1944.08.28 “Going Fast”
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.
The Axis is not merely losing, it is being consumed so completely, and so rapidly, that nothing usable will remain. Aggression produced these fruits; war is eating them; there will be no seed left to grow another war.
The apple labeled “Fruits of Aggression” invokes a familiar moral metaphor: you reap what you sow.
By the end of the month, all of the headlines favored the Allies. In Western Europe, Paris was liberated on August 25, German forces were retreating rapidly across France, and the narrative was increasingly “how fast can they collapse?” In Southern Europe, Rome had fallen in June, German defensive lines in Italy were steadily cracking, and Italy had already switched sides. In Eastern Front, Operation Bagration had annihilated much of Germany’s Army Group Center, and the Soviet advance was catastrophic for Germany. And in the Pacific, Saipan, Guam, and Tinian were in Allied hands, and Japan was now within strategic bombing range of the B-29s.
