World War One political Cartoons

Dr. Seuss (1904-1991) may be best-remembered for his irreverent rhymes and the timeless prescriptions for living embedded in them, but he was also a prolific maker of subversive secret art and the auteur of a naughty book for adults. Though his children’s books have already been shown to brim with subtle political propaganda, during WWII, like Walt Disney, Geisel lent his creative talents to far more explicit, adult-focused wartime propaganda when he joined the New York daily newspaper PM as a political cartoonist. Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel (public library) collects 200 of Geisel’s black-and-white illustrations, but more than half of his editorial cartoons were never made publicly available — until now. Dr. Seuss Goes To War: A Catalog of Political Cartoons from UCSD Libraries has digitized the original drawings and newspaper clippings of Geisel’s wartime cartoons, produced between 1941 and 1943. Here’s a sampling:

In Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography, Judith and Neil Morgan contextualize the collaboration:

Ted was haunted by the war in Europe, and one evening in Manhattan he showed an editorial cartoon he had drawn to his friend Zinny Vanderlip Schoales, the brilliant, hard-drinking intellectual…. She had joined the patrician liberal Ralph Ingersoll when he launched the tabloid newspaper PM in New York with the backing of Marshall Field III. Zinny took Ted’s cartoon to Ingersoll and PM published it on January 30, 1941…

See more on the project site, then graduate to the more subtle, complex political propaganda in Seuss’s children’s books with Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature.