A Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman, dated 30 July 1953. A bespectacled man labeled "De Gasperi" is kicked off a map of Italy, with a fasces labeled "Fascists" on the heel of the boot and a hammer and sickle labeled "Commies" on the toe. Held in the Senate's Berryman collection at NARA (NAID 5743181).
What the cartoon shows
Italy is drawn as what it looks like on a map, a boot. The archive describes a bespectacled man labeled "De Gasperi" being kicked off it, clutching at its top. A fasces sits on the heel and a hammer and sickle on the toe, each with a one-word label. The words are as printed.
ITALY
DE GASPERI
FASCISTS
COMMIES
Jim Berryman
Signed Jim Berryman, kept by the Senate
Jim Berryman signed it for the Washington Evening Star; the record's date is 30 July 1953. The Senate's records at the National Archives keep the original among his political cartoons (series NAID 5730852). FRAME classes the source as identified, files the audience as the domestic public and the purpose as warn or inform, and gives the event as 1953 Italian politics.
Squeezed from both ends
The archive reads the cartoon as an argument that Italy's center government was squeezed between two extremes, and tags it fear appeal: both ends of the boot are drawn as threats to the same man.
"Commies" is the cartoon's own word, a slang label for Communists; "Fascists" is the plain name of the other side. The cartoon is not neutral in its vocabulary, and the reader should see that. Its picture is even-handed. Each movement gets a symbol and a label, one at each end of the boot, and neither is drawn as the lesser danger.
That symmetry is the cartoon's best point. It puts the line between the man in the middle and the movements at either end, with no favorite among the extremes. The archive's record stops at the drawing; it does not say what became of De Gasperi's government.
Italian politics appears elsewhere in the American record on this site: an Italian Khrushchev caricature from Milan and a poster on the fifteen countries of NATO from Rome, both in U.S. Information Agency files. Other Berryman cartoons here include The Juggler on the French premier.
Sources
- FRAME object record, The Boot... Toe and Heel (De Gasperi, Italy), July 30, 1953. Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star.
- U.S. National Archives, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (series NAID 5730852), item NAID 5743181, catalog.archives.gov, retrieved by the archive October 3, 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain.
