Background: These cartoons come from a book published at the end of 1939. The cartoons selected all make the claim that Germany was an innocent nation on which war had been forced. Unlike a 1934 book of cartoons, not a single one of the cartoons in this book portrays Hitler. He had become the all-powerful Führer.
The source: Ernst Herbert Lehmann, Mit Stift und Gift. Zeitgeschichte in der Karikatur (Berlin: Carl Stephenson Verlag, 1939).
With Poison Pen: Current History in Caricature
by Ernst Herbert Lehmann
“Keep it up, Mr. Churchill, and we’ll soon be doing business together.”
Source: Simplicissimus, 6 August 1939
“Business is business! It makes no difference whether it has to do with the crowning of a king or incitement to war.”
Source: Der Stürmer, November 1939
The world battle against the Jews. In a prophetic drawing, an English newspaper shows who will lose this struggle.
Source: Daily Express (London), 14 November 1938
A terrible nightmare of a French armaments maker: “Germany and France have come to an agreement!”
Source: Brennessel, 21 August 1934
Europe can have peace if Germany and France can agree.
Source: Washington Post, 7 December 1938
The campaign of lies. The democracies have called on their most loyal troops to encircle Germany.
Source: Simplicissimus, 9 April 1939
At the Polish border.
Source: Kladderadatsch,10 September 1939
Chamberlain in the House of Commons. In the top frame, Polish police are attacking a German school in Poland. At the bottom, Chamberlain is saying: “I can only admire the remarkable calm and intelligent restraint of the Polish government.”
Source: Kladderadatsch,20 August 1939