese did cut off rubber supplies after seizing critical parts of SE Asia at the onset of World War II.

Indeed, four days after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States banned the use of crude rubber in any items deemed non-essential to the war effort—including baseballs and other sports equipment.

“Through the Smoke Screen” (December 10, 1941)
by William “Bill” Crawford (1913-1982)
19 x 22 in., ink and crayon on Glarco Illustration Board
Coppola Collection

Pencil titled along the top edge “Through the Smoke Screen”, and signed by Bill Crawford at lower right corner. Text along the bottom edge reads “Baseball Meetings”. Approx. 16″ x 22″.

A frequent contributor to the sport’s page, Crawford’s editorial cartoons often mixed the effect of WWII on professional sports issues.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, triggered a serious discussion as to whether or not the MLB season should be canceled. This question was the main topic of discussion at the annual winter baseball meetings held in Chicago on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. On January 14, 1942, MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Landis wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking his advice about the correct course of action.

On January 15, 1942, Roosevelt responded to Commissioner Landis with what has become known as the famous “Green Light Letter.” The President wrote, “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.” He did make it clear that this was his opinion and not an official point of view.

More than 500 major league baseball players served in the military during World War II. Some of these players were drafted, others enlisted voluntarily; some saw combat, some didn’t.

“Gone are the Days” (December 9, 1941)
by William “Bill” Crawford (1913-1982)
19 x 22 in., ink and crayon on Glarco Illustration Board
Coppola Collection

A frequent contributor to the sport’s page, Crawford’s editorial cartoons often mixed the effect of WWII on professional sports issues.

A reply by Crawford to Pearl Harbor: time to go on the Offense.

In the trash: Appeasement (in the form of Chamberlain’s umbrella), the dove of peace, neutrality, non-belligerence, and an interesting bottle, thrown away, with “bottleneck” hanging from it. This is quite nice.

RCA Victor started a worker incentive program in September 1941 called “Beat the Promise” (work above your quota). Large posters with an anthropomorphized wine bottle encouraging the reader to not be a bottleneck. A bottleneck is a person whose slow work effort reduces the production capacity of the entire chain or process in which they are involved.

The poster series was part of a larger campaign by RCA Victor to increase production for the war effort. The campaign included rallies with war bond drives that featured notable military figures and Victor record recording artists. The campaign was very successful; RCA Victor’s production in 1941 was 14 times greater than in 1939, and production through the first six months of 1942 was 49 times greater than the same period in 1939.

After Pearl Harbor, production had all the motivation it needed. No more bottlenecks.

“The Pacific Dragon Shows Its Teeth” (December 8, 1941)
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.

“Will They Divide the Pot?” (December 5, 1941)
by John Tinney McCutcheon (1870-1949)
14 x 14 in., ink on drawing board
Coppola Collection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._McCutcheon

On the Purdue campus, where he was a student, McCutcheon (class of 1889) is memorialized in a coeducational dormitory, John T. McCutcheon Hall. The lobby displays an original of one of his drawings, a nearly life-size drawing of a young man.

After college, McCutcheon moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Morning News (later: Chicago Record) and then at the Chicago Tribune from 1903 until his retirement in 1946. McCutcheon received the Pulitzer Prize for Cartoons in 1932.

In June 1941, WW2 took a sharp turn. There was war in Europe, in China, and in North Africa… and in 6 months, the US would be brought into it through the attack at Pearl Harbor. In June, though, Hitler turned on Russia and took the gambit that he could take Moscow in a well-structured, all out assault to the East.

Operation Barbarossa moved the German forces systematically forward, and within a few hundred miles of Moscow. Operation Typhoon was meant to take the prize and end the effort in victory. But the Russian roads were poor, and their rails were wider than the Germans, so the trains were stuck. Soon, the Germans were lacking food, ammo, and fuel, and soon, the proper clothing for the Russian winter, which they were not anticipating to face.

Operation Typhoon has been described as a stalemate of a boxing match, with lots of blows being landed but nothing gained beyond exhaustion and mutual damage. In early October, the wet season turned the battlefields into mud-pits that the Russians were better at negotiating.

The weather turned colder in November, improving the mobility of the Wehrmacht, who got within 12 miles of the Russian capitol by the end of the month.

Then the tide turned again. In early December, the temperature dropped to -40 (pick your scale, they converge here). Siberian-trained Russians, in fur-lined snow-white gear, tore through the Germans, pushing them back 150 miles. Hitler’s troops were ordered to not back down, and the seesaw occupation along the Eastern Front continued through the war.

“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.

“Winter Tourist” (November 8, 1941)
by Jay Alan Klein (1894-1965)
15 x 19 in., ink on board

Born in Nebraska, Klein was an animator and assistant at Terry-toons in the early ‘30s and later became a print cartoonist, credited as “Alan Klein” or “Jay Alan.”

He attended the University of Nebraska and Chicago of Fine Arts. Known for his political cartoons during WWII but mostly for his work with Modest Maidens until AP terminated all its comics in 1961. He changed the name to Modern Maidens and began syndicating the cartoon himself.

The Italian invasion of Greece lasted from October 28, 1940 to April 30, 1941, kicking off the Axis move towards the Balkans. Italian forces made limited gains, and soon the Greeks counter-attacked and the Italians were repulsed and driven back at the borders with Albania. The Italians spent much of the winter stabilizing a line that left them in control of only about two-thirds of Albania. An anticipated Italian offensive in March 1941 resulted in few territorial gains. Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, intervened in April and invaded Greece after a successful invasion of Yugoslavia.