1944.06.20 "Latest Break-Through" by Paul R Carmack

1944.06.20 “Latest Break-Through”
by Paul R Carmack (1895-1977)
11.2 x 15 in., crayon and ink on board
Coppola Collection

Paul Carmack was a staff cartoonist for the Christian Science Monitor.

Straightforward current events. On June 20, 1944, Soviet forces broke through the Mannerheim Line during the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive against Finland. Vyborg fell that day. For years, the Mannerheim Line had been treated—especially in Western press—as rugged, skillfully engineered, and psychologically formidable. So when it collapsed, and rapidly, it became headline-worthy as a symbolic defensive failure, not just a tactical one.

By mid-June 1944, the list of defeated defensive lines was growing: Atlantic Wall, Gustav Line, Hitler Line, Siegfried Line (threatened), and now the Mannerheim Line.