Existing comment:
Geisel and the War in Europe:
More than a year before the United States entered World War II, Geisel was actively encouraging his country to join the war effort against Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Europe. As a left-leaning editorial cartoonist, Geisel watched with horror as the Fascist government of Italy and the Nazi government of Germany built up their military power, intimidated their neighbors, and brutally oppressed minorities and political opponents in their own countries.
While recognizing the dangers that these countries and their leaders posed to the world, Geisel more often than not portrayed Hitler and Mussolini in comical ways -- as hapless buffoons, egomaniacs, and lowly animals. With these caricatured portrayals, Geisel was attempting to diminish their stature and deflate their intimidating personalities.
But Geisel did not shy away from showing the brutality of these regimes. In one cartoon, Geisel draws Hitler, as hangman, happily singing in a grove of trees from which ten Jews hang dead. In another, he depicts Hitler walking atop a long road of dead bodies on his way to the vital oil fields in the Soviet Union.
One can only imagine had he not stopped submitting his cartoons for PM in 1943, the kind of cartoons Geisel would have drawn depicting the Nazis' concentration camps and other horrors of the Holocaust. |