We’ve talked about quite a bit of anti-Jewish, pro-Nazi, isolationist propaganda that was spread via periodicals before and during WWII. From Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer in Germany to Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent in the United States, there was plenty of anti-semetic content in circulation.

But these vile, hate-filled periodicals didn’t go unanswered. There were underground anti-fascist newspapers published in Germany, Belarus, Italy, and the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia). We’ll highlight more of those elsewhere, but today I want to focus on a US anti-fascist publication that was very much not underground: PM Newspaper.

‍PM was started in June 1940, with funding from Marshall Field III (grandson of the Marshall Field behind the department store chain). Published weekly and distributed to 165,000 New York readers, the newspaper was printed in color far ahead of its time and remained ad-free to protect its journalistic independence…and, therefore, remained largely profit-free as well. But Field III, a silent investor, was loyal to the magazine and its message, so kept it running until he shifted his focus to launching the Chicago Sun in 1948.

Founder and editor Ralph Ingersoll laid out the newspaper’s values clearly and concisely in the very first issue:

‍PM is against people who push other people around.
PM accepts no advertising.
PM belongs to no political party.
PM is absolutely free and uncensored.
PM‘s sole source of income is its readers — to whom it alone is responsible.
PM is one newspaper that can and dares to tell the truth.

The paper’s moral foundation and progressive commitment to independence from advertisers attracted a long and illustrious list of contributors: Ernest Hemingway, Tip O’Neill, Ben Hecht, Arthur Leipzig, Weegee, and more.

My favorite regular contributor to PM Newspaper? Dr. Seuss.

Theodore Geisel wasn’t yet an iconic children’s book author, but he had made quite the name for himself as a political cartoonist and advertiser, working extensively with Standard Oil in the 1930s. From 1941 to 1943, Dr. Seuss took on the role of chief editorial cartoonist for PM, producing more than 400 editorial cartoons lambasting Axis leaders, US isolationism, British-led Appeasement policies, and Nazi party ideals.

I have quite a few issues of PM in my collection, and Dr. Seuss’s cartoons are the pieces I cherish the most.

Though he is known first and foremost for his 60-plus children’s books, there’s much more to Dr. Seuss than The Cat in the Hat. And during WWII, he used his talent to be a real upstander against Nazi Germany and its far too many collaborators.

PM’s Legacy

PM Newspaper published its last issue in 1948, just a year after Marshall Field III sold it in order to focus his time and financial resources on The Sun. But during the war years, there’s no doubt it lived up to its potential, shaping public opinion through an accessible high-graphic, no-advertising model and a no-holds-barred approach to promoting intervention, supporting Roosevelt, and making its unflinchingly antifascist voice heard throughout New York.

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