The Educational Value of Punching Nazis

And as any good teacher will tell you, their classroom, if given enough freedom to design (and sometimes even not), is ultimately a reflection of themselves.

As such, my room, especially after seven years, is covered in art and artifacts, portraits of presidents and activists, student work and thank you’s, and many, MANY, comics-related things. Some of it is there because I like it and want to see it every day, like my sketch of The Thing by Nick Dragotta. Some of it is there because I want my students to know it exists, like the poster announcing the debut of Ms. Marvel on Disney Plus. But some of it is there not simply as decoration, but as a central component of what I hope students get out of my classes.

Which is why, right in the front of the room, visible whenever I teach, and purposefully placed next to a copy of the Declaration of Independence, is a reprint of the cover of 1941’s Captain America Comics #1.

The significance of this comic, at least to anyone who has been to a movie theater lately, cannot be overstated. Captain America, after all, is one of the most well-known superheroes in the history of American media. The story behind the comic — the significance of someone dressed in the American flag punching Hitler in the face a year before Pearl Harbor — is fairly well known. A very important comic book, yes. But a document on par with the Declaration of Independence? Maybe not because of what it DID, but definitely because of what it REPRESENTS. Both documents, in their way and in their time, define the potential of the American Dream as existing above and beyond the boundaries of American reality.

In 1776, American colonists lived within a reality they considered untenable, and had for a long time. The status quo — monarchy in a post-enlightenment world — no longer made sense to them. They desired a change, to take their lives into their own hands, and for better or worse reshape their society into one of collective-determination as opposed to rote obedience to an absent ruler. And so, Thomas Jefferson, on behalf of the Continental Congress, wrote the Declaration of Independence.

While it is undoubtedly remembered most for its first sentence — the “self-evident truths, all men are created equal written by someone who enslaved other people” part — the declaration has more to it; a lot more. And as powerful as that opening statement was, what comes next is where the real meat lies: a detailed list of grievances expounding on exactly what the monarchy had done to the colonies and exactly why asserting their independence is the only logical way forward. It was a mission statement, one made with no shortage of risk.

But a declaration is just that: words. As I tell my students every year, the document itself lays out a plan, a way forward to a potentially better future, but it does not guarantee it. After all, the Revolutionary War had already been raging for over a year at that point. It wasn’t the declaration that created the conflict. So what, then, was it for? And more importantly, who? The answer there is a relatively simple one: it was for the people.

In 1774, John Adams famously wrote that one third of the people were patriots (for revolution), one third were loyalists (for the king), and one third were “too timid” to take a stand one way or another. The declaration, therefore, could be interpreted as targeting that final third. There’s a reason why the thing was read in public in every colony that entire summer: even if you couldn’t read it, as many could not, you could hear it, understand it, and, if George Washington got his way, enlist in the Continental Army because of it. It was a call to action which was, emphatically, answered.

Fast forward 164 years to the summer of 1940. The threat of Nazism was apparent to many the world over, and yet just two years prior Hitler was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year and official United States policy on what was rapidly becoming the second world war was one of staunch non-intervention — not neutrality as much as indifference to the struggles of the rest of the world. Many across the country wanted nothing to do with what was happening in Europe and were content to live their lives with their heads in the sand, even while the American Nazi party sold out Madison Square Garden. But not Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

Raised by poor, working-class parents in Rochester, NY, Simon understood vividly the threat the national socialism posed to the world. Kirby, one of my heroes, did too, but differently. Raised by immigrant parents on the tightly knit Lower East Side of Manhattan, he would hear the news from the old country get bleaker and bleaker, until it stopped coming altogether. And so, when Simon and Kirby were tasked by the editors at Timely Comics (the future Marvel Comics) to create a property that could rival Superman, it was clear who their villains would be.

Captain America would be their declaration, their wake up call to an indifferent and disinterested population…or, at least, to their children. It wasn’t just about the iconic cover either — the issue itself featured Nazis committing horrific war crimes, including the murder of civilians. The message was clear — Nazis were a clear and present danger to the entire world. And much like Jefferson’s declaration, this one carried its own share of risk.

The relative obscurity of comic books as a mass medium at the time would have shielded them from any geopolitical pressure that may have arisen from publishing art centering a man draped in the American flag punching the dictator of another country with which they were not presently at war. However, the blowback closer to home was almost immediate, with threats called into the Timely Office including one Kirby himself answered, telling the coward on the other end of the phone to wait in the lobby for him.

Now, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room: Captain America Comics #1 did not change the world, even close to what the Declaration of Independence had. It was popular, sure, but not enough to keep the character afloat for more than a few years. The call to action was, in large part, ignored. But when I think about that comic and what it, and the bravery and fortitude of its creators, meant at the time, it reminds me of one of my favorite parts of the Declaration:

…Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

In other words, it is the responsibility of the people to stand up to injustice and, when it is the government committing that injustice, to rise up against that government (or, in this case, rigid social frameworks). And if the people do not recognize the injustice as such, to MAKE them do so. When viewed that way, Captain America can really only be seen as a direct descendent of the Declaration of Independence — another entry in the long history of speaking truth to power, created in such a way that even the smallest child could understand it. That’s how I see it anyway — and now, maybe, you will too.