Publishing Satire: Collective Humour

Illustrative satire was the most popular form of clandestine publishing and as such, it represented the biggest single form of content contribution to increased journalistic wartime efforts. There are many examples of cartoons, comic strips, and illustrative satire that indicate attitudes and reactions to Nazi occupation, but to understand their significance better, this chapter focuses on examples as a demonstration of underlying theoretical analysis of humour. These, including comment by Freud, Lorenz, and others, contribute to the psychology of different types of humour, enhancing an appreciation of journalistic values connected with resistance. Examples from publishing in Belgium, France in exile, the British home front, and The Netherlands all demonstrate the scope of political illustrations and the potency of illustrative formats as a community weapon for wartime communication. Included also is a major textual project of fake newspaper production, taking the meaning and significance of satire to a different level as part of the more general increase in journalistic efforts in occupied Europe.