STEINBERG’S WWII

from his NyTimes obit:

“…on the same day that he became a United States citizen he was given an ensign’s commission in the Navy. He was assigned to teach Chinese guerrillas how to blow up bridges, and for a year flew the mountainous route known as the Hump from China to India, making sure that the explosives reached their destinations.

Then Mr. Steinberg was sent to North Africa and Italy by William Donovan, the director of the Office of Strategic Services. His assignment was to draw cartoons that would inspire anti-Nazi resistance within Germany. Mr. Steinberg made lurid images of Hitler with skulls hiding behind him and of Mussolini’s twisted face with one eye popping out. These and other drawings were dropped behind enemy lines and printed in Das Neue Deutschland, a resistance newspaper created by the O.S.S.

During the war The New Yorker published Mr. Steinberg’s visual reports from Asia, North Africa and Europe and satiric drawings of Nazis. In one drawing, ”Benito and Adolf — Aryan dancers,” Mussolini and Hitler are wrestling half naked. But the artist, now Lieutenant Steinberg, also did drawings of military life: pictures of G.I.’s bewildered by Europe and waiting for mail from home. His pictures were published in 1945 in a book called ”All in Line,” the first of many collections of his drawings.

In 1946…Mr. Steinberg was discharged from the Navy…”