ABSTRACT
Early in 1930, the Great Depression began to affect Europe, and most particularly countries like Britain and Germany which had highly-developed industrial economies. The Italian cartoon proposes an explanation of the problem of inter-Allied debts for the convenience of citizens of Europe. In the American cartoon, the practical effect of the policy is seen in the issue of enormous numbers of death warrants. The Soviet cartoon carries a Communist Party resolution in condemnation of the kulaks in the top left corner. The kulaks were relatively wealthy peasants who had acquired their own land. The liquidation of the kulaks was but part of a much wider Soviet design, the first Five-Year Plan, which commenced in 1928, and was designed to restructure and modernize the whole Soviet economy. The cartoonist is apparently suggesting that these appalling unemployment figures represented the crisis of capitalism which would lead to the final destruction of the whole system.
