Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 9
The Big Question this Spring – What’s Hitler Got?1
This cartoon was published in the April 29th, 1939 issue of Ken, a short-lived illustrated magazine that debuted just over a year earlier.
Ken was a very controversial, political, large format magazine with full-page photo spreads, published every two weeks on Thursdays. It contained both articles and stories.
Originally designed as a left-leaning anti-fascist publication, during its short life Ken was a significant source of anti-Japanese hysteria, that “not only joined the parade of accusations about Japanese Americans on the West but projected them at a nationwide level.” The magazine’s first reports on supposed Japanese spies appeared in its inaugural issue. In the months that followed, Ken continued its slanted reportage.2
By January 1939, editor Arnold Gingrich announced the intention to wind up operation, with Ken suspending publication after the August 1939 issue.
One of the magazine’s early picks as editor, George Seldes, held that Ken failed “when its owners abandoned the publication’s planned editorial independence to fall in line with advertiser pressure to suppress unflattering investigative reportage such as consumer advocacy and republican critique of fascism, including the Hitler and Mussolini regimes’ fight against the republic in the Spanish Civil War.”2
I couldn’t find anything on the cartoonist, Robert Malone.
- Malone, Robert. “The Big Question This Spring – What’s Hitler Got.” Ken, April 6, 1939.
- Robinson , Greg. “Ken Magazine and Prewar Anti-Japanese Propaganda.” Discover Nikkei, August 27, 2019. Accessed August 24, 2021. http://www.discovernikkei.org/… ken-magazine.
- “Ken (Magazine).” Wikipedia, last edit: January 17, 2021. Accessed August 24, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_(magazine).
