Long time strategy of building fear of Russia

 

 

Art: Arthur Johnson, 1934

A satirical map warning against the dangers of spreading Communism. Europe (metaphorically, as a woman) awakens to an infestation of red bedbugs, each with the Soviet star on its back. Her plight is mirrored by the map behind her, showing the "vermin" not only in Russia and Eastern Europe, but Spain, France, England, the Scandinavian countries - and at the borders of Germany. 

Kladderadatsch was a satirical German magazine founded in 1848. The magazine supported Hitler from the 1920s with increasing enthusiasm, frequently publishing cartoons that were anti-communist (like this one) and anti-semitic. It ceased publication in 1944. 
 
Arthur Johnson was born in Cincinnati and raised in Germany after his father became U.S. Consul in Hamburg. He trained as an artist in Berlin, and During World War I he contributed a number of cartoons to Kladderadatsch attacking the Allies, particularly the English. By 1934, he was an ardent Nazi and the author of a number of the magazine's anti-semitic cartoons.