1941.06.26 “Just Propaganda”
by Ralph Lee (1906-1947)
14 x 23 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
Ralph Lee was an editorial cartoonist for the Portland Oregonian. He died suddenly, at 41, in January 1947. His cousin, Art Bimrose, was the editorial cartoonist for the Oregonian for more than three decades. In 1937, the Oregonian hired him part-time to work on printing plates. Following Lee’s death, Bimrose was hired as the Sunday editorial cartoonist.
On June 21, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. SS and “security police” follow the troops, carrying out mass shootings of individuals deemed hostile towards German rule. Beginning on June 26, the Romanian police and its military carried out a pogrom on the city of Iasi. Reports and warnings from both FDR and Churchill about Nazi atrocities were in the news.
Although the US leadership was starting to lean into the inevitable in its policies and pronouncements, the level of denialism on the part of the old school isolationists created a schism in the country that would not collapse until the attack on Pearl Harbor.
