Curtain Call at the European Theatre

Graphical History Tour steps back eighty years to the aftermath of V-E Day as seen by American editorial cartoonists. (If you're interested in their immediate responses to the Allies' victory in Europe, we visited them on their 75th anniversary.)

"Down Through the Third Reich's Thousand Years" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., May 22, 1945

As the Allies closed in on Berlin, their discovery of Nazi Germany's extermination camps for Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and communists shocked and horrified Western readers. Descriptions in newspapers and on radio of emaciated prisoners and mass graves would soon be followed by graphic photographs in magazines such as Life and Time.

The Russian photojournalism magazine Ogonek had published photos of German atrocities much earlier, but had been dismissed in the West as Soviet propaganda.

"The Same Old Dagger Trick" by Hugh McM. Hutton in Philadelphia Inquirer, May 31, 1945

Hitler came to power capitalizing on the "stabbed in the back" myth created to explain Germany's defeat in World War I. Militarists, nationalists, monarchists, and populists blamed Jews, communists, liberals, and homosexuals for having conspired with the enemy, wittingly or unwittingly, to weaken the spirit of the German people.

Hugh Hutton was not alone in anticipating a repeat of such excuses from the German high command. The trials of German war criminals were meant to demonstrate to the German people the culpability of their political, military, and law enforcement leaders down to the soldiers and petty officers below them.

"I'm No War Criminal" by Fred Ellis in Daily Worker, New York, May 13, 1945

Fred Ellis, in the communist Daily Worker, lent no credence to German militarist protests that they had nothing to do with their fascist politicians. His was a view shared by most citizens of Allied nations.

"When a Feller Needs a Friend" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, ca. May 28, 1945

The caption to Burt Thomas's cartoon riffs on a well-known cartoon series by Clare Briggs. Here the Big Three have their separate ideas on how to raise the Post-war World.

Uncle Sam represents the U.S. in Thomas's cartoon, and John Bull represents Great Britain, whereas the U.S.S.R. is personified by its actual head of state, Joseph Stalin. The U.S.A. had a brand new president, Franklin Roosevelt having died a month earlier; and Britain's wartime coalition government was heading for overdue elections.

"The Bear's Revenge" by Harold “Tom” Carlisle in Des Moines Register, ca. May 19, 1945 

One could still find positive cartoons of Stalin in the American press such as this one by Harold Carlisle, acknowledging that the war could not have been won without the Soviet Union's participation, and the heavy cost its citizens paid repelling the German invasion of their country. 

If Carlisle's style looks suspiciously like that of John "Ding" Darling, it is likely because Carlisle worked under Darling as inker, and was here filling in while Darling took a day off.

"The Liberator" by Joseph Parrish in Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1945

Taking a decidedly dimmer view of our sometime ally in the war, Joseph Parrish notes that on the Soviet Union's way to Berlin, Stalin had installed puppet governments in the Baltic states. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia would be absorbed into the U.S.S.R., while Poland would retain its independence, if only in name.

My source for this Parrish cartoon was in grayscale, but it appears to me that the Chicago Tribune took to printing its front page editorial cartoon in full color sometime in 1943, until dropping the front page cartoon in 1970. I've re-colored the flags held by the Baltic nations, but I didn't want to venture guesses on the clothing and shadows.

"Hard on a Nervous Old Girl" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, May 21, 1945

The Entente Powers had promised Austria-Hungary's Adriatic coast to Italy as inducement to get Italy to join their side in World War I. The Treaty of Versailles awarded the city of Trieste to Italy, which was less than the Italian government wanted.

Since Italy was on the losing side of World War II, the question of whether Italy should have to give up any territory in Europe arose. The late President Woodrow Wilson's position that borders should reflect the populations within them (rather than what regent had inherited what property) had gained followers since World War I, but Trieste and environs were populated by both Italians and Slavs. Drawing ethnically considered borders there would have required exacting precision.

(Europeans were much more careless about drawing borders in Africa and the Mideast. That's another story entirely.)

"The Phoenix" by Roy Justus in Minneapolis Star-Journal, May 17, 1945

I would like to have included a cartoon about Norway's arrest on May 10 and subsequent trial of its Minister President, Nazi collaborationist Vidkun Quisling. After all, his name entered the English language as a spineless traitor. 

This Syttende mai cartoon by Roy Justus, whose Minnesota readers might have appreciated the date, will have to do — although surely there must be an appropriate allusion to Norse rather than Greek mythology.

"It's Time We Got Started on a New Model" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Daily Star, May 24, 1945

Turning back to those British elections: it was generally expected that Winston Churchill would not remain Prime Minister, and would have to turn the government over to Labour leader Clement Atlee.

"It's Going to Be Hard to Explain" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, May 27, 1945

Even if Americans didn't understand why Britons would be so ungrateful.

Or how cricket is played.

"Same Old Monkey Wrench" by Harold Talburt, May 21, 1945

Turning to domestic politics here in the United States, Republicans in Congress wanted to return to the Smoot-Hawley brand of tariff policies that had precipitated the Great Depression. Protectionist tariffs were central to Republican administrations from the end of the Civil War and onward, popular with Wall Street, but controversial in the Midwest, West, and South.

Woodrow Wilson, facilitated by the 16th Amendment making federal income taxation constitutional, drastically reduced tariffs, only for Republicans to raise them again in the 1920's. FDR policies then focused on a mix of income taxes on the upper class and deficit spending, first to lift the nation out of the Great Depression, and later to finance the war effort.

"The Shape of Things" by Cal Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 31, 1945

Lastly, to get hyper-domestic about things, Cal Alley wondered what the future would hold for Rosie and her fellow riveters.

Monkey Business

Hey, Graphical History Tourists! Today’s Silverback Saturday post is about something you’ve actually heard about!

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial, and nobody a century ago was more delighted than the nation’s editorial cartoonists.

"Grandpa on Trial" by Douglas Rodgers in Sacramento Bee, May 19, 1925

The trial pitted William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic Party nominee for President and a favorite subject for editorial cartoonists, against Clarence Darrow, a high-profile labor lawyer famous for his defense of thrill murderers Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb in "the trial of the century" one year previous.

Bryan would not be at home in today's Democratic Party: a staunch advocate for Prohibition and of blurring the separation of church and state, he had waged a national campaign against the teaching of evolution.

"He Thinks He's the Defendant on Trial" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 31, 1925

In March, the Tennessee legislature had passed the "Butler Act," named for State Representative John Washington Butler, a farmer and head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association. The Butler Act  outlawed the teaching of the theory of evolution, or "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." in public schools, colleges, and universities receiving state funding.

"Fe, Fi, Fo, Fist..." by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 21, 1925

Bryan publicly thanked Tennessee Governor Austin Peay for signing the Butler Act into law, saying, "The Christian parents of the state owe you a debt of gratitude for saving their children from the poisonous influence of an unproven hypothesis."

"Damming the Streamlet and Loosing the Torrent" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, May 22, 1925

(In an unfortunate editing decision, LeCocq's cartoon happened to run immediately alongside a headline about a boy fatally drowned after falling from a dam.)

"He Put Us on the Map" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, May 25, 1925

The trial of John T. Scopes, a 24-year-old high school science and math teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, was not a case of the state singling out and persecuting a principled teacher minding his own business. 

Scopes was in fact recruited by the publicity-seeking manager of a financially struggling coal and iron company in Dayton, the county superintendent of schools, and an attorney to test the new law on the grounds that state law also required teaching from a textbook, Civic Biology: Presented in Problems by George William Hunter. Hunter's book explained and endorsed the theory of evolution; a biology teacher could therefore be in violation of Tennessee law whether he taught the theory of evolution or not.

"Listening In" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, May/June, 1925

Charges were filed against Scopes on May 5, but there is actually some doubt as to whether he ever actually taught students the theory of evolution in the first place. He coached three students to testify in preliminary proceedings that he had, and he was formally indicted on May 25. 

"At Work" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, May 12, 1925

We here at Graphical History Tour Central promise to keep you updated on this broken news a century after it develops.

In the meantime, gratuler med syttende mai!

Skøl!

Denne Ukens Sniktitt

All will be explained in good time.

Meanwhile, God Syttendemai, everyone. Skål!

 

March Times On

Following up on my post from two Saturdays ago, here's a retrospective of some of my favorite cartoons from the first March of previous decades. I won't limit myself to Wisconsin issues this time, but in order to continue where I left off two weeks ago, I'll start with 2011 and work backward.

This first cartoon referenced a "Letter to Wisconsin Republicans From a Conservative Prison Guard," whose response to Governor Scott Walker and state legislators' attacks on state employees such as himself was to declare eternal opposition to the Republican Party.

I'm curious whether the guy has remained committed to defeating the politicians who had betrayed him. Did he become a Bernie Bro? A Lincoln Projector? A MAGAlomaniac?

Sadly, his letter has vanished from the internet, and I think it may have been published anonymously to begin with, so there is probably no way to know whatever happened to him.

for Q Syndicate, March 2011

Later that month, I drew this cartoon critical of Democratic legislators in Maryland. (See, folks, we liberals do not walk in lockstep the way Republicans do.) I bring this cartoon up partly to show how far we have come in ten years on the issue of marriage equality, but also to discuss colorization. At the time, I was still sending cartoons to Q Syndicate only in grayscale.

In this case, however, I was depicting both rainbow colors on one character and Maryland's flag on the other, neither of which translate well into shades of gray. I made a colorized version back then for this blog, and I might have added it to the files I sent my editors. I didn't have a graphics program capable of saving files in better-for-print CMYK format until the next year, however.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, March 16, 2001

Scott McCallum was elevated to the Wisconsin governorship when Tommy Thompson left to join the George W. Bush cabinet in January, 2001. Thanks to a state constitutional amendment passed after the 1977-79 "Acting Governorship" of Martin Schreiber, McCallum was the first governor to nominate his Lieutenant Governor for State Senate confirmation; he tapped Sen. Margaret Farrow (R-Elm Grove), to be the state's first female Lieutenant Governor.

The Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee took issue with the leisurely pace Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala announced for Farrow's confirmation process. Her nomination was announced in March; she ended up taking office in May.

Speaking of things that took from March until May...

for Q Syndicate, March, 2001

I don't have much to say about this cartoon except that it was one of my favorites from that year. I don't often like the non-topical cartoons that get drawn to be held in reserve for when I can't send in a cartoon; it's nearly impossible for a cartoon to be at once topical yet timeless. "The Break-up" was eventually released, probably that May when my better half and I were on vacation in Germany.

Jumping back ten more years in the Wayback Machine...

in Journal Times, Racine WI, March 7, 1991

You sure do, kid. In 30 years, your children will get to experience remote learning via Zoom.

Mommy and Daddy in this cartoon were Baby Boomers my age; junior high schools (grades 7 to 9) in my hometown were conducted in split shifts from 1974 to 1978 because there weren't enough schoolrooms to accommodate all of us at the same time.

The Racine Unified School District did not institute year-round schooling for everyone, but did begin offering it in the 1990's as an elective option at selected schools.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha WI, March 14, 1991

Sometime during the Reagan administration, congressional Republicans began wearing flag lapel pins conspicuously and uniformly during televised joint sessions of Congress — in particular for presidential addresses. Democrats soon followed suit. When our troops went to fight Gulf War I, both sides added yellow ribbons (popularized from the Tony Orlando and Dawn hit from the 1970's). Republicans then started wearing buttons with an agreed-upon slogan on them and, with that war now won, chanting "USA! USA!" at high points during President Bush's speeches. 

By the way, that's supposed to be Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) up in the fifth row between Senators Paul Simon (D-IL) and Al Gore (D-TN).

Stepping back ten more years one last time, I find our old pal President Warren Gamaliel Harding staring out of a picture frame.

in St. Olaf College Manitou Messenger, Northfield MN, March 5, 1981

President Jimmy Carter had named Sidney Rand, the president of the college where I matriculated, as Ambassador to Norway in 1980. Soon after taking office in 1981, President Ronald Reagan notified Rand that he had two weeks to vacate the embassy. That is normal for any change in administration, but Senator David Durenburger (R-MN) called it "a lousy way to do business" nevertheless. "Norway has had four ambassadors in four years," Durenburger told the Minneapolis Tribune, "and to kick him out like that I thought was just another slap in the face to a very important country."

It took almost ten months before Rand's successor, Mark E. Austad, moved into our embassy in Oslo — so you've got no right to complain, Lt. Gov. Farrow! — by which time I had been graduated from St. Olaf and had lost interest in U.S.-Norwegian affairs. Happily, relations between our two countries survived that tumultuous period, and Minnesotans are still allowed to name their football team after their Scandinavian cousins.

Toon: Said the Cat, We're All Mad Here

This week's cartoons comprise a triptych of sorts.

Black Lives Matter Protests in Madison turned violent last week after the arrest of a Black male who brought a bullhorn and a baseball bat into a downtown restaurant and allegedly demanded free food. This was not an arrest in which a Black man was killed; but force was used, and video was shared on social media and tempers flared.

The protesters engaged in quite a lot of destruction of property — and there was absolutely no incidence of boogaloo droogs this time — windows broken at the capitol, molotov cocktails thrown into buildings, and two statues were torn down.

Protesters removed two Capitol statues from their pedestals, WPR reported: “the Forward statue, located on the west entrance of the Capitol at the end of State Street, and a statue of Col. Hans Christian Heg, located on the east entrance of the Capitol at the King Street corner of the square…. Protesters took the Heg statue and dumped it in Lake Monona, almost a half-mile from where it was toppled. And the Forward statue “as of early Wednesday morning, was about a block from the state Capitol in the middle of the street.”

We don't have monuments to Confederate generals in this state. "Forward" was a replica of an 1895 statue by Jean Pond Miner Stoneman of a woman gesturing in the direction of the state motto. The original was purchased by women's suffrage organizations and "presented to the state of Wisconsin on behalf of the women's suffrage movement." The copper statue was replaced in 1996 with a bronze one and moved to a museum. The replica was a frequent rallying spot for protests during the Scott Walker administration.

Far from being a slave-owner, Hans Christian Heg was a leader of a citizen militia that worked to thwart slave catchers. When the Civil War broke out, he was appointed colonel in charge of the largely Scandinavian 15th Wisconsin infantry, seeing action in Kentucky and Tennessee. After pursuing a retreating Confederate unit to Chickamauga, Georgia in September, 1863, he was fatally wounded by a shot to the abdomen.

But perhaps more to the interests of the spokesperson for the protesters, Heg was State Prison Commissioner in 1859, pushing for vocational training rather than the punishment of prisoners. I think that's actually one of the demands of this week's protesters. Too bad they never bothered to learn the history of the statue before tearing it down, beheading it, and dumping it in Lake Monona.

The protesters' spokesperson apparently had little to say about the Heg statue, which was a gift from the Norwegian Society of America in 1925, around the time that Confederate statues were spreading across Dixie like kudzu. Instead, she focused her contempt on Ms. Forward:

“We’re not moving forward, we’re moving backwards,” said Ebony Anderson-Carter. “This (statue) doesn’t need to be here until we’re ready to move forward.”
Anderson-Carter says she and the other protesters want to see something done about racial injustice in the state, and speak with the state’s Black youth.
“The Capitol is where we solve problems, and nobody’s coming here to solve problems,” said Anderson-Carter.

Statues can be repaired and replaced. But not all of the damage Tuesday night was to inanimate objects. I'll have more on that on Thursday.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Lycklig Tjugondedag Knut, everyone!

Time to take that Christmas tree out to the curb, or the farm, or the bayou, or whatever the ecologically responsible thing to do with them is in your neck of the woods.

But do check with the local authorities before hauling your tree out to the neck of somebody else's woods.

Discovering America Before It Was Cool

In Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Earlier still, in Nine Ninety-nine

Leif Erikson found the Land of Vine.

And before we even numbered dates,

ᎠᏯᏩᏍᏗ crossed the Bering Straits.

Denne Uken Snikitt

Happy Leif Erickson Day, everyone! Skøl!

In 1929, Wisconsin became the first U.S. state to officially adopt Leif Erickson Day as a state holiday, thanks in large part to efforts by Rasmus Anderson. In 1931, Minnesota did also. By 1956, Leif Erickson Day had been made an official observance in seven states (Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Illinois, Colorado, Washington, and California) and one Canadian province (Saskatchewan). In 2012, the day was also made official in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In 1963, the U.S. Representative from Duluth, John Blatnik, introduced a bill to observe Leif Erickson Day nationwide. The following year Congress adopted this unanimously. In 1964, the United States Congress authorized and requested the President to create the observance through an annual proclamation. Lyndon B. Johnson did so, as has each President since. Presidents have used the proclamation to praise the contributions of Americans of Nordic descent generally and the spirit of discovery. In addition to the federal observance, some states officially commemorate Leif Erickson Day, particularly in the Upper Midwest, where large numbers of people from the Nordic countries settled.

Glad Syttende Mai

It has been 190 days since we've flown a flag in front of our house.

We put a flagpole up back when we built this house over a decade ago, and regularly flew the American flag every day the weather allowed. (We get a lot of wind here; we've had to replace the flagpole twice after winds snapped it apart.) Before that, we flew a flag at my husband's old house.

But ever since a blustery con artist utterly unfit for the job proved he was able to fool enough of the people enough of the time to elect him President of the United States, we just haven't been able to bring ourselves to fly the stars and stripes. We took down the pole and put a solar light in the post.

We've agreed that we'll fly the American flag on national holidays, so it will finally go back up on Memorial Day, weather permitting. And the solar light will return until June 14.

But for now, it's Norwegian Independence Day. Fram! Fram! Fram!

We're So Glad We've Had This Time Together

Well, it's the first Saturday after Epiphany, and time to take down the Christmas lights, trees, wreaths, and stockings. At least at our house.

My Dad always made it a point to de-Christmasify the house on January 6, Epiphany. Back when we had live trees, they went out to the curb, until he started taking them back to the compost pile. Once we started using artificial trees, they went up to the attic.

My husband and I got the outside lights taken down today before the rain started and the bitter cold that is predicted to follow behind it. We were going to tackle the tree today, but only got as far as getting the empty boxes for the ornaments up from the basement.

This is not our tree, thank God.

One of the churches where I work is also "un-hanging the greens" today, but the other, with a largely Latino congregation, will leave Christmas up until February 2. The Anglo members were initially mystified by this practice, wondering if the Latinos were ever going to put their Christmas diorama away at all. The custom stems from a Mexican practice of leaving Christmas decorations up until Candelaria, Presentation of Our Lord, which is always on Ground Hog Day.

This custom obviously comes from people who don't try to keep a live tree in the house until eight days before Ash Wednesday.

Latinos are not the only ones who try to extend the Christmas season beyond the church-proscribed twelve days. The Scandinavian Lutheran Church tried to popularize having 20 days of Christmas in honor of the sainted Danish Prince Knut Lavard, Duke of Schleswig, who was martyred on January 7, 1169. Somewhere along the line, his Saint's Day got moved back a week from the seventh to the thirteenth.

Tjugondag Knut translates into “20th Day Knut,” which refers to the 20th day after Christmas Eve. This used to be the day when Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians would ransack the tree of the candy and cookies it had been adorned with before Christmas and then kick it to the curb, so to speak.

Happily, nobody has subjected the rest of us to songs of what their true love sent to them on twenty days of Christmas ... let alone the forty days from December 25 to February 2.

Q Toon: So Chic!

I've been seeing a lot of complaints about the U.S. Olympics teams' outfits, and Facebook keeps urging me to check out the Norwegian Olympics curling team's pants. Are the Germans' team rainbow jackets a protest against Russia's antigay laws, or just a way to make themselves easy to find if they get lost on the slopes?

Surely, there is no pro-gay message behind the Russians' own pink suits, which are even more colorful than the tap water at the Sochi hotels.

Glad Syttende Mai!

If you want to drink a toast to Norway today, just remember that the DWI limit there is .02%.