Introduction

Since their spectacular rise to public prominence in the 1840s, when the satirical magazine Punch commissioned John Leech to create the first series of ‘Mr Punch Cartoons’, humorous, politically motivated graphic satire has been a popular mainstay of British journalism. Throughout the twentieth century, cartoons relentlessly appeared in all sorts of newspapers, yet a twenty-first-century reader reflecting on the cartoons created in the first half of the previous century may find it difficult to fully realise the immense impact and journalistic importance of the cartoon in an era before the near universalisation of television consumption.

The twentieth century saw many events that were recorded in newspaper cartoons: the First World War, the 1916 Easter Rising, women's suffrage, the Second World War, the Cold War, inter alia. In fact, by the early twentieth century, the inclusion of political cartoons in editorial pages was already well established as a key element of news coverage, reinforcing the editorial standpoint of a particular article or newspaper.

It has been postulated that humorous pictures, cartoons and caricatures are more easily created and understood than comical text. In this sense, the humorous picture serves to communicate a more credible and digestible message than a similar conveyance presented in other media, offering immediacy and accessibility. Most political cartoons are designed to influence viewers with regard to specific political events of the day, but what is the essence of their appeal?

Some of the appeal, of course, is due to the easy visual accessibility of a picture. But some must be due to the visceral punch a cartoon can give to an opinion, affording the reader a thrill of outrage or affirmation they would never get from written paragraphs (Dooley and Heller 2005: 15).

Cartoons appeal to readers on a number of levels. Perhaps most importantly, their pictures do not require a high degree of literacy, a fact to which their rapid rise in popularity during the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries is often attributed.

FACED WITH THE need to recognise that the Sorge ring had covered its activities with the greatest care by endeavouring to conceal their covert operations through the device of obtaining respectable professional employment and, in Sorge's case, also of pursuing an outwardly Bohemian style of social behaviour, Meisinger embarked on a course of vetting members of the German community to test the extent of their willingness to adhere to perceived National Socialist ideals and of their underlying support of the regime. With the outbreak of war, his congratulations to his hosts were accompanied by the submission of lists of German citizens deemed by him to be ‘unreliable’ – a term which covered a wide range of possibilities beyond the unacceptable norms associated with racial, political and social exclusion.

The rapid expansion of Japanese control in Asia also facilitated the restoration of German activities southwards and enabled him to arrange for the appointment of his predecessor, Huber, as police liaison in Thailand. Huber was linked in with the arrangements for co-operation with the Japanese Army's tokumu kikan, headed by Colonel Iwagurō Takeo, which had been initiated following the appointment of Colonel Scholl as military attaché at Bangkok in July 1941. These contacts were accompanied by efforts at the expansion of the Abwehr organisation in China and were also linked to secret efforts by Admiral Wenneker to make contact with the German vessels which had taken refuge at the outbreak of war in Portuguese India.

Huber called on the support of the Gestapo to vet the small numbers of German residents in Thailand and suspicion fell quite soon on the Austrian photo-journalist, Karl-Raimund Hofmeier, working for the Völkischer Beobachter, who had been given the unique opportunity as a non-Japanese to accompany invading Japanese forces, a role akin to that previously accorded to Ivar Lissner when working for the same newspaper in 1938. As it was discovered at this time that Lissner appeared to have obtained a close relationship with the Japanese Army covert intelligence service, there was a strong suspicion that both Lissner and Hofmeier were operating in Japanese interest and that their double life bore comparison with that now proven to be the case with Sorge and Clausen working for the USSR.

ONE OF THE principal features of the various historical accounts of the Sorge Affair that needs to be more accurately characterised is that of Sorge's relationship with Meisinger. It is clear that Meisinger was located in Tokyo for only a small part of his service as Police Liaison Officer prior to his recall by Ott from Shanghai following Sorge's arrest, as Meisinger and his new wife found Shanghai a much more attractive location within East Asia than Tokyo. Meisinger clearly was encouraged by Sorge to indulge in whatever fleshpots were available in Tokyo when he first arrived there in April 1941. Meisinger was clearly despatched to Tokyo before the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union and soon after the despatch of Wohlthat from the Four- Year Plan Ministry to negotiate a trade agreement with Japan at a time when it was recognised that steps would have to be taken to replace the land route through Russia for vital supplies of rubber for the German war economy. At first, it was hoped that the Japanese could be persuaded to despatch rubber on board Japanese vessels to Europe after the Japanese Naval Mission was delivered by the auxiliary cruiser, Asama Maru, and hopes were entertained of a Japanese assault on Singapore and the Dutch East Indies without the United States being drawn into the conflict.

If one examines Schellenberg's activities at this time, he was busily worming his way into the confidence of Counsellor Kramarz of the Military-Political Department of the German Foreign Ministry and subsequently suggesting that the liaison officer of the Abwehr, von Bülow, be replaced by someone with closer Party and Gestapo connections. The replacement was a close friend of Ribbentrop, Under-Secretary (Inland) Luther, who broached the suggestion put forward by Schellenberg that Abwehr officers in diplomatic missions abroad responsible for counter-espionage be replaced by police liaison officers. At the end of 1940, Meisinger was transferred from Warsaw for training within Schellenberg's department, but when he reached East Asia his telegrams and telephone contacts were always with Heinrich Müller, never Schellenberg.