I Need Peace Now!! I Must Prepare for the Third Round. Ink & Blood. New York, 1944.

Szyk’s Last Word on the German Question

SZYK, Arthur. I Need Peace Now! I Must Prepare for the Third Round… Signed and Dated “Arthur Szyk N.Y. 1944”. Watercolor and gouache on paper. Sheet size: 14″ x 11″. Image size: 12″ x 10 7/8″. Fine condition.

Chosen as the final illustration in Szyk’s political masterpiece Ink and Blood, this magnificent image portrays the end of the line for the nearly beaten Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Germany. In early 1944 as the Third Reich’s resources and command began to fall apart their V1 rockets were still raining death and destruction upon English cities in a last ditch effort to win the war. Szyk boldly satirizes the hysteria behind the Master Race and its failure to subdue the Allies by portraying the Wehrmacht as a severely wounded vulture being choked, threatened and beseeched to get up and kill some more.

Hitler directs a worried frown toward the grossly obese and mannish figure of Germania, the national symbol of Germany. The Fuhrer holds his hands open in an expression of ‘What gives?’ At his feet Goering and Himmler assault the exhausted vulture while Goebbels [the Minister of Propaganda] leans in with his microphone to broadcast the animal’s plea of “I need peace now! I must prepare for the third round…” Germania herself does not look fully subdued. Having heard the vulture she now rests her hand against the side of her head in a thoughtful pose. By her side, weighted down by a human skull and a “robot” plane, are secret blueprints “the plans and preparations [for] the Third World War.” Chillingly— as this is just a year before the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the plans state that “Germany’s future war will be won by the robot bomb;” the implication being that it will be vastly more devastating then anything yet known in modern warfare.

The exceptionally large dimensions of this painting provide a feast of detail that is the hallmark of Szyk’s art. His application of the iconic human skull as the supreme distillation of the Nazi empire has never been put to better use than in this illustration. The skull is absolutely embedded in the art: appearing as Germania’s earrings, in the repetitive fabric of her skirt and decorating her golden crown. It appears in the blueprints and on Himmler’s SS hat surrounded by the ubiquitous swastika. But whereas the swastika was chosen and distributed by the Nazis as their personal symbol Szyk goes it one better by portraying the skull as an interchangeable emblem that more viscerally unmasks the deadly intention behind the token.

Exhibition History: A reproduction print was exhibited at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, April 10–October 14, 2002 as the location of the original artwork was unknown at the time.

Publishing History: France-Amerique, New York, (Christmas) December 24, 1944, p.8; Cosmopolitan magazine, January, 1945, p. 49; Liberty magazine, October 27, 1945, p. 20; Ink & Blood. A Book of Drawings. New York: Heritage Press, 1946, Plate LXXIV; Luckert, Steven. The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2002, p. 85; on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.