Hank Barrow, Omaha World Heral

This cartoon is the last  item to appear…

… on the last page

… of the last album

…of Aunt Ethel’s war.

The post Dec. 31, 1945 – Alterations are up to the new tenant appeared first on WW2 Cartoons.

S.J. Ray, K.C. Star

The post Sept. 2, 1945 – Japan Surrenders appeared first on WW2 Cartoons.

Hugh Hutton, Philadelphia Inquirer

So much has been written about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that it seems pointless in recounting it here.  Instead, I’ll just present the three editorial cartoons in Aunt Ethel’s vast collection that addressed the topic and probably accurately expressed  the sentiment of most Americans at that moment in history.

Grover Page, Louisville Courier Journal

S.J. Ray, K.C. Star

The post August, 1945 – Hiroshima appeared first on WW2 Cartoons.

S.J. Ray, K.C. Star

In late June, 1945, General Dwight David Eisenhower, supreme commander of the allied armies in Europe, returned to the U.S. for the first time after the victory in Europe.

As the man who welded more than five million men and women into a unified force, he had received world acclaim. In London, Paris, Washington and New York, the highest honors had been bestowed upon him.

Then he came home to Abilene, Kansas, for a visit with his mother and four brothers.  The town welcomed him with an old-fashioned non-military parade and a picnic in a park which had been renamed for him.

Later in July he returned to Europe, where he resumed his duties as supreme commander of the American sector and American representative on the allied control commission for Germany.

The post July, 1945 – Eisenhower returns to hero’s welcome appeared first on WW2 Cartoons.

Tom Little, Nashville Tennessean

The Battle of Okinawa was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II.  The 82 day long battle lasted from early April until mid-June, 1945, culminating in an Allied victory and occupation of the island.

It was the last major campaign of the Pacific War. More ships were used, more troops put ashore, more supplies transported, more bombs dropped, more naval guns fired than any other operation in the Pacific.

The battle was also one of the deadliest of any World War II engagement. The Japanese lost over 100,000 troops, the Allies suffered more than 50,000 casualties, with more than 12,000 killed in action, while hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, wounded or committed suicide Approximately one-quarter of the civilian population died due to the invasion.

Alexander, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin

The main objective of the operation was to seize a large island only 340 miles away from mainland Japan which could serve as a springboard for the planned invasion of the islands.  Although hastily converted to a base for air operations, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet Union’s formal declaration of war against Japan caused Japan to surrender just weeks after the end of the fighting at Okinawa, and the invasion never took place.

The post June, 1945 – Okinawa appeared first on WW2 Cartoons.

S.J. Ray, K.C. Star

Sidney Strube, London Daily Express

Lute Pease, Newark Evening News

Bruce Russell, L.A. Times

The post June, 1945 – Germany in ruins appeared first on WW2 Cartoons.

S.J. Ray, K.C. Star

Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day or VE Day) was on May  8, 1945, the date when the Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of  Hitler’s Third Reich.   On April 30 Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin  and so the surrender of Germany was authorized by his replacement, President of Germany Karl Donitz.  The act of military surrender was signed on  May 7 in Reims, France and May 8 in Berlin.

The post May 8, 1945 – VE Day (Victory in Europe) appeared first on WW2 Cartoons.

S.J. Ray, K.C. Star

The death of Adolf Hitler was reported to the American public on May 1, 1945.

The Associated Press story, datelined London, began: “Adolf Hitler died this afternoon in Berlin and was succeeded by Admiral Karl Doenitz, his personal choice as heir to command of the German nation, the Hamburg Nazi radio said tonight.”

While exact details of Hitler’s death were a subject of controversy, historians today generally agree that Hitler committed suicide on the afternoon of April 30 by gunshot and cyanide poisoning.

The post May, 1945 – The death of Adolph Hitler by suicide on April 30 appeared first on WW2 Cartoons.

The day after they were both executed by machine gun along with their sixteen-man contingent, mostly ministers and officials of the Italian Social Republic.  The next day the bodies of Il Duce, his mistress and the others were hung upside down, in Piazzale Loreto (Milan) and abused by the crowds.

After his death, an Italian proverb was created that refers to him: “Those who are always right, always end up in Loreto Square”

The post April, 1945 – Benito Mussolini executed by machine gun appeared first on WW2 Cartoons.

S.J. Ray, K.C. Star

Ernie Pyle, considered the GI’s war correspondent, was killed by Japanese sniper fire on the tiny island of Ie Shima off the coast of  Okinawa on April 17, 1945.  His death was universally mourned by Americans on the homefront and in the armed services.

The son of an Indiana farmer, Pyle became a roving war correspondent at the outbreak of World War II.  Starting with the German bombing of England in 1940,  Pyle went with the U.S. Army to North Africa in 1942, covered the invasions of Sicily and Italy, accompanied Allied troops during the Normandy landings, witnessed the liberation of France and then moved on to the Pacific.

By 1944 Pyle had established himself as one of the world’s outstanding reporters. He applied an intimate style to the war. Instead of the movements of armies or the activities of generals, Pyle wrote from the perspective of the common soldier, an approach that won him great popularity and also the Pulitzer Prize in 1944.  In that year, he wrote a column urging that soldiers in combat get “fight pay” just as airmen were paid “flight pay”. Congress passed a law giving soldiers 50 percent extra pay for combat service and called it “the Ernie Pyle bill.”

In a letter to his wife early in 1945, Ernie Pyle wrote, “Of course I am very sick of the war and would like to leave it, and yet I know I can’t. I’ve been part of the misery and tragedy of it for so long that I feel if I left it, it would be like a soldier deserting.”

Author John Steinbeck said about Ernie Pyle: “There is the war of maps and logistics, of campaigns, of ballistics, armies, divisions, and regiments. Then there is the war of homesick, weary, funny, violent, common men, who wash their socks in their helmets, complain about food, whistle at Arab girls, or any other girls for that matter, and lug themselves through as dirty a business as the world has ever seen and do it with humanity and dignity and courage – and that is Ernie Pyle’s war.”

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