“Army-Navy 1938” (November 26, 1938)
by Emidio (Mike) Angelo (1903-1990)
18 x 19 in., ink on art board

Emidio Angelo was born in Philadelphia, a year after his mother and father, a baker, arrived from Italy. He studied art from 1924 to 1928 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Angelo joined The Philadelphia Inquirer as a political cartoonist in 1937 and worked there until 1954. He also drew cartoons for the Saturday Evening Post, Life and Esquire.

On May 14, 1938, the English national football team, in its last outing with the German team, was ordered to give the Nazi salute, in what remains today among the most controversial moments in sports history.

On September 30, 1938, British PM Neville Chamberlain arrived at Heston Aerodrome following a conference with Adolf Hitler and other European leaders in Munich. Holding up the recently signed Anglo-German Declaration for the assembled crowd to see, Chamberlain declared that he had secured “peace for our time.” The meetings had resulted in the Munich Agreement, which allowed and legitimized Nazi Germany’s recent annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia. Hitler, who had annexed Austria earlier in the year, had vowed to invade Czechoslovakia on October 1, 1938, to occupy the German-speaking Sudetenland region. And thanks, in part, to his secret pact with the Soviets, he did just that. It was the beginning of the end for Chamberlain.

Throughout the autumn of 1938, Britain was once again on the brink of armed conflict with Germany as the latter’s aggression increased.

November 6, 1938 was Kristallnacht. A wave of violence targeting Jews occurred throughout Germany and Austria in retaliation for the assassination of Ernst vom Rath. Nazi authorities did not interfere as Jewish shops and synagogues were burned and looted, and 20,000 Jews were arrested. Remarkably, that same evening, Swiss citizen Maurice Bavaud attended a parade in Munich celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch with the intention of assassinating Adolf Hitler with a pistol. However, Hitler marched on the far side of the street relative to Bavaud’s position making the shot too difficult, so he abandoned his attempt. A week later, on November 13, Bavaud was caught stowing away on a train in Augsburg. Later, when interrogated by the Gestapo he admitted his plan to assassinate Hitler.

On November 18, 1938, 3,500 members of the motion picture industry attended a “Quarantine Hitler” rally at the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles. The crowd unanimously voted to send a telegram to President Roosevelt urging him to use his authority to “express further the horror and the indignation of the American people” at the Nazi persecutions of Jews and Catholics.

On November 21, 1938, Neville Chamberlain told the House of Commons of plans to lease at least 10,000 square miles in British Guiana to provide homes for German Jewish refugees

On November 24, 1938, Hitler ordered his military to prepare for an occupation of Danzig.

On November 26, 1938, the Army-Navy Game was played under the shadow of these world events.

“Advice from an Expert” (November 18, 1938)
by William Norman Ritchie (1865-1947)
12 x 16 in., ink on paper
Coppola Collection

Ritchie was a long-time editorialist for the Boston Post.

After WW1, Kaiser Wilhelm exiled himself to Holland. He settled in a country house in the municipality of Doorn, known as Huis Doorn, on May 15, 1920. And Hitler, a veteran of WW1, like other leading Nazis, felt nothing but contempt for the man they blamed for Germany’s greatest defeat.

FEBRUARY 4, 1938

On February 4, 1938, The Wehrmacht was established in Nazi Germany by decree, putting Hitler himself in complete control of the military. The new command structure abolished the position of War Minister, and twelve senior generals were sent into retirement.

On February 12, 1938, Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg went to see Hitler in Berchtesgaden. Schuschnigg tried to open the meeting with light conversation about the beauty of the view, but Hitler brushed such talk aside and began a tirade of shouting, threatening to invade unless his demands compromising Austria’s sovereignty were met.

On February 22, 1938, by a vote of 330-168, Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy was endorsed by the House of Commons. Winston Churchill was among about 20 Conservatives who abstained from voting.

On March 1, 1938, Hermann Goering was presented with a field marshal’s baton by Adolf Hitler, who made the gesture to placate Goering for not giving him a cabinet position.

In news reports on March 2, 1938, Field Marshal General Hermann Goering, warns that Adolf Hitler’s “protectorate” over Germans of Austria and Czechoslovakia will be backed up by Nazi bombing planes: “We are burning with zeal … to prove to Der Fuehrer and the German people that his air force is invincible.” The Field Marshal didn’t say how the Third Reich proposed to avoid hitting Germans as well as Austrians in Vienna, further saying that his air force would be “terrible in action.”

Burning with Zeal. Locked and Loaded. Fire and Fury.

Kaiser Wilhelm, in Holland, Wilhelm has grown to distrust Hitler: “We have ceased to live under the rule of law and everyone must be prepared for the possibility that the Nazis will push their way in and put them up against the wall!”

On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich.

Wilhelm was also appalled at the Kristallnacht of 9–10 November 1938: “For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German.”

The diplomats from around the world almost unanimously condemned the murders and acts of violence and destructions. The British described the pogrom as “Medieval barbarism,” the Brazilians called it a “disgusting spectacle,” and French diplomats wrote that the “scope of brutality” was only “exceeded by the massacres of the Armenians,” referring to the Turkish genocide of 1915-1916. Nevertheless, no country broke off diplomatic relations with Berlin or imposed sanctions, and only Washington recalled its ambassador.

From a published article by ex-Kaiser Wilhelm on Hitler, December 15, 1938:

“There’s a man alone, without family, without children, without God … He builds legions, but he doesn’t build a nation. A nation is created by families, a religion, traditions: it is made up out of the hearts of mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children … For a few months I was inclined to believe in National Socialism. I thought of it as a necessary fever. And I was gratified to see that there were, associated with it for a time, some of the wisest and most outstanding Germans. But these, one by one, he has got rid of or even killed … He has left nothing but a bunch of shirted gangsters! This man could bring home victories to our people each year, without bringing them either glory or danger. But of our Germany, which was a nation of poets and musicians, of artists and soldiers, he has made a nation of hysterics and hermits, engulfed in a mob and led by a thousand liars or fanatics.”

“Noah Chamberlain See a Dove” (September 30, 1938)
by Charles (Chuck) Werner (1909-1997)
14 x 16 in., ink and crayon on textured paper
Coppola Collection

Charles (Chuck) Werner won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1939 for a cartoon he did for the Daily Oklahoman titled “Nomination for 1938” which allowed for the transfer of the Sudetenland to Hitler’s Germany (October 6, 1938). At age 29, Werner was the youngest person to win the Pulitzer. Werner left the Daily Oklahoman to be the Chief Editorial Cartoonist at the Chicago Sun in 1941 before leaving for the Indianapolis Star in 1947. Throughout his nearly sixty-year career, many U.S. Presidents expressed interest in Werner’s cartoons, including Lyndon B. Johnson and Harry Truman requesting cartoons for their presidential libraries.

The world is armed for war on a rocky sea, and here is a reference to the delusion of appeasement around the “peace in our time” speech given by Chamberlain at the Heston Airport (September 30, 1938), just as the invasion of Czechoslovakia tipped the scales towards the historical start of WW2, a year later, with the invasion of Poland.

“What a Handy Article an Umbrella Is” (September 30, 1938)
by Vaughn Richard Shoemaker (1902-1991)
22 x 24 in., ink on paper
Coppola Collection

Vaughn Richard Shoemaker was an American editorial cartoonist. He won the 1938 and 1947 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning and created the character John Q. Public.

Shoemaker started his career at the Chicago Daily News and spent 22 years there. His 1938 Pulitzer cartoon for the paper was “The Road Back”, featuring a World War I soldier marching back to war. The 1947 winning cartoon for the paper was “Still Racing His Shadow”, featuring “new wage demands” of workers trying to outrun his shadow “cost of living”. He went on to work for the New York Herald Tribune, the Chicago American, and Chicago Today. By his 1972 retirement he had drawn over 14,000 cartoons.

In 1938, Shoemaker won the first of two Pulitzer Prizes for Editorial Cartooning. This cartoon is fairly self-explanatory. And I have covered the reasonable background for it previously, so let’s fire up the way-back machine and self-plagiarize a bit. This cartoon related to the famous “peace for our time” speech that the British PM, Chamberlain, gave upon return from Germany…

Historians report that the Treaty of Versailles (1919), brokering the peace at the end of WWI, caused significant resentment in Germany, and that Hitler played off of this to achieve power. The British government believed that Hitler and Germany had some genuine grievances, but that if these could be met (‘appeased’) Hitler would be satisfied and become less demanding.

Becoming Chancellor in 1933, Hitler began to re-arm the country, breaking the Versailles restrictions. In March 1938, he annexed Austria. Czechoslovakia was next.

The story of the cartoon tells it all. In September 1938, British PM Neville Chamberlain returned from Germany, having signed the Munich Agreement as an appeasement, allowing Hitler to subdivide Czechoslovakia, and then famously, publicly, and ultimately ironically declared “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.”

German forces moved in and occupied a significant chunk of Czechoslovakia on October 1. Six months later, all of Czechoslovakia was taken over. Poland was next.

Digging into this a little more: after WWI, the European League of Nations was set up to create a mechanism of cooperation and communication, in an attempt to circumvent another war. The rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and their build-up of military conflict, proved that the League was not particularly effective.

Late in the 1930s, the major European nations adopted a policy of “appeasement,” in which concessions were granted to these two dictators with the idea that they would be satisfied and agree not to escalate their aggression. British PM Chamberlain, who took office in 1937, continued the policy.

Czechoslovakia was made up of a patchwork of territories, including a region with a majority German population called Sudetenland. The Sudeten Nazis, and Hitler, were emphatic about Sudeten’s autonomy from Czechoslovakia.

By September, 1938, violence was increasing as Hitler and the Nazis agitated against Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain made two trips to Germany in September.

By now, Hitler was demanding the ‘return’ of Sudetenland to the Empire under threat of a new war. During the first trip, Chamberlain agreed to advocate for handing over Sudetenland to Germany. And in response, Hitler continued to escalate attacks on Czechoslovakia. A week later, after the second trip, where Chamberlain agreed to Germany’s possession of the Sudetenland, Hitler upped the ante, insisting that Czechoslovakia be broken up completely… a demand he dialed back in exchange for the unconditional separation and return of the Sudetenland by October 1.

This appeasement, called the Munich Agreement, was the basis of Chamberlain’s declaration of peace on the same day as the publication of this cartoon, giving us all (today) an interesting sense of just how up to date communication, attention, and opinion was about current happenings. This cartoon is viable for only about a day – between Chamberlain’s declaration on September 30…

“I believe it is peace for our time. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”

… and the Nazi invasion of Sudetenland on October 1.

“Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella” turns out to be as big a deal as “Hilter’s moustasche” or “Churchill’s cigars” in terms of symbolism. After the Munich Agreement, Chamberlain become known as the Umbrella Man.

A recent article on Chamberlain and the umbrella sheds light on all of this.

Quoting from there:

Due to the irrefutable diplomatic failure of the Munich Agreement signed on 30 September 1938, at each juncture in the reassessment of appeasement historians, political scientists, and generations of politicians too have tried to identify the underlying lesson to be learned, whether strategic, ethical, or psychological. Munich has consistently been conjured as an object lesson in international relations, an example of a how negotiations with dictators should not be conducted, and used to serve as a practical example of a principle or an abstract idea.

In fact, umbrellas, and Chamberlain’s umbrella in particular, were omnipresent in the visual and material culture, and in the rhetorical constructions of the Munich Crisis and in its aftermath. Chamberlain’s umbrella was easily the most produced and reproduced political emblem of late 1938–9, represented in a wide range of textual and visual forms in the media, and in consumable forms as accessories, adornments, novelties, souvenirs and edible delicacies. In Britain and abroad, and especially in France, the umbrella came to stand for a distinctly British form of diplomatic engagement. The Yorkshire Post asked: ‘Is there any other single object that could be turned to so much political symbolism? Perhaps it was the association of ideas between Mr Chamberlain’s mission and the purpose of the umbrella that struck foreign imagination…the umbrella has no bellicose connotations. It is shelter, protection (originally against sun as well as rain)’.

“Get to Work, Uncle!” (September 26, 1938)
by Milton Rawson Halladay (1874-1961)
15 x 16 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 ramifications from WW1 echoed though Europe for years. Mussolini marched on Rome in 1922, and by 1925 declared himself leader for life. He was a “darling” of the American press for many years, and the new experiment in Fascism was seen as having saved Italy from radical leftists and for revitalizing the economy.

Mussolini normalized the initial press reception of Hitler, who was often called “Germany’s Mussolini.” Hitler was seen as something of a joke, a volatile and insecure man who was worshipping the Italian strongman. Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, and by 1935, the mistake in underestimating him was recognized, but the isolationist US, deep in the Great Depression, was not taking the stage.

Mussolini attacked Ethiopia in 1935, and in March 1936, months before the Berlin Olympics, Hitler pushed German troops, with no objection, into the Rhineland, against terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler and Mussolini appeared together often in 1938 as chummy heads of state.

On September 12, 1938, in a keynote at the Nuremberg party rally, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, a territory in Czechoslovakia, join Germany. Czech President Bensh was not making this concession.

On September 26, 1938, Hitler announced that the Wehrmacht would move on Czechoslovakia on October 1. He insisted that the Sudetenland issue was “the last territorial demand” he would make on Europe.
The German press was under orders to mount a strong and personal attack on Benesh, and “to sow discord between Benesh and his people.”

On September 30,1938, Germany, Italy, France and the United Kingdom signed the Munich Agreement, which allowed for the annexation and military occupation of the Sudetenland by Germany. Czechoslovakia was not consulted. Benesh agreed, despite opposition from within his country, after France and the United Kingdom warned that they would remain neutral, despite their previous promises, in a war between Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Benesh was forced to resign on October 5, 1938, under German pressure.

We see delightful editorial symbolism here, as the entirety of the US political system is charged with just tending to its own field and to not be distracted (Get to Work, Uncle) as Hitler and Mussolini sow discord in Europe.

“Peace at Any Price?” (September 22, 1938)
by James Harrison (Hal) Donahey (1875-1949)
15 x 21 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

James Harrison (Hal) Donahey was the chief editorial cartoonist for the Plain Dealer from 1900 to 1949. Before working for the Plain Dealer, Donahey worked for the Ohio Democrat in New Philadelphia and as an illustrator for the Cleveland World. According to A History of Cleveland (vol.1), “As a cartoonist Donahey wields an exceedingly clever pencil; his humor is never offensive and shows the man of heart. He is of a creative mind, studious, modest, and altogether a charming fellow, and a real artist.”

“Peace at Any Price” has become a scathing attack phrase on political appeasers.

In 1938, Germany was preparing to invade Czechoslovakia and take possession of the Sudetenland, a German speaking region in the country’s south. The invasion was expected to set off a broader conflict in Europe, since both France and the UK had treaties with Czechoslovakia. The French and British people were anxiously waiting to see whether war would break out.

At the last minute, the leaders of France, the UK, and Germany held a conference in Munich. The three powers agreed that Germany could move against southern Czechoslovakia and that the UK and France would not stop them. In return, Hitler promised that he would not invade the rest of Czechoslovakia.

(suckers!)

The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, returned to London triumphantly and announced that the country would not be going to war with Germany. Crowds cheered as he announced,

“My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time” (September 30, 1938).

The next day, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.

The message in the drawing is clear: it is not just “democracy” taking the beating, but we have the loss of arts and culture, the destruction of what was built, and we are walking to the edge/precipice of civilization’s end.

The phrase “peace at any price” is strongly associated with Chamberlain but in fact, it was first famously used by Theodore Roosevelt. In 1917, Roosevelt was long out of office but still took a major interest in politics. He was urging the US to enter World War I, ironically enough, and he wrote:

“Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood—the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”

The economic problems that resulted from World War I and the Depression led people to question whether democratic government could improve their lives. Totalitarian governments rose up in the 1920s and appeared to provide a sense of security and offered a strong direction for the future. Stalin… Mussolini… Horihito… Franco… Hitler…

The after Hitler met with Chamberlain, he ordered the swift takeover of the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany under threat of war. Czechoslovakia, Hitler claimed, was slaughtering the Sudeten Germans. Does this sound like a familiar authoritarian playbook? Russia is only saving its natives from the Ukrainians.

On 21 September, Czechoslovakia capitulated.

Putin… Kim… it never changes. We simply forget.

As Benjamin Franklin departed the Constitutional Convention, he was asked if the framers had created a monarchy or a republic. “A republic,” he famously replied, and then added, “if you can keep it.”

1938.09.21 “The Amateur” (September 21, 1938)
by Jack Patton (1900-1962)
12 x 14 in., ink and crayon on board
Coppola Collection

Jack Patton was originally from Louisiana. He worked as an editorial cartoonist from the 1910s through the 1930s. In the 1930s, he was a widely read editorial cartoonist for The Dallas Morning News. His last editorial cartoons appeared at the end 1939 and perhaps through the start of 1940. During the 1930s, he also began the newspaper strip ‘Restless Age,’ which was followed by ‘Spence Easley’.

As a child, Patton read a magazine advertisement offering easy lessons in drawing. He signed up for a brief course, and it was enough to whet his appetite for a lifetime of cartooning. Scraping together enough money to get to Chicago, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts. While at the school, he received word that the old Dallas Journal, then the evening publication of The Dallas News, needed an assistant in the art department. Hurrying back to his hometown, Mr. Patton found to his delight that he would work with veteran News cartoonist John Knott. The year was 1918 and two years later his editorial cartoons won a place on page 1 of the Journal. In the early part of his career, Mr. Patton was one of the first men in the business to put out both an editorial cartoon and a comic strip daily. The editorial cartoons had a stinging wit, and the originals were frequently requested by the subjects, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and John Nance Garner.

September 12: Hitler made a speech in Nuremberg declaring that the oppression of Sudeten Germans must end. The speech was broadcast live to the United States by CBS Radio and was the first time that many Americans had ever heard Hitler speak.

September 13: French PM Edouard Daladier asked British PM Neville Chamberlain to make the best deal he could with Hitler.

September 15: Chamberlain boarded a plane for the first time in his life and flew to Germany to meet with Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain had already decided not to go to war over Czechoslovakia, so all that was left to negotiate was the means of meeting Hitler’s demands.

September 17: Chamberlain reported to the Cabinet on his meeting with Hitler, informing its members of his belief that a settlement of the Sudeten matter would satisfy Hitler’s aims.

September 18: Daladier came to London for a conference on Czechoslovakia. The German annexation of the Sudetenland was agreed upon.

September 19: The British and French representatives in Prague presented the Anglo-French proposal to allow the Sudetenland to be annexed.

September 20: The Czechoslovak government rejected the Anglo-French proposal; Hitler met with the Polish ambassador and told him that Germany would support Poland in a conflict with Czechoslovakia. Hitler also said he was considering shipping Europe’s Jews to a colony and expressed hope that Poland would cooperate with such a plan. He replied that if Hitler could solve the Jewish question, the Poles would build a monument to him in Warsaw.

September 21: The British and French ambassadors informed the Czechoslovakian President that his country would have to accept their plan or face Germany alone.

September 22: The Czechoslovakian government resigned.

September 25: The new Czechoslovakian President rejected Hitler’s latest demands as “an ultimatum given to a defeated nation, not a sovereign one.”

September 27: The French government announced that France would not enter a war purely over Czechoslovakia. Neville Chamberlain gave a radio address saying, “However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbor, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account. If we have to fight it must be on larger issues than that.”

September 29: Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier, and Benito Mussolini met in Munich to settle the Sudetenland crisis. Czechoslovakia was not invited, neither was the Soviet Union.

September 30: The Munich Agreement: At 1 AM, the four powers at Munich agreed that Czechoslovakia would cede the Sudetenland to Germany by October 10. The territorial integrity of the rest of Czechoslovakia was guaranteed by all signatories.

Neville Chamberlain flew back to Britain and declared “peace for our time.”

October 1: There is no Munich Agreement: German troops began to occupy the Sudetenland.

October 3: Nazi Germany issued the Decree on the Confiscation of Jewish Property.

October 5: All German passports held by Jews were invalidated.

October 7: The Fascist Grand Council of Italy approved the first Italian Racial Laws, banning interracial marriage and prohibiting Jews from enrolling in the Fascist Party or serving in the military.

October 28: Some 12,000 Polish Jews were deported from Germany in the vicinity of the border town of Zbaszyn. Many of the expelled Jews were denied entry into Poland on the basis of the country’s new denaturalization law. Some went back into Germany and about 5,500 wound up staying in disused stables and other temporary shelters around Zbaszyn with nowhere else to go.

1938.09.13 “Mention Lincoln, But Don’t Quote Him.”
by Mischa Richter (1910-2001)
9.5 x 13.5 in., ink and wash on paper
Coppola Collection

Mischa Richter (1910-2001) was a well-known New Yorker, King Features, and PM newspaper cartoonist who worked for the Communist Party’s literary journal “New Masses” in the late 1930 and early 1940s, becoming its art editor in the 1940s.

With the election of Abraham Lincoln (the first Republican president) in 1860, the Republican Party largely dominated the national political scene until 1932. After 1912, many of the Teddy Roosevelt supporters, who followed TR to the new Bull Moose Party, left the Republication Party, consequently resulting in an ideological shift to the right. The GOP lost its congressional majorities during the Great Depression, and under FDR, the Democrats formed a winning New Deal coalition that was dominant from 1932 through 1964.

After 1936, the GOP split into a conservative faction (dominant in the West and Midwest) and a liberal faction (dominant in the Northeast)—combined with a residual base of inherited progressive Republicanism active throughout the century. The Republications were longer the Party of Lincoln.

The Democratic Party lost a net of 72 seats in the 1938 United States House of Representatives elections, with the GOP picking up seats from Progressive and Farmer–Labor Parties.

The GOP comeback in 1938 was made possible by carrying 50% of the vote outside the South, giving GOP leaders confidence it had a strong base for the 1940 presidential election.