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Ágnes Tamás
1he Faces of the Enemy in the Two World
Wars: A Comparative Analysis of German and
Hungarian Caricatures
In the interwar period the prevailing opinion both in Germany and in Hungary
was that these countries did not lose the Great War on the battlefields but as a re¬
sult of ineffective propaganda and press. For example, Adolf Hitler criticised the
comic papers and also blamed them for losing WWI (1943: 198). Therefore, it is
insightful to analyse the changes in the methods of the propaganda spread through
caricatures, knowing that Germany and its ally, Hungary, subsequently lost WWII
as well.
In this chapter I examine the depiction of the enemy during the periods of the
two World Wars (June 1914—June 1918; September 1939—September 1944),
through the caricatures of comic papers and newspapers (during WWII Hungarian
newspapers regularly published political caricatures). The German Kladderadatsch
(‘Tumult’) was a national-liberal comic paper during World War I that became
right wing during WWII; the Hungarian liberal Borsszem Janké (‘Johnny Pepper¬
corn’) ceased publication after 1938. Thus I analyse WWUH through the right wing
newspaper Magyarság (“Hungarianness), published until 1944, as was Kladdera¬
datsch. In the last ycar of publication of Magyarság, the editors reprinted (with
Hungarian translation) caricatures from Kladderadatsch—without the signature of
the original caricaturist.' The nature of Kladderadatsch’s caricatures was determined
by a small group of caricaturists, the most important of whom was Arthur Johnson,
who drew caricatures throughout both world wars and became a convinced fascist
during the 1930s. He perfected his method of distorting the features of the enemy
in his drawings. Borsszem Janké also employed several famous artists, such as Dezsö
Ber, Geza Zöräd or Jenö Feiks, but in Magyarsdg one cannot find any drawings of
these leading caricaturists.
It was during and after WWI, when, parallel with the examination of propa¬
ganda effects and application of propaganda by scholars and journalists, the opin¬
ion that the press has a great influence on people during the war (which is also
reflected in the above-mentioned views held by Hitler) became pervasive (details
see in Lasswell 1971). People then believed that the war could be won with well¬
' After the German occupation of Hungary (in March 1944) the coordination (Gleichschaltung) of the
Hungarian press began immediately (VAsdrhelyi 1975: 40-43). Before March 1944 the editors of Mag¬
yarsdg had occasionally used caricatures from Kladderadatsch, but after May 1944 this became regular.