After the war, one day while I was in Michigan visiting my Uncle Bert and his family, I was nosing around in their cellar. On the top shelf of a wire rack over in one corner was a pile of almost-new comic books.
I have complained elsewhere here that there wasn’t any reading material in that house, at least not out in the open and available to me, other than Bert’s illustrated book of chicken diseases. But I forgot that beautiful stack of comics, which starred mostly WW II-era superheroes.
They seemed to have a common theme – at least one story in each issue had that comic’s hero slapping, punching, kicking, knocking down or otherwise humiliating either Hitler or Japan’s General Tojo. Mussolini didn’t suffer anywhere near the abuse the other two Axis leaders did, probably because Italy surrendered in 1943 and was a non-player for the rest of the war.
Superheroes were not the only abusers of the three Axis leaders and their armies; punishment could also be dished out by comic-strip celebrities such as heavyweight boxer Joe Palooka, or the band of rowdy grade-school boys known as the Commando Cubs.
As I read the stories, I had a fleeting thought that if a comic book writer could get a character close enough to Hitler to punch him in the face, why not just kill him? But I realized, since the war had already been over for three years, killing Hitler early would have put the world out of balance and messed up the space-time continuum, or something like that. Also to the downside, that writer’s superhero would have had one less villain available to humiliate in future issues. Finally, if our many years of post-war exposure to all forms of popular media have taught us anything, it is this: killing Hitler early always leads to unanticipated and undesirable consequences.
Outcomes, sans superhero intervention
- After Italy surrendered in September 1943, Mussolini was dismissed from office by King Victor Emmanuel and imprisoned. He was soon freed by the Germans and restored to power as Hitler’s puppet. In April 1945, he was captured by Italian communists and executed by firing squad, then his body strung up for display. In a way, the terrible abuse inflicted on his corpse by the Italian people might be said to counterbalance his relatively light treatment in the comics.
- Hitler committed suicide as Russian forces closed in on his bunker in April 1945.
- Tojo attempted suicide as he was arrested by American soldiers in September 1945, but survived. He was hanged for war crimes in December 1948.
Here are some comic book covers from the internet.
Whistle while you work,
Hitler is a jerk.
Mussolini bit his weenie
now it doesn’t work.
– Carl Sandburg