Fritz Behrendt was born in Berlin in 1925 to a Jewish family. In 1937, the boy emigrated with his parents to the Netherlands, where he managed to survive the war. After the war, Behrendt was an ardent supporter of leftist ideas, worked in Yugoslavia and the German Democratic Republic, but everything changed dramatically after his arrest and accusations of sympathy for Tito. After a year and a half, the ardent communist became an equally consistent anti-communist.
Behrendt's drawings are distinguished by their absolute uncompromising attitude towards their characters. One may disagree with the artist’s opinion, who left a great creative legacy, but in any case, his archive is the most valuable collection of illustrations of the second half of the XX and the beginning of the XXI centuries. During his long life, which ended in 2008, Behrendt saw the beginning of the Cold War and its end. Warspot publishes a small selection of the artist's cartoons dedicated to the significant events of an entire era.
A caricature of 1947, making fun of the Molotov Plan, hinting that, according to this plan, the development of the world will follow the Soviet scenario
«A new beginning?» a cartoon of 1985, in which the artist doubts the real prospects of Mikhail Gorbachev's restructuring
«It's not just Berlin at stake!» The artist illustrates the Berlin crisis of 1961 and warns against Soviet plans to conquer the globe
«It wasn't us!» The artist mocks the defense put forward by Karl-Adolf Eichmann-the former head of the Nazi Department for Jewish Affairs in the Reich Central Security Administration (RSHA) and the architect of the final solution to the «Jewish question», convicted in Jerusalem for crimes against humanity
«In 100 years the wall will still be standing." In 1988, the General Secretary of the Socialist Party of Germany, Erich Honecker, rejected the idea of dismantling the Berlin Wall
«Denied!» In 1954, Pierre Mendes-France, Prime Minister of France, renounced any form of German military involvement in the European Defense Community, despite requests from US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
A caricature of 1973 of a Franco-German duo on the international stage, surrounded by the world's leading powers: The United States in the form of an eagle (President Richard Nixon), the Chinese dragon-chairman Mao and the Soviet bear with Brezhnev's eyebrows
Caricature dedicated to the «Prague Spring» 1968. The leader of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubchek, runs away from the hunters Brezhnev and Kosygin, pursued by Zhivkov, Ulbricht and Gomulka
A caricature of the Caribbean Crisis 1962. The USA and the USSR, represented by Khrushchev and Kennedy, are preparing for the worst, and are taking missiles on Noah's Ark
A caricature of 1959 of decolonization. White man lost in Africa
A Caricature dedicated to the Hungarian events of 1956: «This is an exclusively Hungarian question." The international community was powerless against Soviet military intervention
UN in Bosnia, 1992: «Hello, we are coming!»
Caricature of Charles de Gaulle in 1964. 20 years after the Allied landings in Normandy, General de Gaulle calls for the withdrawal of American troops from French land
The end of the communist regime in the USSR, 1991: «Almost everything»
