A History of World War Two – In Political Cartoons

At the beginning of World War II, a great aunt of mine, Miss Ethel Snoddy, began clipping political cartoons from newspapers. She faithfully kept this up for five years, pasting her cartoons into five large photo albums, one for each of the war years 1941 through 1945.

By war’s end, she had compiled nearly 3,500 different examples of political commentary, war news and propaganda, all in editorial cartoon form. The cartoons mainly appeared in the Kansas City Star or the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette but were syndicated from newspapers throughout the nation and several other countries.

Aunt Ethel ultimately gave her unusual albums to my cousin, an educator and history buff. In 1997 he donated them to the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas.

As a young farm boy growing up near Emporia, I looked at Aunt Ethel’s curious collection various times but had no real appreciation for it. But as an adult, and as a person born during World War II, I developed an enormous admiration for those who struggled and sacrificed during the war years, both those directly engaged in the conflict and those on the home front like my parents and my great aunt Ethel. In 2007, long after Aunt Ethel was gone, I traveled to the Eisenhower Library to revisit the collection and acquire a photocopy of every album page. It is a digital copy of these photocopies that you will view on this website.

In the past year or so, my son Jim became interested in these cartoons and together we built this site. What you see represents many hours of work spanning four generations. Jim and I were motivated by nothing more than a desire to make this unique perspective of World War Two available to history students and teachers, historians, war buffs, or anyone else who wants a richer understanding of this incredible period of time.

This website is a labor of love and a work in progress. For more information about the collection, visit the About The Cartoons page. We invite your comments or questions about Aunt Ethel’s War.

Best regards,

Bob Rice,

Carmel, CA

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