Some say that history repeats itself. Others say that it doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes.
In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I'm departing somewhat from my usual review of cartoons hitting their century mark in order to look at works from the period of Soviet expansionism immediately after World War II, now that history is doing whatever it is that history does.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 erased Poland off the map of Europe, while assigning Lithuania to German control and Latvia and Estonia to the U.S.S.R.'s. By the spring of 1945, the USSR had occupied all three Baltic states and Poland. Viewing the Baltic states as errant parts of historical Russia, Stalin reincorporated all three into the Soviet Union.
The U.S. protested Stalin's move, but the Allies were preoccupied with the war's western and Pacific fronts. Opening up a new front with a supposedly allied nation was simply not going to happen. The U.S. never did recognize the USSR's annexation of the Baltic trio.
Likewise, Poland's fate was sealed before the defeat of Hitler. Once they were no longer of any use to Stalin, he had all of Poland's military officers summarily executed, and set up a puppet government in Warsaw.
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| "Whose Move" by Walt Kelly in New York Star, 1948 |
Stalin expected all of Germany would join the communist bloc as well. With Germany defeated, the Allies set up U.S., Great Britain, France and Russia zones of administration. Given the remarkable showing of the Communist Party in France's 1946 elections, Stalin figured that all he needed to do was subvert the British in their zone, and the U.S. would succumb to its isolationist partisans and withdraw out of his way.
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| "Blood from Turnips" by J.F. Meehan in Brooklyn Eagle, August 3, 1946 |
Ostensibly, what Stalin was interested in was war reparations from Germany and the weaker Axis powers. How he achieved it was by subjugating governments in Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania to control from Moscow. (Finland had German backing during its Continuation War against the USSR, 1941-44. But permanently reclaiming Finland for Mother Russia would remain just out of Stalin's grasp.)
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| "An Unlucky Day for the Traffic Cop" by Cyrus Hungerford in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 13, 1947 |
Alarm over rampant Soviet expansionism in Europe all but silenced any remaining isolationists in the U.S. The Truman Doctrine of speaking up for the sovereignty of smaller nations was useless without the military might and foreign alliances to back it up.
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| "The Foot Is Familiar" by Herbert Block in Washington Post, February, 1948 |
In Czechoslovakia, where Hitler's quest to carve up and conquer his neighbors had begun, the Soviets engineered a coup, overthrowing the elected government in Prague.
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| "The Speaker's Platform" by Edwin Marcus in New York Times, 1949 |
Soviet adventurism was not confined to Europe alone; the Allies were supposed to return occupied Iranian territories to control of Shah Reza Pahlavi's government, but Stalin refused to withdraw from areas taken by Russian troops. Instead, the USSR encouraged breakaway socialist republics in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan.
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| "Aw, C'mon, Joe, Let It Cool Off" by Dorman Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. March 17, 1946 |
With U.S. and British support, Iran crushed the Azerbaijani and Kurdish rebellions in 1946 and 1947 respectively.
Meanwhile, Truman responded to Stalin's push to undermine the governments of Greece and Turkey with substantial foreign aid that would have had Republicans of the 1920's howling in protest. Remnants of isolation still existed (notably at Hearst papers and the Chicago Tribune), but most of the protests to the Marshall Plan came from Moscow.
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| "Advice from an Expert in Internal Affairs" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, April 9, 1947 |
With nearly all of Europe reeling from World War II's devastation, the Marshall Plan stepped in to make sure that even the British Empire would be safe from the lure of Soviet domination.
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| "Great Expectations" by Edwin Marcus in New York Times, 1947 |
And the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was born: a mutual defense treaty that, again, would have been anathema to the American isolationists of the 1920's.
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| "Unintentional Cupid" by Richard Q. Yardley in Baltimore Sun, 1949 |
The founding countries of NATO in 1949 were Great Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. Turkey joined in 1952, and West Germany in 1955.
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| "Observation Post" by Herbert Block in Washington Post, October, 1951 |
Stalin then, and Putin now, would characterize NATO as an offensive threat to Russia's existence. But for seven decades, Europe stayed at peace (for the most part) — possibly the longest respite from war the continent had seen since before the the cro-magnons met the neanderthals.
But it's all over now.
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Housekeeping note: My source for the Walt Kelly cartoon at the top of this post dates it in 1946, but every reference I can find about the "Pogo" cartoonist says that he first began drawing editorial cartoons in 1948, for the short-lived New York Star that began publishing in July of that year. Although events could have made that cartoon appropriate in either year, I can find no source mentioning that Kelly ever drew political cartoons for the Star's predecessor, PM, or any other publications before 1948.
