Wednesday, March 28, 2012

The way to war in some cartoons

Today we have seen some meaningful cartoons about the increasing tension in the first decades of the 20th century in Europe. Here you have some more: 


This is the cover of the French magazine Le Petit Journal Illustré. The cartoonist represented the unstoppable collapse of the Ottoman Empire  in 1908, when Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina and Russia won influence at the Balkans after the independence of Bulgaria. The Austro-Hungarian Emperor and the Russian Tsar were represented seizing parts of the Balkans before the Ottoman Emperor´s impotence. 



The Eastern Question´s Wake-up, Le Petit Journal Illustré, 18th October 1908




This is a cartoon of the beginning of October 1912, appeared on Punch, a British satirical magazine. The main  European powers were represented over the pot, trying to content the Balkan troubles.




The boiling point, Punch, 2nd October 1912


Finally war started and the Balkan League (Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia) declared war to the Ottoman Empire. The following cartoon comes from a German magazine called Simplicissimus and it represents the British lion, the two-headed Austro-Hungarian eagle, the French Gallic rooster, the Russian bear and the German eagle trying to stop the fire of war at the Balkans after the outbreak of the First Balkan War.




"Unfortunately the united European fire brigade was unable to stop the fire"
Simplicissimus, 28th October 1912


And this last cartoon was published by The Chicago Tribune in August 1914, a little after the outbreak of the war. It´s called "The Crime of the Ages- Who did it?". Every country involved at war is represented as a soldier and all of them are pointing with their swords at the ones they consider responsible for the outbreak. Only Italy kept out of war.


The Crime of the Ages-Who did it?, 5th August 1914

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