Political cartoon depicting Joseph Stalin created by an American journalist

Albert Edwin Carter (1909-1992) was born in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, to Reverend Joel Miles (1869-1947) and Mary Melissa Cass (1874-1958) Carter. Joel was born in Tennessee to William (1844-1901) and Mary (1842-1918) Carter and had one brother. Mary Melissa was born in Tennessee to William Marion (1834-1902) and Julia Ann Dorcas Douglass (1836-1879) Cass and had nine siblings and half-siblings. Joel became a Methodist clergyman, following in the footsteps of seven previous generations in his family. Albert had five older siblings: Carroll Douglass (1900-1955), Joseph (1903-?), Clyde Cass (1904-1985), William Eugene (1905-1972), and Mary Juliet (1907-1958). The family moved around southern Virginia for the first decade of Albert’s life. In the 1920s, they settled in Chattanooga, Tennessee. From 1929-1933, Albert attended the University of Chattanooga. By 1930, 20-year-old Albert was working as a cartoonist and reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. Anti-Jewish decrees were soon passed that restricted every aspect of Jewish life and altered how many Germans interacted with Jewish community members. During the mid-1930s, Germany followed a revisionist policy aimed at overcoming the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles (1919). The nation withdrew from the League of Nations, reinstituted the draft, and openly rearmed and remilitarized the Rhineland. These changes prompted many foreign scholars, reporters, government officials, and foreign correspondents, among others, to pay closer attention to Germany. In many cases these individuals, or their representatives, made their way to Germany to document what was happening first hand. In early 1934, Albert was among these individuals that traveled through Germany, in his case, by bike. He documented his experiences throughout the trip. On November 15, 1934, Albert boarded the SS Quistconck on the Italy-controlled island of Susak (now Croatia), and returned to the United States. He arrived on December 12, and then made his way back to Chattanooga. Beginning in 1936, Albert served as the Sunday editor and foreign affairs columnist for the Chattanooga Times. He wrote many articles for the column, and often punctuated the articles with political cartoons. Many of these cartoons depicted national leaders from around the globe, including Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, and Japan. As part of the revisionist policy approach, Germany provided military assistance to dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), formed a coalition with Benito Mussolini’s Italy, and signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan (1936) and Italy (1937). In September 1939, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed the previous month, Germany invaded western Poland while the Soviet Union annexed eastern Poland, leading Great Britain and France to declare war.

Albert had developed an interest in South America’s relationship to the war in Europe and to the United States. This interest spurred his effort to visit all the nations of South America as a reporter and researcher. This travel was funded by two fellowships from the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Albert likely undertook his travels from 1940 into early 1941. Albert had returned to Tennessee by July 1941, where he compiled his notes and extensive background research into a 300-plus page book titled, The Battle for South America. The book presented a succinct socio-political and economic history of each South American nation. It also examined Germany’s previous relationship with each nation, the economic impact of the German declaration of war, and the overall impact of propaganda, the promise of future economic aid from Germany, and extent of fifth column activity leading up to and during the war. Five months after the book’s publication, Japan’s December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, prompted the United States to declare war against Japan and Germany. After several years of intense battles in Northern Africa and throughout the European Theater, Germany surrendered to Allied forces in May 1945. Japan did not surrender in the Pacific Theater until August 1945. During and just after the war, many of the South American nations Albert had studied took in some Jewish refugees, adding to large, existing communities of Western Europeans, many of them German and Italian, on the continent. Following the war, several South American nations, including Bolivia and Argentina, also became safe havens for German war criminals and former Nazis, among them Nikolaus “Klaus” Barbie and Josef Mengele.

In 1943, Albert became a Foreign Service Officer serving in Central and South America for the U.S. State Department. On April 19, 1946, Albert married Dorothy Sharp Carter (1921-2016) in San Jose, Costa Rica. At the time, he was working as a Cultural Attaché for the American Embassy. Dorothy was originally from Chicago, Illinois, but spent much of her childhood in Galveston, Texas. Her parents were Dr. William Barnard and Alice Percy Sharp, and she had one sister, Gloria. Dorothy moved to Oakland, California, to attend college, and received her secondary school teaching credentials from Mills College in 1945. Later that year, Dorothy accepted a position to teach English at the Costa Rican North American Cultural Center in San Jose, where she met Albert. Dorothy and Albert had four children, all of whom were born in different nations between 1947 and 1956. Dorothy and their children accompanied Albert when he was posted at embassies throughout his career, including Uruguay, Panama, Paraguay, and Germany. Between postings, the Carter family would often return to the US. During this time, the Carters lived in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, Galveston, Texas, and Washington, D.C. After Albert’s retirement from the State Department in 1969, he and Dorothy moved to Austin, Texas. During this period, Dorothy authored several children’s books. Following Albert’s death, Dorothy moved to Herndon, Virginia, to live with their youngest child.