Oldal 115 [115]
The Faces of the Enemy in the Two World Wars
between peace and war with Janus, the two-faced Roman god: John Bull showed
his ‘peaceful face’ to Wilson and his ‘warlike face’ to the German Michel (a personi¬
fication of Germans in the comic papers). During WWII Churchill demonstrated
his ‘winning face’ in the direction of Europe and shouted ‘SOS’ in the direction of
America (K, June 18, 1916; K; November 10, 1940).
Apart from the gods of war and peace, several mythological stories found their
way into the caricatures. At the time of naval battles one can see depictions of
Ägir, a German sea giant of great power, in Kladderadatsch or caricatures of Nep¬
tune in Borsszem Janké (K, January 10, 1915; BJ, August 13, 1916). Agir was not
only a mythological giant but also the name of a WWI German battleship. The
depiction of the German giant was often similar to the representation of Neptune
carrying the trident, although this did not belong among the attributes of Ägir. In
these caricatures Agir was happy when English battleships sank. Important WWII
battles took place at sea as well, although symbols of these were not popular. Agir
did not resurface, and Neptune, whose role changed significantly, appears as a god
defeating and threating Britain, for example Neptune appeared in the image of
Josef Stalin.
In the period of WWI the analysed papers published caricatures with figures
from the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as motifs from the Trojan War, announcing
the necessity of persistence—the obvious parallel is that the Trojan War also lasted
for a very long time. Caricatures referring to the ancient battlefields appeared
mainly in 1915, since the caricaturists connected the characters of the Trojan
myths with the war in the Aegean Sea. For example, on the Dardanelles Trojan
heroes greeted German soldiers with the exclamation “Zeus strafe England!”
(‘Zeus, punish England!) (K, April 4, 1915).’ In another caricature Zeus looks at
the modern battlefields of Troy and mentions the difference between the Ancient
and modern war: “Once the battle here was fought for the beautiful Helena—but
now it is for John Bull’s dirty account-book” (K, May 2, 1915), referring to the
aims and methods of Britain’s war-waging negatively. During WWII, caricatures
also depicted the Trojan horse or Achilles, but again, this had been more frequent
before that time. For instance, in one caricature Franklin D. Roosevelt pulls a red
Trojan horse full of Soviet soldiers into Europe, thereby threatening the safety of the
continent (K, January 1, 1940). However, the occupation of Crete gave relevance
for the surfacing of another mythological figure, the Minotaur, who appeared as
a Briton in British uniform and ate the children offered to him (K, November 17,
1940), depicted in order to demonstrate the barbarism of Britain.
During WWI the Colossus of Rhodes was depicted in connection with the
fight for the Dardanelles. Germany’s ally, i.e. the Ottoman Empire, was shown as
the Colossus of Rhodes, although this does not suggest the same massage as before,
7 The original form of the greeting originates from the German poet, Ernst Lissauer (“Gott strafe
England!”—“God, punish England!”) who wrote also a hate song against England (Brockhaus 1970: 507).
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