Horton Hears a Heil

Imagine Yertle the Turtle and Horton the elephant up in arms over Hitler and Mussolini. Actually, there’s no need to use your imagination. Theodor Seuss Geisel ’25. aka Dr. Seuss , drew hundreds of such images during the early part of World War II for the New York City newspaper PM. Long forgotten, some 200 of the impassioned political cartoons have been collected in a new book, Dr. Seuss Goes to War by University of Massachusetts history professor Richard Minear (The New Press. $25). For Seuss fans the cartoons have a familiar look. But they were well ahead of their time, writes cartoonist Art Spiegelman in the book’s introduction, “in seeking to entertain as ell as convince.”

By 1941 Seuss was established as a commercial artist. He wasn’t yet known as a children's writer (Seuss had published his firstChildren's book And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street in 1937 but only after first receiving more than two dozen rejection letters). His strong personal views about the war in Europeled him to send an unsolicited cartoon to PM, a left-wing daily, In January of 1941 Editor Ralph Ingersoll accepted the submission, and for the next two years Seuss didn’t stop drawing his odd political gems.

Seuss eventually put down his pencil and accepted a commission in U.S. Army. He w orked with director Frank Capra making propaganda films  three years before returning to civilian life in 1946. His toons, however, were his greatest propaganda. In them he picked on isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh and depicted Axis tyrants with deadly whimsy, rarely holding anything back. In the following excerpt, the subject matter may surprise, but the one-of-a-kind Seussian style of zany characters is readily apparent.

OCTOBER 5, 1941
Two months before Pearl Harbor came the hilarious “I was Weak and RunDown.”  On a May 1941 PM cover, Dr. Seuss drew “Uncle Sam”talking at full steam—talking and not doing. Note how long the eagle's neck is, how conveniently his wings become hands with thumbs he can twiddle, and how happy he appears.

MARCH 20, 1942
In “You Can’t Build a Substantial V Out of ” it is “Dawdling Producers” who are turties. Almost all the turtles look happy or at least complacent, but Dr. Seuss clearly was not. This V of turtles prefigures the much higher tower of turtles that after the war leads to the downfall of Yertle, king of the turtles, in Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories (1958).

DECEMBER 25, 1942
In a Christmas Day cartoon, a man peeks out from a shelter after the cyclone of war has passed; the title, ”With a Whole World to Rebuild...” underscores the pettiness of the shelter-dweller, who thinks only of patching up his fence, labeled “ISOLATION.”

DECEMBER 22, 1941
Italy declared war on the United States on December 10, 1941, in tandem with Germany, Japan’s other Axis partner. The United States reciprocated on December 11. Later that month, when Dr. Seuss drew “Bundles for Benito,” the basic elements of his Mussolini were already in place: huge underslung jaw, five o’clock shadow, split upper lip, excess poundage. In this cartoon there are crossed bandages on Mussolini’s bared hip; in later cartoons the bandages migrate to the side of Mussolini’s head.

MAY 20, 1941
France posed cartooning challenges somewhat different from those presented by Hitler’s Axis partners. In 1941 the northern half of France was occupied by the Germans; the southern half was in theory independent under a government located at Vichy. An early cartoon shows Hitler picking the pocket of a thoroughly befuddled Philippe Petain. The French leader wears his marshal’s cap and uniform from World War I. Petain looks skyward toward Hitler’s Sieg Heil salute, but the saluting arm is a prop, and Hitler’s real right hand reaches out to relieve Petain of his watch.

APRIL 3, 1942
Here Hitler dwarfs normal people in one of the truly memorable cartoons of the war. The cartoon epitomizes the essential relationship between totalitarian dictator and subject and, indeed, the creation of a new race of slaves.

DECEMBER 22, 1942
Just before Christmas, three enchanting reindeer addressed the reader: “Maybe it’s none of our business... but how much are YOU giving this Christmas in U. S. War Bonds and Stamps?”

Captions reprinted from Dr. Seuss Goes to War by Richard Mine&r (published 1999 by The New Press. New York City, m cooperation with the Dr. Seuss Collection at the University of California at San Diego) with permission of the author.