Soviet cartoons of the Second World War, part 2

Soviet propaganda of the 1930s was depicting the mighty Red Army that would win any war “with a little blood and on the enemy’s territory”. March of the Soviet Tankmen, a popular song composed in 1939 proclaimed:

The armor is hard and our tanks are fast

And our men are full of courage

The Soviet tankmen are ready for action—

Sons of their Great Motherland.

Refrain:

Thundering with fire, glinting with steel,

The tanks will begin a harsh campaign

When we’re called to battle by Comrade Stalin

And the First Marshal [K. Voroshilov] will lead us in this battle!

                     Stalin and Voroshilov on the 1935 poster by Gustav Klutsis.

This song was also used in the Ivanov-Vano’s Не топтать фашисткому сапогу нашей Родины (Fascist Boots Shall Not Trample Our Motherland), 1941. Like some other propaganda cartoons, it emphasizes the beastly nature of the German invaders and portrays an overwhelming military response by the Red Army forces, including both brave cavalry, the iconography of the Russian Civil War, and modern tanks and aircraft. It also features notion of the unexpected nature German invasion that would be later extensively used to explain heavy losses during the early stages of the Great Patriotic War.

Russian, with English subtitles

• 1940s
• black and white
• great patriotic war
• Ivanov-Vano
• soviet animated propaganda
• soviet posters
• world war II