It's Over, Over There

Today's Slowback Saturday would probably have been more appropriate a week or two ago...

"Thank God" by Cy Hungerford in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 8, 1945

I may be a little late to mark the 75th anniversary of V-E Day, but I prefer to think that I'm observing Memorial Day a little early.

"Slowly Emerging from His Last Foxhole" possibly by Harold Talburt in Washington (D.C.) Daily News, by May 7, 1945

I haven't been able to find the signature on this cartoon, but I suspect it was by Harold M. Talburt. Individual units of the German armed forces were surrendering for days ahead of the official surrender of the German government. Hitler's suicide was on April 30; the allies accepted Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz's May 7 surrender at 9:21 p.m. local time on May 8. (It was already May 9 in Moscow and points east, which is why Russia and Israel observe the anniversary a day later; the German Army Group Center in Prague held out until May 11.)

"Journey's End" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May, 1945

Many American cartoons celebrated the end of the war in Europe with images of swastikas, Mein Kampf, or other symbols of the Nazi regime in ruins. Of course, Hitler had been dead for a week, so there were no new cartoons, as there had been at the end of World War I, of the German leader suffering defeat.

"The End...And a Beginning" by John Milt Morris for Associated Press, by May 7, 1945

Many cartoonists focused instead on the victims of war and their hopes for a peaceful world to come.

"Peace" by Vaughn Shoemaker in Chicago Daily News, by May 8, 1945

All may have gone quiet on the European front, but the war continued to rage in the far east.

"It's a Date—See You in Tokyo" by Jacob Burck in Chicago Times, by May 7, 1945

Cartoonists conveyed a general sense that with Mussolini and Hitler out of the way, it was only a matter of time until Japan surrendered also. But nobody suffered the delusion that it was going to be easy.

"Holding Us Down to Earth" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., by May 7, 1945

Dorman Smith was the prolific and widely distributed cartoonist who replaced the liberal Herb Block at the conservative Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1943. I could have easily replaced all of the V-E Day cartoons in this post with Smith's and still have captured all the moods of the day: exultation in victory, sympathy for the liberated millions, grim determination to soldier on in the Pacific, etc. (There is also a slim possibility that the cartoon I've credited to Talburt was actually by Smith; but while I found many of Smith's cartoons reprinted several times in a wide variety of newspapers, I have only found "Slowly Emerging from His Last Foxhole" in one.)

"And Now..." by Jim Berryman in Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, May 8, 1945

In missing the 75th anniversary of V-E Day, I also missed the 45th anniversary of the very different end of another armed conflict.

"Will the Last One Out..." by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1975

On the 30th anniversary of Hitler's suicide, the People's Army of Vietnam completed their conquest of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. The U.S. hastily evacuated its embassy of all personnel, as more refugees than could be accommodated scrambled to board the departing helicopters.

"This Is the Way the World Ends..." by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun-Times, April 30, 1975

U.S. troops had ceased hostilities over three years earlier, Americans having grown weary of a seemingly endless war that showed no progress and deeply divided the body politic. Skirmishes continued between South Vietnam and North Vietnam and their Viet Cong allies. When North Vietnamese forces launched a new major offensive in 1975, South Vietnamese forces crumbled before them. President Gerald Ford found no support in Congress for sending American reinforcements.

"First World War..." by Jeff MacNelly in Richmond News Leader, by May 11, 1975

The fall of Cambodia, South Vietnam, and Laos was widely viewed as marking the end of "The American Century."

"Second Thoughts" by Don Hesse in St. Louis Globe-Democrat, by May 9, 1975

But there would be a momentary lapse in the hand-wringing in mid-May. Gunboats of the Cambodian Navy seized a U.S. merchant ship, the Mayaguez, in the Gulf of Thailand. 65 hours later, the U.S. Air Force and Marines overwhelmed the ship's captors. Eighteen Americans died in the operation, but all 39 crew members of the Mayaguez were returned safely to their ship.

"Mayaguez Incident" by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, May 18, 1975

That the Khmer Rouge apparently had no intention of keeping the Mayaguez crew captive indefinitely was immaterial to a nation desperately in need of something to feel good about.