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And as brilliant a broadcast as that is, I want to contrast it
to a cartoon that was done by Bill Mauldin who created the
characters Willie and Joe, which I think sums up the GI's
attitude towards the enemy in Europe.
I don't know if you can read that caption.
It's a shivering emaciated dog trying to get into a cave where
Willie and Joe are sheltered.
And one says, "Let him in, I wanna see a
critter I can feel sorry for."
Now Mauldin was from Arizona.
He was about 22, 23 at the war's end.
He was with the infantry in Italy for most of the war.
And at about this time he, there he is, at about this time he won
a Pulitzer for this cartoon.
It was a news item saying that fresh-spirited American troops
are bringing in thousands of war weary enemy prisoners, and
they're virtually indistinguishable here,
everyone is just sick and tired.
We'll go through a few Mauldin cartoons, here's a chaplain
forever, amen, hit the dirt.
That's Joe, Willie rather speaking, saying "I feel like a
fugitive from the law of averages.
At the time of Mauldin's Pulitzer, Time magazine asked
him to do a cover, so here's Willie in color, that's from
June of '45.
This is a typical Mauldin scene, that's Joe having some coffee
ya know, "Who is it?"
And Willie says, "it will comfort my old woman to know
that I, for her to know that I have given up rye whiskey and 10
cent cigars."
Now Willie was married, and he's just gotten a picture of his
son, "my son, five days old, cute kid ain't he?"
So now we're in May, and this is a scene of the German surrender
and we're going to hear Charles Collingswood of CBS's
description of the scene.
(Mr. Charles Collingswood). "General Jodl of the
German army, signed the last document. "
"He sat there very straight, with his head
down over the papers."
"And when he had signed the last one, he put the cap
back on the pen and looked up at the men
sitting across the plain wooden table. "
"Opposite him sat General Bedell Smith,
Eisenhower's chief of staff. "
"As he looked to his right, General Jodl could see a big
powerful man in the uniform of a Russian
general sitting next to General Smith. "
"He was General Susloparov, the Russian delegate."
"Over his shoulder appeared the extraordinary
head of another Russian. "
"The head was as big as a board, with fierce unwavering eyes
whose bright and sinister gaze did not for an instant leave the
drawn face of General Jodl."
"Jodl did not meet his eyes for long."
Then General Jodl looked again at General Smith, 'I would like
to say something,' he said."
"Smith nodded, Jodl rose stiffly to his feet."
"Herr General," he said in a voice that choked and almost
broke, 'with this signature, the German people and the German
armed forces are for better or worse, delivered into the
victors hands.'" "In this hour I can only express the hope that
the victor will treat them with generosity."
"Then General Jodl sat down quickly,
no one else said anything. "
"The Germans looked around as though wondering what to do
next, and with another nod from General Smith they got up,
General Jodl, his aides and General von Friedberg who
commands the German Navy, with Jodl in the lead,
they walked quickly out of the room."
(Mr. Barton). Again, a very dramatic
effective description of the scene, but
for the GI's sentiment, I'm gonna return to Bill Mauldin.
Here's his cartoon from VE Day.
Mauldin, he drew his cartoons for Stars and Stripes and they
were eventually picked up by a syndicate in the United States
and were seen in quite a few newspapers as he was doing them.
And as the war drew to a close in 1945, Mauldin had an idea
that he would kill off Wilie and Joe on the last day of the war,
that they would be you know, shot at that point.
Because he said that was a common fear among soldiers, that
they would get all the way to the end, only to die on the last
day, as happens in "All Quiet on the Western Front."
Stars and Stripes said no to that idea, Willie and Joe were
much to popular, much to popular for that.
So here's his VE Day cartoon.
Oh, I'm sorry.
"The hell with it, I ain't standing up till he does."
[audience laughter].
Now Stars and Stripes were widely read in every theater of
the war and so was a magazine called "Yank".
"Yank" was something very special.
It was only published for about 3 1/2 years; it ended in
December of 1945.
It was a 100% production of soldiers.
Every photograph, every word written, every
drawing, every bit of it was generated by soldiers.
and this is from shortly after VE Day, we've got a GI
chatting up a female Russian soldier here.
I don't know if you can read the captain there, but there was an
article in this issue called "The Life and Death of the
Nonfraternization Policy".
This was one of the less successful policies of the war.
And it finally came to an official end after VE Day,
things loosened up a lot for soldiers
in Europe at that point.
So here's from the same issue, "Yank boy meets girl, legally",
this was a great relief.
Then we go to, but it wasn't, there were still of course there
were language and cultural barriers, they didn't always
understand each other very well.
So here we have Bill Mauldin again, "I asked her to teach me
to yodel, she taught me to yodel."
Now, many soldiers in Europe, however glad they were about the
end of the war in Europe, were just destined to be sent to the
Pacific to finish that part of the war.
So here's Yank again, Pacific bound.
I want to say a little bit more about Yank, they had many
different kinds of features, this was one called Main Street
America.
They would run pictures of towns back home for guys who were
homesick, and you know, wondered what Main Street in their town
looked like when there was Providence, Rhode Island, New
Orleans, you know, was a regular feature with them.
They did a lot of things that were pretty controversial.
This is an article on the Neesay, who, you know legendary
outfit in Italy, highly decorated, and this is about the
problems they were facing.
Neesay, that is Japanese, American born Japanese soldiers,
who were returning to the United States and finding they were no
more welcome than the Japanese who served in the Japanese Army.
And they were looking ahead, post war issues, you know, what
are you going to do when you get back?
And this is actually from "Time Magazine", from May or June of
1945, you know there was a great relief that followed the end of
the war in Europe and a lot of, you see a lot of propaganda from
this time reminding people that the war is not over.
And this is unusually graphic to see a depiction of a dead
American soldier, reminding people he's not celebrating;
the war's not won yet.
Now VJ Day came August 14th, 1945, but it had been
anticipated for awhile, not just because of the two atomic bombs
but because I think on August 10th, or perhaps the 11th, Japan
had indicated that it would surrender and
was trying to get better terms.
That wasn't going to happen.