“Army Worm!” (June 25, 1941)
by Charles (Chuck) Werner (1909-1997)
11 x 15 in., ink on paper

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.

In June 1941, WW2 took a sharp turn. There was war “worming” its way through Europe, through China, and through North Africa… and in 6 months, the US would be brought into it through the attack at Pearl Harbor.

On June 22, though, Hitler turned on Russia and took the gambit, in Operation Barbarossa, that he could take Moscow in a well structured, all out assault to the East.

“The Willing Slaves” (June 21, 1941)
by Unknown
9 x 10 in., ink on paper

This drawing is an unsigned sketch.

On June 21, 1941, Winston Churchill made a radio address in which he spoke of “the Nazi war machine, with its clanking, heel-clicking, dandified Prussian officers … [and] the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts.”

“Another Case of Mental Derangement” (June 16, 1941)
by Ty Mahon (1896-?)
20 x 20 in., ink on board

Mahon was the editorial cartoonist for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin as well as a general illustrator Esquire during the 1930s and 1940s. He is a bit of a ghost. The 1940 census lists him as living in Philadelphia and being born in 1896.

Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, Hess served in that position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom during World War II. He was taken prisoner and eventually convicted of crimes against peace, serving a life sentence until his suicide.

Hitler decreed in 1939 that Hermann Goering was his official successor, and named Hess as next in line. In addition to appearing on Hitler’s behalf at speaking engagements and rallies, Hess signed into law much of the government’s legislation, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped the Jews of Germany of their rights in the lead-up to the Holocaust.

Concerned that Germany would face a war on two fronts as plans progressed for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union scheduled to take place in 1941, Hess decided to attempt to bring Britain to the negotiating table by travelling there himself to seek meetings with the British government.

Before his departure from Germany, Hess had given his adjutant a letter addressed to Hitler that detailed his intentions to open peace negotiations with the British. He delivered the letter to Hitler at the Berghof around noon on May 11. After reading the letter, Hitler let loose an outcry heard throughout the entire Berghof and sent for a number of his inner circle, concerned that a putsch might be underway.

Hitler worried that his allies, Italy and Japan, would perceive Hess’s act as an attempt by Hitler to secretly open peace negotiations with the British. Hitler contacted Mussolini specifically to reassure him otherwise. For this reason, Hitler ordered that the German press should characterize Hess as a madman who made the decision to fly to Scotland entirely on his own, without Hitler’s knowledge or authority.

The official press bulletin said that Hess had become “a deluded, deranged and muddled idealist, ridden with hallucinations traceable to World War injuries“… hence the cartoon’s title of “another case” of derangement.

Hitler stripped Hess of all of his party and state offices, and secretly ordered him shot on sight if he ever returned to Germany. He abolished the post of Deputy Führer.

Hess was already in a deteriorated mental state by the Nuremburg Trials, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Forty years later, while in custody in Spandau, he died by hanging himself in 1987 at the age of 93.

After his death, the prison was demolished to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.

“If George Washington came back and saw what’s happened to his foreign policies.” (June 9 1941)
by John Tinney McCutcheon (1870-1949)
13 x 16 in., ink on drawing board

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.

Isolationism was strong in the US after WW1, and right through the outbreak of WW2 until the attack on Pearl Harbor. FDR was pushing on ways to provide aid and assistance to Great Britain, in particular, as it has taken on the defense of the rapidly growing western front and takeover of the European continent.

Because of the prominent role played by the UK, the doctrines from the American Revolution are used to argue for US non-interference with the War in Europe.

“Come on Adolph, Roosevelt is on the air again!” (June 5, 1941)
By William von Riegen (1908-1984)
14 x 17 in., ink and crayon on paper, mounted on board

William von Riegen was a cartoonist for the New Yorker. The cartoon shows him to be a reasonable caricaturist in addition to his skills with figures, gesture, shading, and uniforms.

He was born in New York and studied with George Bridgman at the Art Students League where he later did some teaching. He lived in New Jersey for much of his career.

His early cartoons appear to be in “College Humor” (ca. 1936-8), and his longest run was as a cartoonist for the New Yorker (1937-1975). He was also a regular at Collier’s, Esquire, Look, and other illustrated magazines.

A notation on the back gives the caption, which is rather worn out on the front. The artist’s name and address are written on the back, and the interesting note “$50 Defense Bond” in the same handwriting and as part of the same block of text.

On the night of April 30, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt went on the air to announce a new “Defense” Savings Bond, the Series E.

The first Series E bond was sold to President Franklin D. Roosevelt by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau on May 1, 1941. These were marketed first as “Defense Bonds.” Then, in December 1941, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declared war on Japan. And Germany declared war on the U.S. shortly thereafter, bringing the country into World War II.

This required a great deal of financing; about $281 billion was spent for the war effort between 1941 and 1945. The Series E bonds became known as “war bonds” after Pearl Harbor.

“Stamp Him Out with a Defense Stamp!” (June 5, 1941)
By Jack Markow (1905-1983)
15 x 19 in., ink and wash on paper

Markow was an American cartoonist who also wrote instructional books about cartooning, comic strips and comic art. For three years, he was the cartoon editor of “Argosy.” His high school drawings landed him a job doing layouts and paste-ups in the sales promotion department of the
Fleishmann Yeast Company. He later studied drawing and painting at the Art Students League. Markow was one of the first faculty members at New York’s School of Visual Arts, where he originated the magazine cartooning course and taught for eight years. He wrote a popular book named “Drawing and Selling Cartoons.”

Before entry into the war, defense savings bonds and stamps, which were used during WW1, made their reappearance in mid-1941. Banks, post offices, and retail stores held “stamp days” that were organized by local clubs. College campuses were popular sites for the distribution of stamp books, where individual stamps started with the investment of a dime.

“For Defense” (June 3, 1941)
By Henry Boltinoff (1914-2001)
11 x 15 in., ink and wash on board

Born in New York City, he was in his teens when he started drawing pictures for the theatre section of The New York American, where his brother, Murray, was an assistant editor. He worked there from 1933 until the paper folded, in 1937. Then he freelanced for magazines, selling hundreds of cartoons to Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal etc. Two years after that, he called on Whitney Ellsworth, DC’s editor, whom he’d come to know while making the magazine rounds. His brother Murray ended up as a long-time editor at DC.

His most prominent creation for DC was “Dover & Clover” which debuted in More Fun Comics #94 (Nov. 1943). Dover & Clover ended in 1947, and the rest of Boltinoff’s longer work was gone soon after. But the fillers continued until the early 1970s.

The particular poster that these two guys are looking at was issued in 1941, during the first ‘defense bond’ campaign.

The first Series E bond was sold to President Franklin D. Roosevelt by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau on May 1, 1941. These were marketed first as “Defense Bonds.” Then, in December 1941, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declared war on Japan. And Germany declared war on the U.S. shortly thereafter, bringing the country into World War II.

This required a great deal of financing; about $281 billion was spent for the war effort between 1941 and 1945. The Series E bonds became known as “war bonds” after Pearl Harbor.

This is an early magazine contribution by Boltinoff, who is so widely known for his sharp cartoon lines. The back of the cartoon notes it as a “Defense Bond” depiction, and it appears that the cartoon was sold, with the proceeds going to the Art Students League Scholarship Fund.

“It’s Later Than You Think” (May 20, 1941)
A.W. Mackenzie
15.25″ x 22.25″ ink and crayon on board

a prolific editorial cartoonist who worked for the New York Post and New York Mirror from the early 1930’s to the late 1940’s. Bottom edge is written in pencil “May – Vol. 11, No.5”

Civil defense was kept up in the UK, Germany, and Japan after WW1. It never quite got organized in the US, and what did was soon forgotten. The August 2, 1940 call by FDR told the states to model the defense councils after World War I experience without going into any details. But this ignored two problems: First, not much was recalled of that experience, as noted; and second, the “coherent” integrated World War I organization was never implemented.

On May 20, 1941, the formation of the “Office of Civilian Defense” was announced in Executive Order 8757 with LaGuardia as its volunteer director while still retaining his post as mayor of New York City.

Things got better, but the coordination and coherence was slow to come – the imagined protection afforded the US by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans led to a rather “whatever” attitude.

The attack on Pearl Harbor changed this attitude, as did the U-boats lurking in the North Atlantic.

According to report in 1950, however, a great deal of this civil defense work was local, and also disappeared after the war. A huge reconstruction project started as the Cold War heated up and the Korean War got going. The history is interesting (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0637900.pdf).

“Whittling It Down.” (May 12, 1941)
By Louis Franklin Van Zelm (1895-1961)
11 x 15 in., ink on board

Published in the Christian Science Monitor. Born in NY and educated in parts of New England and New Jersey, Van Zelm was VP of a metal company in 1920, drawing on that side for the New York Evening World (“Rusty and Bob”).

During the 1920s he contributed cartoons to the Larchmont Gazette, and drew “Such Is Life.” A 1925 issue of The MIT Technology Review noted van Zelm’s career changed: “All the yellow journals through the Middle West in mid-December printed long stories to the effect that L.F. van Zelm, whom we all remember as the best little cartoonist we had during our days at the Institute, has deserted architecture for cartooning, and is now cleaning up hordes of shekels as the perpetrator of a comic strip which makes a daily appearance in the dailies throughout that section. I feel sure all the gang join me in wishing Van the greatest success.”

He worked for the Christian Science Monitor from 1940-47, and then off and on again for the rest of his life. It was reported that on February 20, 1955, van Zelm filled his 50-room house, an old hotel, with gnomes and elves, and drew the daily cartoon, The VanGnomes, for the Christian Science Monitor. In 1958 he produced the strip Farnsworth.

The Battle of the Coral Sea, from May 4-8, 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial
Japanese Navy and naval and air forces of the United States and Australia. Taking place in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, the battle is historically significant as the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other and the first in which the opposing ships neither sighted nor fired directly upon one another.

The US learned of a Japanese plan through intelligence and sent two US Navy carrier task forces and a joint Australian-American cruiser force to oppose the offensive.

Although a tactical victory for the Japanese in terms of ships sunk, the battle proved to be a strategic victory for the Allies. The battle marked the first time since the start of the war that a
major Japanese advance had been checked by the Allies. More importantly, two of the Japanese fleet carriers were damaged enough to be unable to participate in the Battle of Midway the following month.

“Tillie” (April 8, 1941)
By Russ Westover (1886-1966)
3.5 x 6.5 in., ink on an envelope
Coppola Collection

Initially a sports artist in California in the 1910s, Westover moved to NY and became a strip artist at the NY Herald. He worked on his concept of a flapper character in a strip he titled “Rose of the Office.” And with a title change to “Tillie the Toiler,” it sold to King Features Syndicate. Leaving the Herald, he began “Tillie the Toiler” for King Features in 1921, and the working-girl strip quickly established a wide readership, leading to a 1927 film adaptation by Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Pictures with Marion Davies as Tillie.

During the late 1920s, more than 600 papers were carrying “Tillie The Toiler.” Cupples & Leon published a series of at least eight “Tillie the Toiler” reprint collections beginning in the 1920s and continuing into the 1930s. Westover profited from another movie when Kay Harris appeared in the title role of Columbia Pictures’ “Tillie the Toiler” (released in August 1941). Westover retired in the early 1950s.

During WWII, Tillie, like other comic strip characters, joined the Army during WWII. This color profile portrait of Tillie, in uniform, pre-dates the US entry into the War, and was done on a postmarked envelope, dated April 8, 1941. The three stamps are all “For Defense” stamps used during WWII. This may be the only known WWII specialty piece by Westover.

The stamps are not trivial. By the summer of 1940, Americans wanted nothing to do with the European conflicts overseas, holding tightly to their isolationist ideals.

Roosevelt realized it was only a matter of time until Adolf Hitler would narrow his focus on the Western Hemisphere, and felt it was his duty to prepare the nation for when that time came. Roosevelt’s first action to put an end to the American isolationism.

Part of Roosevelt’s plan was to issue postage stamps to educate the public. He provided sketches of what he envisioned to the Post Office Department, and the final designs stayed true to the President’s vision. The stamps were each labeled with their purpose “For Defense” and included inscriptions honoring Industry, Agriculture, Army, Navy, Security, Education, Conservation, and Health as important aspects of the national well-being.

The new stamps were issued on October 16, 1940, which was also the first day of registration for America’s first peacetime draft. When the stamps were issued many more Americans supported the importance of preparedness and the stamps served as a constant reminder of the importance of a strong national defense. These stamps would go on to be the workhorses of the American postal system during the war. Between the three issues, a total of 19,677,985,200 stamps were issued, more than any other US stamp series up to that time.

US #899, the first in the series, pictures the Statue of Liberty that was placed on top of fort built to defend New York against naval attacks. US# 900, the second in the series, pictures a 90-millimeter anti-aircraft gun. US #901, the third and final stamp in the series, pictures a raised torch, representing enlightenment.