• The cartoonist was David Low. He was a bitter critic of dictatorships. His cartoons became very famous in the years before World War 2 because he was very critical of the dictators Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. In this cartoon he is back to bashing Stalin!
• This cartoon was published in the Evening Standard on March 2nd 1948. Around 2 weeks earlier Communists had taken over the government of Czechoslovakia. The main opposition leader, Jan Masaryk, died in mysterious circumstances during the takeover.
• Czechoslovakia followed Communist takeovers in Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
• The main figure in the chair is Stalin. The man spinning the globe is the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov. The picture on the desk shows General Marshall. He was the US military commander in charge of giving US aid to help rebuild Europe after the war. Stalin refused to accept Marshall Aid and did not allow any of the Eastern European states to accept it either.