Give Schicklegruber the hot-foot! is a 1944 black-and-white war bond cartoon signed Jed White, USNR, for Fourth of July purchases. A hand lights a match under the boot of a figure with a swastika on his sleeve. No issuer is named (NAID 514388).
A match under a boot
The joke is a prank. In a black-and-white cartoon, a hand lights a match under the boot of a figure whose sleeve carries a swastika, the way a hot-foot prank is played. The caption names what the match stands for: Fourth of July war bond purchases. The signature adds USNR and the year.
GIVE SCHICKLEGRUBER THE HOT-FOOT !
4TH OF JULY
WAR BOND
PURCHASES
[signature: Jed White USNR '44]
Signed Jed White, USNR, and issued by no one named
The archive lists the maker as an unnamed issuer, with the cartoon signed Jed White, USNR. No agency or printer appears in the transcription. FRAME sets the issuer type to "Mixed", the purpose to "Fundraise", and the audience to "Domestic public". The National Archives holds the sheet in Record Group 44 with the World War II posters. The record gives no first printing, no run and no place of display.
Ridicule aimed at one man
The one technique FRAME tags is name-calling. The archive's note is that the poster uses the mocking family name "Schicklegruber" for the German leader. The cartoon never prints the name Hitler. The reader is expected to know who is meant.
Ridicule of a head of state is a liberty a free press prizes, and the target here was a dictator whose government had earned it. The cartoon picks out one man by a mocking family name and a swastika. It does not draw a nation as a race, the step that the same year's Hari-Kari Kit bond sheet took. Its ask is also modest: a voluntary purchase on a holiday, sold with a laugh.
The Treasury's 1942 sheet Right in Der Fuehrer's Face sold bonds with a fist striking a face that the archive reads as a caricature of Hitler. More sheets aimed at Hitler's government are on the anti-Nazi propaganda hub, and the numbered loan drives are on the war bonds hub.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Give Schicklegruber the hot-foot!, 1944. Unnamed issuer; cartoon signed Jed White, USNR. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-883, NAID 514388, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
