1943.03.12 “Resistance”
by Cloyd Jonathan "C.J." Sweigert (1897-1973)
18.5 x 25 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
Sweigert was an American political cartoonist and fine art painter, based in Palo Alto, California. He was born near San Jose, and his family were early pioneers of the area. He attended Berkeley (class of 1918) where he studied agriculture. He was a self-taught painter. He served in the Army during WW1.
Sweigert joined the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper in 1932, working as a political cartoonist until his retirement in 1955. Sweigert's cartoon after the death of Winston Churchill was widely published in England.
The phrase "Can dungeons, bolts, or bar confine thee? Or whips thy noble spirit tame?" is a line from an English translation of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem.
The question essentially asks if physical imprisonment or torture can truly crush the inner strength and freedom of a person's will and beliefs. The implied answer is no, suggesting that true freedom resides within the spirit and cannot be extinguished by external forces.
In this French setting, resistance to the Nazi occupiers is turning fatal… for the occupiers… as one Nazi soldier is down and a second has just been shot. And the protagonists are out of sight, as the common people go about their daily business.
In early 1943, following the Malta Conference, where sympathetic support to the French underground was on the agenda, the Allied press began reporting on urban guerrilla activities in France, particularly school protests (February) and grenade attacks and ambushes on German patrols conducted by immigrant-dominated groups (March). Paris newspapers and Allied news wires highlighted increasing boldness by partisans in city streets.
