Jane Anderson began broadcasting from Berlin on April 14, 1941. When Nazi Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941 American citizens were repatriated from Germany but Anderson chose to remain.
She broadcast Nazi propaganda by way of a short wave radio for the German State Radio's U.S.A. Zone, the Germans named her ‘The Georgia Peach’. Her programs regularly heaped high praise upon Adolf Hitler and ran 'exposés' of the 'communist domination' of the Roosevelt and Churchill administrations. She conducted numerous on-air interviews, the most famous among them was of her co-worker, the British traitor William Joyce. When Berlin fell she was on the run up until April of 1947, when she was caught in Salzburg, Austria and placed in the custody of the U.S. military.
Illustrated with a black and white photograph of the 33 year-old soprano was this small notice announcing the discovery of Dorthy Kirsten (1910 - 1992) of Montclair, New Jersey. Kirsten went on to great heights, performing with the Metropolitan Opera for the next thirty years, she would also enjoy some popularity singing duets on the radio with Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Nelson Eddy, and Perry Como.
"It is a singular fact that [the] supposedly civilized Americans in these times deny the Negroes the opportunity to engage in respectable jobs, the right of access to the restaurants, theaters, or the same train accommodations as themselves and periodically will run amuck to lynch Negroes individually or to slaughter them wholesale - old men, women, and children alike in race wars like the present one."
What Radio Tokyo was referring to were the multiple race riots that broke out in Detroit and seven other municipalities during the Summer of 1943.
"Fort Warren, Wyoming, is bleak, windswept, desolate. It is no wonder that the soldiers stationed there looked forward to the arrival at the lonely post of a unit of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). [When the women arrived] The men of Company H, Fifth Quartermaster Training Regiment, sent over an invitation to a party... The party was informal but military. The hosts marched in formation to their guests' barracks where the two companies fell in behind their respective officers for the return trip. The evening included a buffet supper, attendance at boxing matches and refreshments afterwards."
After Hitler drafted everyone who could possibly be drafted, he found that he now had a labor shortage. He reached out to his fellow Fascist, Mussolini, asking for additional workers - Italy complied and numerous volunteers went forth. These Italians returned two years later and told how they were consistently abused:
"They were treated by the master race like the millions of Russian, Polish, French, Yugoslav war prisoners who are forced to produce for the Nazi war machine. Far from home, cut off from their families, the Italian workers suffered hardships often as great as the workers from Nazi-occupied countries."
"We cannot conduct a Gallup poll in Germany, but we can find out by other opinion polls and from other inquiring reporters what the average German is thinking. Our reporters are the Nazis themselves. The poll is tallied daily at short-wave listening stations, among them that of the Columbia Broadcasting System. The C.B.S. corps of engineers monitors and records and interprets the voices of the enemy."
"The Nazi propaganda here analyzed is a record of Nazi failure to keep the German people from thinking 'non-German' thoughts and failure to prevent the record from being known."
This article is illustrated with fourteen W.W. II photographs.
"Sometimes it is difficult to repress an impulse to whoop with delight, and this was one of them. This was the moment we had lived for, the moment every submariner dreams about... We were ready. War was our trade... Now we were playing for keeps. We were eager to get at it."
Click here to read about the rise of naval aviation.
"Since the policy limits Marine Corps personel to 20 percent of the navy, no Marine can specialize as do other service men. He must be a crack rifle and pistol shot, a saboteur, a scout familiar with jungle and city alike. He must run, walk, swim, sail, shoot, and maim better than the men he's fighting... He glories in this responsibility, as in his corp's 167-year-old reputation as nonpareil shock troops. He's never yeilded either that responsibility or reputation to his jealous friends in rough-and-ready Army and Navy units. They resent the Marine. He knows it and doesn't give a damn, cocky in the knowledge that he's relied on to pave the way for the Army's operations and to finish up the Navy's."
This is a six page photo-essay that is comprised of seventeen images (two in color) of the San Diego Marines, who are identified as the "dirtiest" and "cockiest" fighters in the nation's arsenal.
Click here to read another article about the Marines.
A three page photo-essay found on the yellowing pages of a 1943 issue of Click Magazine introduced American readers to the flying Black Panthers of the U.S. Army Air Force; a fighter squadron composed entirely of African American pilots, trained "at the new $2000,000 airfield in Tuskegee, Ala.". The four paragraphs that tell their story are accompanied by eight portraits of the pilots and snap-shots of the assorted ground crew, mechanics and orderlies - all Black.
"They undoubtedly will reach a combat area this summer. One squadron, the 99th, has arrived overseas already. [These] pilots, whose insignia is a flame-spewing black panther, are rarin' to join them. They want to roar a personal answer to the Axis 'race superiority' lies."
After suffering eleven years of the squalor brought on by the Great Depression, many Americans were in shock to find their pockets fully lined with cash and their days spent in gainful employment when W.W. II came along (in 1943, the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 1.9%). The bars and restaurants that were situated around defense plants found that for the first time in years they were fully booked with paying customers. This article points out that this new economic boom on the home front was not without complications: absenteeism. As more factory workers discovered the joy of compensated labor, the more frequent they would skip work - which was seen as a nuisance for an industrial nation at war.
"Many workers, not just youngsters, are making more money than they ever made before in their lives."
Here is an article by George Creel (1876 - 1953) regarding the life and career of General George Marshall (1880 - 1959) and all the unique elements within him that made him an ideal Chief of Staff for his time:
"He can not only talk with civilians in their own language, but he can also see things from the civilian point of view. Even during the years when Congress denied adequate appropriations for the Army, no one ever heard him snarl at rotten politicians. He saw the unwillingness to prepare for war as a democracy's hatred of war, and even while regretting it, he understood."
By the time this article appeared at the New York City newsstands, the British had chased Rommel's Afrika Korps out of Egypt, the Americans had suffered their first defeat at the Kasserine Pass and was in the process of walloping the Tenth Panzer at El Guettar. The anonymous general who penned this article took all that into consideration but believed there was much more fight left in the Germans than there actually was.
Although historians may like to refer to World War II as "the first hi-tech war", some of the ancient tools were still put to use with great effect. The attached article gives a very brief outline concerning the W.W. II use of carrier pigeons and the goings on at Camp Crowder, Missouri, where these birds were trained.
"Since 1400 B.C. these birds have acted as couriers; they are the oldest instruments of war still in use. Although they form only a small part of our tremendous Signal Corps resources, the Army maintains a corps of expert pigeoneers who have rendered their birds, by scientific training and breeding, ten percent stronger than those used in World War One."
During the course of World War II the U.S. Army signal Corps deployed more than 50,000 carrier pigeons.
In an effort to put an end to worker absenteeism at defense plants, a fetching welder at the Albina Engine & Machine Works shipyard (Portland, Oregon), Jeannine Christiansen unhatched a sure-footed scheme to do just that. Recognizing that (most) men don't find life worth living without rubbing noses with the females of the species, Miss Christiansen instituted the NO WORK NO WOO movement (I think you can guess what Woo means). The attached report states that it was effective and spread to other factories along the West Coast.
The Sten gun was hastily created after the catastrophic retreat from Dunkirk when it was widely believed that the invasion of England was inevitable. The British Home Guard requested an easily produced sub-machine gun that could be quickly assembled and easily used by those who have never had any firearm training whatever. Dubbed "the ten dollar gun", the Sten gun met all these requirements and more; over four million of them were manufactured throughout the Forties and although they were never used to defend the British Isles, they were parachuted en masse to the partisan armies in Europe.
The attached article is illustrated with six images and tells the story of the Sten Mark II and the small Canadian factory that produced them. Interesting stories are told and there are pictures of cute Canadian girls.
Two black and white diagrams illustrating the unique features of the German Luger pistol appear alongside a brief history of the weapon. Additional information included in the article are operating instructions and "a table of characteristics" which lists assorted fun facts about the weapon; it's weight, length and range, as well as an explanation as to how the piece compares to the M1911 A1 Colt 45 (the standard issue side arm of the U.S. Army):
"Since 1908 the Luger pistol has been the official German military side arm. George Luger of the DWM Arms Company in Germany developed this weapon, known officially as "Pistole 08", from the American Borchart pistol invented in 1893"
"Italians who were assigned to the defense of key hill positions surrendered in droves as the U.S. attack intensified... Many of the Italians had been without food for two days. There water was exhausted. Some of the captives shamelessly wept as the Americans offered them food and cigarettes."
Click here to read about American POWs during the Vietnam War.
During the Second World War there were two prominent canteens where the Allied soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines could go to see and be seen with the glamorous actor types of their day: the Hollywood Canteen in Los Angeles and the Stage Door Canteen in New York City. It was in these two locales that the stars of both stage and screen could be found both waiting and busing tables, preparing food and cracking wise with the volunteers and draftees of the Allied Armies. We needn't tell you which of these two establishments Hollywood decided to celebrate on celluloid, but you should know that the film was extremely popular- attached is the review as it appeared in fashion magazine of the time.
World War II terms such as tail gunner, waist gunner and belly gunner are no longer a part of our vocabulary; they are uttered, if at all, about as often as the word blacksmith. However, since you found this website, there is a good chance that you use these terms more often than most - which means you'll appreciate the attached color photo-essay from 1943 illustrating how vital W.W. II Allied aerial gunners were in winning the air war over Germany and Japan.
An enthusiastic piece that informed the folks on the home front that the days of the Japanese Zero were numbered:
"Hellcat, daughter of battle, answers all the prayers of Navy pilots. She's a low-winged Navy fighter; F6F, the Navy's newest and the world's best...F6F is a ship that can fight the Jap Zero on the Zero's own terms, a plane that can stand up and slug, that can bore in with those terrible body blows."
The attached article from 1943 appeared in a number of publications throughout the nation in order to impart to the women (and perhaps a handful of the men) how urgent was the need for their used silk stockings.
Click here to read about the most magnificent stockings of the Forties...
"Throughout the land, child labor is making a comeback as already inadequate laws buckle under pressure of fraudulent appeals to patriotism. Here is what greed and indifference are doing to America's greatest asset: its children:"
"[The Devious] prefer children - the child worker is cheaper, more agile and willing, has less bargaining power. So the cry goes out for more and more children, 'to help win the war!'"
"Just how it helps win the war for an Alabama girl of 11 to work in the fields till she collapses and is taken to a hospital with heart trouble has not been made clear."
The following notes, based on directions issued in 1943 by the German Army High Command, regarding the use and proper care of German infantry weapons during winter campaigns. The instructions in question concern:
• German Luger & Walther P38 pistols,
• the Gewehr 41 rifle, Gewehr 98,
• M.G. 34 light machine gun and the,
• M.G. 42 heavy machine guns.
The article is accompanied by illustrations of the snow sleds used to transport the German machine guns.
Click here to read about the mobile pill boxes of the Nazi army.
An article from the Fall of 1943 that reported on the second campaign fought by the men of the 82nd Airborne Division, the invasion of Sicily:
"These air-carried forces were will be in a position to assist seaborne invaders not only by harassing the rear of the foe's first lines, but by standing in the way of his attempts to bring up his reserves...These men were also to show that an airborne force can assail and capture and enemy's strategic strong points, can man his bridges and his highways, can dominate his high-banked rivers and fight off his counterattacks."
"From businesslike German schools come the professional spy and the saboteur - cunning, ruthless, superbly trained for their specific tasks. They'll be hard to stop, says Mr. Hoover, and catching them - in time - is a job in which every American can give the FBI a hand."
Here is an article from 1943, the year everything changed for the Axis. The article explains all that was involved with the stout-hearted raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania. 177 American bombers were sent to do the job.
"From Ploesti, the Nazis extracted oil and oil products which maintained the entire German and Italian fleets, and third of the whole German air force in Russia. Around the Ploesti installations, the Germans had raised a forest of antiaircraft guns of large and small calibers. They had built blast walls around plants' vital parts and spotted airdromes from which fighters could rise to intercept our bombers."
For those who survived it, the Second World War changed many lives - some for better, some for worse. Gale Volchok was rescued from a dreary job in New York retail and delivered to the proving grounds of two different infantry training camps in New Jersey. It was under her watchful eye that thousands of American soldiers learned to throw their enemies into the dirt and generally defend them selves.
"On the first day of operations, I heard him say, 'By golly, we've done it again! By golly, I wouldn't have believed it1' Meaning the surprise landings really turned out to be a surprise. And [turning to the press corps] he added, 'This is the period when you fellows want to know everything, but military folks are scared to death just now. Darn it, I can't tell you anything! After all, I'm the man responsible."
The attached chart shows the total number of elementary and high school students who were enrolled at the ten Japanese-American internment camps during the period leading up to March, 1943.
If you're one of those types who tend to feel that Americans aren't as smart as they used to be, this is the article for you: attached is a collection of quotes generated by eight home front dullards who were asked the question:
"Do you know what you are fighting?"
They all understood that their nation had just finished it's second year fighting something called "Fascism" but were hard-pressed to put a thoughtful definition to the term:
"A Kansas cattle raiser defined Fascism as '...the belief in a big industrial enterprise. Anyone who thinks that way is Fascist-minded."
Additionally, it is fun to see the pictures of all the assorted noobs who made such ridiculous statements.
Here is a 1943 article that was cabled from Stockholm, Sweden, relaying assorted eyewitness accounts of the Allied bombing campaign over the German city of Hamburg in 1943:
"The people of Germany have now learned, through the terror-filled hours of sleepless nights and days, that air mastery, the annihilating blitz weapon of the Nazis in 1939 and 1940, has been taken over by by the Allies...The most terrible of these punches has been the flood of nitroglycerin and phosphorus that in five days and nights destroyed Hamburg."
A Click Magazine photo-essay about the hard-charging WAACS of the Motor Transport School in glamorous Daytona Beach, Florida. Trained to operate and maintain two-ton trucks, the American women of the WAACs were mobilized to run the vast convoy system within the U.S. in order to free-up their male counterparts for more dangerous work in hostile regions.
Click here to read about the most famous woman truck driver in all of World War II...
"The Black Brain Trust consists of about 25 Negro leaders who have assumed command of America's 13,000,000 Negroes in their fight for equality. They hold informal meetings to plan their strategy, whether it is to defeat a discriminatory bill in Congress or to overcome a prejudice against a private [in the army]. Few white men know it, but they have already opened a second front in America - a front to the liberation of the dark races."
Attached herein are a few "authentic sketches [that] show the nerve center of a captured Nazi sub." accompanied by a few informative paragraphs about the beast:"
"Every inch of a U-boats space, every one of its 45 men, is utilized to the maximum. Each serves the sub's principal weapon, the torpedoes which speed toward an objective at 45 knots. New models have one or two guns of 3.5-inch caliber or more which are effective against unarmored ships at ranges up to five miles."
The misery that lingered over the W.W. II German home front is well documented and many of the issues concerning melancholy, hunger and thirst can be read in the attached assortment of letters that were pulled from the bloodied uniforms of the thousands of dead Nazi soldiers that surrounded the city of Stalingrad in 1943. These personal correspondences by German parents, wives and sweethearts present a thorough look at the dreariness that lingered over the German home front.
Although the Selective Service agency granted 4,192,000 draft deferments to farmers throughout the course of World War II, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recognized that this number alone would never be enough to harvest the food necessary to feed both the home front and the armed forces. With this shortage in mind, the Women's Land Army was created in 1943 to provide that essential farm labor that proved so vital in winning the war. Between the years 1943 and 1945 millions of American women from various backgrounds rolled up their denim sleeves and got the job done. The attached magazine article is one of the first to tell the tale of this organization, and was printed at a time when there were only 60,000 women in the field.<
Attached is a black and white plan depicting the "Rohwer Relocation Center", which was located in Desha County, Arkansas. The plan clearly illustrates how the residential huts were to be placed in addition to the churches, shops and schools.
Moved by the devotion and fortitude of the U.S. Army combat medics serving in the New Guinea campaign, YANK correspondent Dave Richardson wrote this short article in praise of the selfless acts performed by four outstanding medics.
The hokum that Constance Drexel (1894 - 1856?) coughed-up over the airwaves on behalf of her Nazi paymasters was considered to have been so negligible in content by the U.S. Department of Justice that all charges against her were dropped.
During the Second World War in the United States it would have been an act of treason for a journalist to write a slanderous profile about any of the leaders of the allied nations who were beset against the Axis powers. Not only would the writer face grave charges, but so would his editor and publisher. However, this does not mean that the editors of Coronet Magazine had to go so far over the top as to publish this article by the Soviet cheerleader Walter Duranty (1884 – 1957) of The New York Times.
All thanks to the efforts of a private donor, three lounges were built explicitly for the women volunteers of the WACs and WAVES. Furnished with vanities, hair dryers, magazines and ping-pong tables; they must have been a big hit - they look very much like the sets of a Fred Astaire movie.
"An odor rises from the men, the characteristic odor of an army. It is the smell of of wool and the bitter smell of fatigue and the smell of gun oil and leather. Troops always have this odor. The men lie sprawled, some with their mouths open, but they do not snore. Perhaps they are too tired to snore, but their breathing is an inaudible, pulsing thing."
Click here to read a movie review of The Grapes of Wrath.
Terrible accounts of the Nazi murders that took place in the occupied nations in Europe between 1939 through 1943. The journalist pointed out that these massacres were not the work of the SS or the Gestapo, but of the Wehrmacht.
In light of the fact that we are patriots, we like to think that these hairdos were not as wide-spread on the home front as the journalist implies.
Michel, of the Helena Rubinstein salons, has been fingered as the one responsible for the two-tone "pin-On" hairdo, a look that was entirely reliant upon the false hair industry in order to achieve the preferred look. Three color images are provided as well as six "how-to" images.
During the Second World War, hair dye was not simply used by women; click here to read about the men who needed it.
Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy's influence on American fashion.
"Japan has put into the arena a pure fascist man. It is making war against us with a well-nourished, athletic, relentless fighting animal who seems to be controlled to an extent we find difficult to understand by his government and by the officers who exert his government's authority... The Jap went into the war with an air corps skimmed from the top of his population... Our best pilots, too, were taken off the top of our population. They were college boys of high intelligence and perfect physique. The Japs had good pilots, but now they are dead. Many of our best pilots died killing them."
"The top man in Negro music climbed on the bandwagon when he and his band played a hot spot called the Kentucky Club. That was twenty years ago, in New York City's Harlem. This year, Duke Ellington (1899 – 1974) made another debut, at Carnegie Hall, goal of the great in music...Piano lessons bored Ellington when he was six years old. He never learned to play conventionally, but he was only a youngster when his flare for improvisation reaped attention and landed him a job in a Washington theater...one by one, his compositions hit the jackpot: 'Mood Indigo', 'Sophisticated Lady', 'Ebony Rhapsody', 'Solitude', 'Caravan'".
"Ellington calls his work Negro Music, avoids the terms 'jazz' or 'swing'.
These are the observations of an American woman in fascist Japan; the writer was Joy Homer. In this article she tells of her travels to Tokyo in 1940 where she was asked to secretly address those small groups that silently wished for a republican form of government while silently opposing their country's imperial conquest of China.
This illustrated article from an obscure U.S. Army weekly states quite clearly that in light of the successful use of cavalry on the Eastern Front, the U.S. Army was once again training men to fight on horse-back. Referring to the writings of a Soviet General named O.T. Gorodoviko (a probable reference to General O.T. Gorodovikov: 1879 -1960) who had stated in an article written in an undated issue of The Cavalry Journal, that cavalry proved effective in fighting the Nazis when deployed as mounted infantry in limited engagements. The journalist conveyed his enthusiasm that the era of the mounted man was back.
"Before December 7, 1941, the average American regarded the Jap as a comical little fellow who bowed deeply from the waist and said, 'So sorry.'...[and] as a fighting man, the Jap was obviously a joke. His army hadn't been able to to lick poor old broken-down China in four years... This picture was destroyed forever by the bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor... But what makes the Jap so brave? Briefly, the Jap has two words for it. The first is Shinto and the second bushido,"
"The long-awaited climax of the great Allied air offensive against Germany came like a thunderclap last week. It was the opening of the Battle of Berlin... According to the [British Ministry of Economic Warfare], the Germans have evacuated nonessential civilians (children, invalids and the aged) just as the British had from London three years before. But all evidence indicated that government officials and essential workers still remained in the German capital."
Attached is small Yank Magazine article pertaining to a booklet titled, When You Meet an American that was distributed to assorted British girls by their government during the Second World War:
"Try not to appear shocked at some of their expressions...if a lad from back home asks for a hot dog he actually means, 'fried sausage in split rolls'...'Hi'ya baby!' is legitimate".
Written months after the battle, this is the Yank report on the naval engagement that was "the turning point in the war":
"The Jap had failed to get a foothold on Australia. Strategists reasoned that he would now strike east, at an outpost of the North American continent. Alaska became the No. 1 alert; bombers were flown to Midway; carriers came north and Admiral Nimitz pushed patrols far out toward the Bonins and Wake islands... A navy patrol found the enemy first, in the early hours of June 3 [1942]... Reconnaissance showed a Jap force of about 80 ships approaching Midway."
- the contest that followed proved to be the first truly decisive battle in the Pacific war.
"Japan's one purpose now is to fight back and stall for more time - not to attack. That period in her war is over, and she came out on top...All signs now point to a growing major Allied offensive, and for the first time the enemy will be faced with the problem of holding territory which he can't afford to lose."
This article was written by Max Hill, who was serving as the Tokyo bureau chief for the Associated Press at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. The column consists of his observations as to how the Japanese home front operated during his seven month incarceration.
Click here to read about the Japanese home front during the early period of the Sino-Japanese War.
Click here to read about the W.W. II German home front.
The attached is an uncredited article from the later days of 1943 concerning the continuing struggle for supremacy of the North Atlantic:
"It was plain to see that due to the Allied tactics which drove the U-boats from the seas last summer, sinking 90 subs in 90 days, something new had to be added... the newer [German] subs have larger conning towers, painted white this time instead of black - packing at least two new guns, and shooting it out in the open instead of from ambush... Brazil has recently reported 11 sinkings in the South Atlantic."
A few months after PM Daily was established, the editor announced that he had gone to great lengths to purge their ranks of Communists. However, as the attached movie review makes clear, they missed one. While the rest of the country was absolutely scandalized by the pro-Soviet Warner Brothers production, Mission to Moscow (1943), Peter Furst, the reviewer in question was absolutely delighted:
"The film reflects the undisguised admiration of [U.S. Ambassador Joseph E. Davies (1876 – 1958)] for Joseph Stalin and his government, as well as the Ambassador's conviction that the famous Soviet 'purge' trials of 1936 - 38 were based on proof 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that the former leaders punished were guilty of plotting with Germany and Japan for the overthrow of the Stalin regime."
War-torn Hollywood was at its best for the Academy Award Ceremony at the Coconut Grove Hotel in March, 1943. To no one's surprise, Mrs. Miniver walked home with most of the most coveted trophies.
A black and white schematic drawing depicting the "Tule Lake Relocation Center", which was located in Tule Lake, California. The plan clearly illustrates how the residential huts were to be placed in addition to the churches, shops and schools.
This printable list of war-themed movies indicates that Hollywood studio heads were all earning their commission stripes in 1943; attached you will find a list of film titles, stars and a one sentence synopsis of the plots.
Read the story of the CAMPBELL, a U.S. Coast Guard Cutter - she sank six German U-boats in twelve hours during one of the nastier moments that made up the Battle of the Atlantic.
CLICK HERE to read about the women of the U.S. Coast Guard during the Second World War.
In the years to come, he would be known as the Oscar Award winning screenwriter for A Walk in the Sun, Sands of Iwo Jima and Ocean's Eleven - but in 1943 Harry Brown (1917 – 1986) was writing tongue and cheek essays like this one on the history of warfare under the nome de guerre "Artie Greengroin":
"War is a very popular pass-time of humane beings. It is fought by men, on sides, with the popular intentions of killing people of the other side. The more people get killed the more you win. That is war. Historically, war has been fought for a long time and several people have won them. Some people have been Alexander, Julius Caesar and some other people..."
"Informed London sources said Saturday that the number of U-boats operating against Allied shipping is increasing despite the improved defense record of the last six months."
Here is a petite profile of Tracy Strong (1887 - 1968), who, as Director of the YMCA War Prisoners Aid Committee, had license to enter every combatant nation in order to see to the health and welfare of all POWs. Much of his work involved procuring books, sporting equipment and musical instruments to the incarcerated.
This is an amazing article that recalls the open-all-night cities that were the B-17 bases in Britain during World War Two. Such were the lives of the ground crews, who worked all night and then found sleep impossible - preferring to stay-up and stare at the skies in anticipation for their returning bombers.
"A crew chief stumbles past you on his way to the hangar. He's been going seventy-two hours without taking his shoes off; his face is unshaven, and his eyes look like holes burned in a blanket."
"The candy-makers of the nation are not having a such a sweet time of it, for, like most other manufacturers, they are bothered by scarcities of labor and materials and so must cut corners and find substitutes."
The article goes on to point out that the sugar that was available was largely devoted to military personnel (18 pounds a year); as a result of this candy rationing, movie-goers were introduced to popcorn as a substitute (you can read about that here).
Although the diplomatic break with Finland would not come until the Fall of the following year, the pressure was being applied by Joseph Stalin to recognize a German-Finn alliance. FDR, however, knew that Finland was only interested in regaining ground that the Soviets had stolen during the Winter War.
On July 26, 1943, in the same U.S. Federal Court that tried the American poet Ezra Pound (in absentia) for treason, Robert H. Best (1896 – 1952), formerly of the Associated Press, was also convicted on the same charges. What Iva Toguri (the alleged Tokyo Rose) was believed to have done for Hirohito, and what Pound did for Mussolini is what Best did for Adolf Hitler: he had broadcast Nazi radio propaganda.
"The Reich is being methodically pulverized. The Eighth U.S. Air Force by day and the R.A.F. by night have only begun their deadly round-the-clock job. The coming months will see them unleash a fury that surpasses all the world's earthquakes."
"Thousands of American girls are traveling the same road as 21-year-old Dorthy Vogely, our new Cover Girl this month. No longer do they live at home waiting for a nice young man. Instead they've gone on their own to help win the war..."
"There is no other country at war with such an enormous gulf in sacrifice between fighting men and civilians. There is no other country where the men at the front have given up everything, while the people at home have given up practically nothing. And the soldiers know it...'A few bombs would do this country a lot of good.' I heard that in San Francisco from a curly-headed sailor who had been sunk in the Pacific, and I heard it again in Washington from a corporal who had left his leg on Hill 609. Both added, rather anxiously, that, of course, they wouldn't want anyone to get hurt."
Dogs for Defense was a World War II organization founded by three patriotic dog enthusiasts who established the group in order to procure patriotic canines (meeting certain height and weight standards) for the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, that branch of the services charged with the task of training the animals. Dogs for Defense was able to provide as many as four hundred dogs a week for the U.S. Army throughout both W.W. II as well as the Korean War.
This 1943 article by the noted American sociologist, Willard Waller (1899 – 1945), reported on the impact that W.W. II was having on the American educational system. Waller pointed out that during the course of 1942-43 school year, as many as 189,000 teachers had left their classrooms in order to work in defense plants. The author argued four distinct points that would halt the mass exodus - among them was the cry that "salaries of teachers must be raised to the point where they match favorably with industry."
Illustrated with seven color pictures, this wartime magazine article served to give the folks back home a sense of what an U.S. Navy sub is capable of doing:
"With a crew of 44 men, an American submarine in Pacific waters may reasonably hope to sink twenty or more enemy ships before the end of this war... By its very limitations, the submarine offers its crew opportunities to do damage to the enemy which are not given to sailors on other types of vessels. Ninety percent of the time during the war our pig boats (ie. submarines) are looking for the enemy. Cruisers and destroyers, on the other hand must often pass up the privilege of fighting in order to carry out some broad strategy objective; thus convoying, reconnaissance and scouting are a kind of boresome duty the submariner seldom knows."
"They are a proud lot, our submarine men, but not boastful. They talk less of their exploits than the public likes. The brass hats apparently have decided to keep it that way."
Click here to read a unique story about the Battle of the Sula Straits...
Those cheeky, ill-informed editors at PIC MAGAZINE impertinently protested that the Howard Hughes' movie The Outlaw should have been in the theaters ages ago - failing all the while to recognize that the film had been released a week prior to the publication of their article.
But they made up for it by providing their readers with six seldom-seen cheesecake pictures of the star, Jane Russell.
Here is the book review for The Case For Mrs. Surratt (1945) by Helen Jones Campbell. The review narrates how the landlady who had the misfortune of renting a room to the Lincoln conspirators soon found herself swept up in the pervasive Confederate hatred that enveloped the capital city following the assassination. In no time at all she sat among the plotters in a military tribunal where she was quickly judged guilty and sentenced to hang. The book is still in print.
Siegrid von Laffert, Edit von Coler and the exotic dancer LaJana had four things in common: they were all carbon-based life forms, they were all all German women, they were all beautiful and they were all Nazis spies:
"These women spies are called the 'Blonde Battalions'. Chosen for their physical attractiveness, they are usually between 18 and 22 years of age. Members of the 'Blonde Battalion' are admitted to the Gestapo school in Altona, near Hamburg and after they are sent out to perform their work as efficient machines, with rigid discipline and precision..."
Pencil-necked geek Frederick Kaltenbach was born in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1895. A former school teacher, he left the U.S. to earn a Ph.D in Germany but somehow ended up translating German texts into English for the Nazi aviation magazine, ADLER. By-and-by this eventually lead to his own radio program, just like all translation jobs always do.
Five fashion photographs and a few words on the "government-approved" look for the autumn of 1943. The wartime fashion news for 1943 was apparel order L-85 that had been issued by the War Production Board in order to "conserve material for victory".
To read another article about 1940s fashions and the hardships of fabric rationing, click here. Click here to read about the fashion silhouette of the early Fifties.
Originally published in the Stars & Stripes of the U.S. Marine Corps, The Leatherneck, this is an interesting eight page article illustrated with fifteen photographs regarding the dramatic growth in that institution that took place in the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Click here to read a CLICK MAGAZINE article about the Marines of W.W. II.
"Nearly 100,000 women, from messengers aged 16 to seasoned railroaders of 55 to 65, are keeping America's wartime trains rolling. So well do they handle their jobs that the railroad companies, once opposed to hiring any women, are adding others as fast as they can get them..."
One of the most popular women's group of the 1940s was Ada Leonard and Her All-American Girl Orchestra; few were surprised to hear that they were first girl band to be signed by the USO when America entered W.W. II. Sired by two vaudevillians, Ada Leonard (1915 - 1997) briefly toiled as a stripper in Chicago nightclubs before embarking on her career in music.
This interview displays for the readers her salty, fully-armored personality and her disgust concerning the total lack of glamor that accompanies USO shows, topped-off by a photo of her pretty face.
Dan Burley (1907 - 1962) was a much admired man of his day; noted editor and columnist who served at a number of respected African-American newspapers and magazines, a Boogie Woogie pianist, sports writer covering the Negro League and he was to Jive what Samuel Johnson was to English - a lexicographer. This PIC MAGAZINE profile centers primarily on his efforts to translate famous English lines into Jive talk and chronicle the "slanguage" .
More about the African-American press corps can be read HERE.
Flying home after bombing Tunis, the B-17 All-American with a full crew of ten onboard was sliced open at the rear by a nazi fighter plane that nearly severed her tail. How the craft stayed up in the air was anybody's guess.
This Collier's article clearly illustrated the gloom that hung over the German home front of 1943:
"Nobody escapes war service in Germany. Children serve in air-raid squads; women work very hard...The black market flourishes everywhere. More fats are required, as are fruits and vegetables, for the people's strength is declining. A report I have seen of Health Minister Conti shows that the mortality rate for some diseases rose 49 percent in 1941 - 1942."
Click here to read about the dating history of Adolf Hitler.
"[Berlin,] the target of 69 RAF raids so far, [the city] has been hit hard only a few times this year and underwent no raids during 1942. On the morale front it ranks ahead of all other German cities. When the others were raided the outcry of the Germans was bitter but local. When Berlin hit groans rose from all over Germany. If RAF night raiders should raze the capital by fire, as they did Hamburg, the whole German nation would suffer the shock of Berliners... Goebbels begged them to stand up under bombs as stoutly as the British did in 1940."
1940s feminism bares no resemblance to the take-no-prisoners feminism of today. This is made clear in the attached article by Amaran Scheinfeld (1900 - 1979), a writer, whose book Women and Men (1944), as stated by the New York Times, "foreshadowed many issues of the feminist movement". The primary difference between the two lay in the fact that seventy-five years ago it was believed that it was nature that had established many of the rolls played by the (two) genders.
French collaborator Pierre Laval (1883 – 1945) is remembered as the Nazi tool who presided over France between 1942 and 1944, allowing for the deportation of Jews and French laborers into Germany. On D-Day, Laval stood before the radio microphones cautioning his countrymen not to join in the fight against the German occupiers. His many sins would be known a year later during the liberation of Paris, but this writer was very accurate in cataloging all his many failings, both as a citizen of France and as a Human Being.
Laval was captured in Spain; you can read about that here...
CLICK HERE to read about Laval's Norwegian counterpart: Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling...
"Edward James Smythe, a whisky-guzzling old reprobate whose great sorrow is that Hitler is too merciful toward the Jews, has decided to tell all - if anybody will listen. Smythe called PM's city desk the other day and, after establishing his identity as the well-known American-bred tinhorn Fascist, now under indictment with 27 others on sedition charges, said:"
"'Remember that joint meeting of the Klan and the Bund at Camp Nordland over in Jersey? Well I organized that...'"
Printed years before Germany's surrender, here is the digitized copy of the English/German phrase book that was printed by the U.S. Army for distribution among those soldiers who would be occupying that country in 1945. It is beautifully illustrated by the cartoonist Milton Caniff and is sixty-seven pages in length.
This is yet another excerpt from "Psychology for the Fighting Man" which addresses a grave concern that has been on the mind of all soldiers from time immemorial: "how to be brave and safe?". In simply three paragraphs the psychologists charged with answering this question actually do a pretty feeble job, but they did a fine job summing up the heavy responsibilities that the front-line G.I. had on his mind when great acts of courage were expected of him.
Perhaps one of the most lucid definitions of bravery was uttered by an anonymous soldier from the Second World War who offered that courage is like a bank, with a finite balance; each soldier is allowed to make a small or a large withdrawal from the account and they can do so when ever they wish, but when the account is empty they can't go to the bank any longer.
Click here to read a psychological study of fear in combat.
"A ranking member of of the German embassy staff in Tokyo told me a few weeks before Pearl Harbor, 'If Japan goes to war against America and Britain, our days will be numbered here, too. Japan will wage a race war in which we Germans will be regarded as enemies along with the rest of the white race. It is only a matter of time. They intend to conquer all of us, but they are smart enough not to tackle all of us at once.'"
Imperial Japan had a great many reasons to dislike their Nazi ally and most of them were far more legitimate than this one. All of them are are laid out in the attached article.
Attached you will find a few well-chosen words about that famous 1943 photograph that the censors of the War Department saw fit to release to the American public. The image was distributed in order that the "over-optimistic and complacent" citizens on the home front gain an understanding that this war is not without a cost.
A haunting image even sixty years later, the photograph depicts three dead American boys washed-over by the tide of Buna Beach, New Guinea. The photographer was George Strock of Life Magazine and the photograph did it's job.
Click here to read General Marshall's end-of-war remarks about American casualty figures.
"McMillan, who was [in 1914] the first accredited correspondent with the BEF in France, was sent by the United Press from London to Gibraltar in November, 1940, on what he thought would be a routine assignment. He expected to be back in England in two days. Instead, he stayed in the Mediterranean two years."
Here is told the tale of Countess Grace Buchanan-Dineen, a Detroit hostess and amateur Nazi spy. She was posted to Motor City in order to report on all the goings-on there to her pals in Berlin. The FBI turned her shortly after her her arrest and she began spying for them.
Appearing on the pages of a 1943 CLICK MAGAZINE was this article by Austrian journalist Alfred Tyrnauer, who was no stranger to Nazi terror. The journalist explained quite clearly for his American readers who exactly Hermann Goering was, his shameless looting in all Nazi-occupied zones and the goings-on within "Goering Works", the German re-armament trust.
"Master crook, blackmailer and general villain Reichsmarshal Hermann Wilhelm Goering, second most potent Nazi, 'owns' the world's largest industrial empire by right of possession. Gross Goering has stopped at nothing, not even murder, to enrich himself and insure his future comfort, whether the Nazi regime stands or falls."
A photograph, profile and statistical information concerning the Vultee "Vengeance" A-31 - which was a W.W. II American dive bomber, built by Vultee Aircraft Corporation. The Vengeance was not used in combat by any US units, however it was deployed by the British and Commonwealth Air Forces in Southeast Asia as well as the Southwestern Pacific Theaters.
Here is a short profile of Irna Phillips (1901 - 1973) - she was, more than anyone else, the one who can be credited with the creation of the daytime dramas called "soap operas" on both radio and television.
The following illustration was created by the U.S. Government during the early days of World War II and will help to illustrate how enormous the task of Japanese-American "relocation" must have been.
Click here to read some of the reasoning that was offered for this step...
With the loss at Kasserine Pass and the victory at El Guettar behind them, the U.S. Army in North Africa traveled ever northward in a caravan of Jeeps and trucks looking for their next engagement with Rommel's Africa Corps.
"General Sir Thomas A. Blamey, Australian commander of Allied ground forces in the Southwest Pacific, declared the Japs have massed 200,000 first-line troops on the approaches to Australia and might be expected to launch an offensive at any time."
From the pages of a 1943 issue of America's Alertman was this page that presented some information about the German JU 88 twin engine bomber, which was the primary offensive aircraft in the Luftwaffe's arsenal during the Second World War. It was the successor to the Ju-87 and saw service as a night fighter and torpedo bomber in addition to serving as reconnaissance aircraft. The earliest prototype first flew in December of 1936 with a civilian registration of D-AQEN; it managed a top speed of 360 mph. Throughout the course of the war there were 15,000 JU 88's constructed.
The attached article from 1943 goes into greater detail and can easily be printed.
This cautionary article seems like a collaboration between Emily Post, the Twentieth Century's High-Priestess of manners, and Sigmund Freud. It concerns one-part social instruction and one-part psychology. It offers wise words to the Yank readers as how best to behave when being interrogated by Axis goons; American mothers would have been proud to know that their tax dollars were well-spent advising their progeny to keep in mind manners, manners, manners and always anticipate the direction of the conversation:
"It's best to call your enemy questioner "Sir" or his rank, if you can figure out what it is. Then when you answer "I'm sorry, sir" to his questions, there isn't much he can do about it..."
Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.
Widely seen mid-way through the year 1943 was this COLLIER'S MAGAZINE profile of singer Lena Horne (1917 – 2010) who impressed the the West-coast press corps in the same way she did the ink-stained wretches of the East:
"When she was sixteen she was in the chorus at the Cotton Club in Harlem, getting that job through her mother who was then playing in-stock at the old Lafayette Theater on Lenox Avenue... Her name up to then was Helena Horne, but Barney [Josephson] ruthlessly dropped the added letters. He also taught her a great deal about using her personality in her songs."
This article page from a 1943 YANK MAGAZINE concerns the American A-36 fighter-bomber of World War II. The article is accompanied by photographs and testimonial accounts as to how well the fighter aircraft performed in combat over North Africa and Sicily.
"Built by North American Aviation, this ship is a dive-bomber version of that company's P-51 Mustang fighter. The A-36 can climb at the rate of nearly half a mile a minute, with a ceiling of 30,000 feet. Powered by a 12-cylinder Allison engine, it has a flying speed in excess of 400 miles an hour..."
Like most capital cities, Washington, D.C. had numerous social clubs set aside for members of the press throughout the decades. A great number of the ones in Washington flopped because they would extend credit to their members when they drank at the bar. The one exception was the National Press Club - they insisted that their reporters and columnists pay-as-they-go. It was this well-observed rule that saved the club from bankruptcy and allowed it to flourish well into the Twenty-first Century. This article recalls what a busy place the NPC was during the war years.
Recommended reading:
Drunk Before Noon: The Behind-The-Scenes Story of the Washington Press Corps
Here is a small article that appeared during the middle of the war saying that there were German parishioners within both Protestant and Catholic churches who offered food and shelter to the various assorted minorities (primarily Jews) who were persecuted by the Nazis.
General Lunsford Errett Oliver (1889 - 1978) wrote this article about his experiences commanding the American Army in Tunisia. As many of you may know, the American efforts in North Africa were fraught with many difficulties, the least of them were the Germans. The biggest one referred to by the general was the total lack of air cover for his advancing army.
Click here to read about the retreat of the Africa Corps.
Who was it who deprived men of their suit vests and trouser cuffs? Who banned silk stockings? Who outlawed the "flow" in "flowing skirts"? Why, it was the War Production Board of course - click the title link if you want a name and a face...
Colonel Chauncey Hooper was a World War I veteran; of African-American stock, he had served with the "Harlem Hellfighters" (the 369th Regiment, 93rd Division). When 1943 came along, he could be found as an army colonel in Hawaii, lording over a regiment of "colored" New Yorkers calling themselves "Hooper's Troopers". This article is by no means about Hooper as much as it concerns the high number of Harlem Jazz musicians who served under his command
Dorie Miller was an African-American hero during the Second World War, click here if you would like to read about him.
"The motto of the Engineer Amphibian Command is "Put'em Across", and its principle is aptly put by Brigadier General Daniel Noce (1894−1976) , chief of the U.S. Army's amphibious operations in the European theater, who built this force from scratch. 'Water between us and the enemy is an avenue, not an obstacle' he says."
Erroneously believing that their new recruits were lacking in a sufficient amounts of anti-Teutonic zeal, the brass-hats in charge of the U.S. Army training gulag at Fort Knox, Kentucky decided to employ roving bands of faux-Nazis to frustrate and bedevil the men in training. The hard-charging editors of YANK belittled the scheme.
This is a 1943 editorial that was penned by Republican Senator Robert Taft (1889 – 1953) who explained in the most clinical terms that President Roosevelt's loyal opposition on Capitol Hill can be relied upon to support him in all matters involving his roll as Commander-in-Chief. However, Taft implied, any further efforts to go gallivanting about the Capitol creating any more of those agencies with the New Deal trademark names like FSA, WPA, NYA, REA, TVA etc. etc. etc will be met with the stiffest opposition from the Republicans, who were well outnumbered, anyway.
Taft's column was answered by his opposite number in the Democratic Party: New York Senator Robert F. Wagner (1877 – 1953); his column can also be read here.
The historian Henry Steele Commager chose to rank FDR at number 19 insofar as his impact on the American mind was concerned - click here to understand his reasoning...
In this article, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) attempted to play (very politically) both sides of the street, implying on the one hand that the creation of the Japanese-American internment camps seemed a reasonable measure in wartime; but the reader doesn't have to have a degree in psychology to recognize that she believed otherwise.
Here is a book review from the mid-war period covering The American by historian James Truslow Adams (1878 – 1949). Adams attempts to tackle the age old question as to why Americans are different from everyone else. The reviewer quotes the observations of Crèvecoeur, among others, before delving into the meat of Adams study.
"When 22 divisions were cut off by the Russians at the gates of Stalingrad, the Nazis had to rely on air transport for contact with the surrounded troops. One mid-December day a German cargo plane was shot down on its way from the ringed divisions. The wreckage yielded some three hundred letters from doomed soldier of der Fuehrer. The Soviets selected and published a typical one:"
"It is hard to confess even to myself, but it seems to me that at Stalingrad we shall soon win ourselves to death."
The FBIS - short for Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service - is the organization that listens to the world's radios for Uncle Sam. It's monitoring station in Washington has, besides editors and annalists, some sixty fantastic linguists on its staff - people who are fluent at anywhere from three or four - up to a couple of dozen, languages apiece. Their job is to intercept and translate the shortwave broadcasts of Rome, Berlin, Vichy and a score of lesser stations, which daily pour out Axis propaganda in more languages than were ever spoken in the Tower of babel."
"The Russians shot down 18 enemy planes over Kuban on Sunday. Moscow estimated German plane losses on all fronts for the week ending Saturday at 381 against 134 Russian planes."
"When meat rationing finally comes, it is going to be just as stiff on the individual as canned goods rationing. On the average, the meat ration will provide about four ounces per citizen per day... The trick is more stews and meat gravies and no steak."
Here is the PM movie review of At The Front North Africa directed by John Ford and produced by Darryl Zanuck for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The reviewer seemed irked that the film only showed the Germans having a difficult time.
Click here to read about the American Army in North Africa...
Having no idea that The Great I Am had His own plans for the Jews of Europe, numerous heads of government convened to plan a homeland for the Jews - in Latin America.
"A vast plan for resettling thousands of Jews and other refugees in South America currently is being studied in several important Latin American capitals..."
Douglas Chandler (1889 - ?) was one of several American expatriots to make radio broadcasts on behalf of Adolf Hitler and company. Believing that he was somehow providing a valuable service for the Free and the Brave, he smugly titled his radio program, 'Paul Revere'".
"The British have struck heavily at the Mareth Line in what both sides call the opening blow of the long-awaited big battle of Tunisia."
(The Mareth Line was a system of bunkers built by France in southern Tunisia during the late Thirties. The line was intended to protect Tunisia against an Italian invasion from its colony in Libya.)
This Yank Magazine article was written shortly after the U.S. Army's triumphant performance during the Battle of El Guettar in Tunisia (March 23 - April 7, 1943) and rambles on with much enthusiasm regarding the admirable performance of the M2 Half Tracks. Half Tracks were used on many fronts throughout the war and in many ways, yet as this article makes clear these armored vehicles at El Guettar were mounted with a field gun and used to devastating effect as tank-destroyers against the German 10th Panzer Division.
The writer, Ralph G. Martin went on in later years to become a prolific historian and biographer.
Click here to read an article about German half-tracks.
Recognizing that simply because he had retired from the ministry, it did not mean that he had retired from spreading the Good News; Reverend J.J.D. Hall immediately began to deliver a sermon with each and every wrong number he received. That was in 1940 - three years later his telephone number was recognized as an institution and a reliable source for those thirsting for knowledge of The Almighty.
When Manuel Avila Camacho (1897 – 1955) came to power as the president of Mexico (1940 - 1946) he immediately went to work kicking out the Fascist spies from Japan and Germany:
"He banned Nazi newspapers and cut Nazis off the air. He squashed the anti-Semitic Gold Shirts of Monterey and purged fifth columnists in key positions. He washed his hands of the Nazis and extended a hearty handclasp to Roosevelt."
"Hollywood's manpower problems have multiplied, as in any large industry, since the U.S. entered the war. The draft, war plants, and the Government need for technicians depleted studio staffs all along the line, from producers to prop boys. The majority of Hollywood stars have devoted an untold number of hours to Army camp tours, war work, canteens; they have raised funds for war relief and war bonds. Robert Montgomery (pictured in uniform) is only one of many stars who have entered the armed services. Now he's a lieutenant in the Navy in charge of a torpedo boat squadron....With the reduction in Hollywood's talent ranks and the new ruling for a $25,000-net-income ceiling, movie companies face a crises in production."
Click here to read a about a particularly persuasive and highly effective W.W. II training film...
By the Autumn of 1943 it was becoming apparent to both parties that the Allies were coming into their own. The Axis was discovering to their surprise that they were not the only ones who knew how to fight - they'd been routed from North Africa, creamed at Stalingrad and bloodied at the Bismarck Sea:
"On every front in this global war Axis strategy is definitely on the defensive."
"Americans on December 5 [1943] will look backwards to a dramatic night 10 years ago - many will be surprised that a whole decade has passed since the nation abandoned Prohibition... In the early '30s, Congressman LaGuardia found authorities siphoning an estimated million dollars a day in graft from bootleggers. Cost of the 'Noble Experiment' to the government hovered around a billion dollars a year. In the last 14 Prohibition years, the public was figured to have spent more than $36,000,000,000 for bootlegging and smuggled liquor!"
We are not sure how wide-spread boxing exercises were among all the U.S. Army infantry training camps during W.W. II, but the attached photo-essay will cue you in to the fact that it was mighty important at Camp Butner in 1943.
"What Hollywood is saying secretly and can't say publicly is: The Armed Forces are taking away all our actors, all our technical men. Things are serious now; in six months they will be desperate. But if anybody in Hollywood got up and said that unless a great change in public policy is made, the movies might be out of business in six months..."
"[Movie stars have] a duty and Hollywood has a duty and they should be made to stick to it."
Until recently we always seemed to think that all those pretty British girls during the war were genuinely captivated by that unique and sincere breed of American male called the "G.I.". It seemed obvious to us that such a self-effacing, homespun, mud-between-the-toes kind of charm would naturally lead to thousands upon thousands of out-of-wedlock births and prove once and for all that the Anglo-American alliance was truly a necessary union and not merely a wartime contrivance. But after a careful reading of the attached headline from this 1943 Yank, it occurred to us that perhaps British girls were just doing their bit for king and country.
To us, the most interesting part of this 1943 editorial is in the opening sentence, where an accounting is given as to the number of prisoners acquired after a full year and a half of war. The U.S. military had amassed 22,000 Germans, 14,000 Italians - yet only 62 (sixty-two) Japanese prisoners of war! This is famously due to the instructions given to the Emperor's combatants to not be taken prisoner - but we certainly expected there to be more than that. The writer goes on speaking in favor of just treatment for Axis prisoners - but please don't pamper our Nisei in Arizona.
"Breathing hard, Rommel's Afrika Korps has succeeded in outstripping its pursuers and taken refuge behind the fortress heights that guard the Tunis-Bizerte pocket. Pounding on the gates are the British Eighth Army of General Bernard Montgomery [and] Lt. General George Patton's American and French Army..."
This article,'Blow It Out of Your Ballast Tank' was penned by Marion Hargrove and cartoonist Ralph Stein
in order to clear away some of the Hollywood blarney and set the record straight about the W.W. II submarine duty in the U.S. Navy:
"To read articles about submarines, you'd think they were about as big as a small beer keg, and that the men worked curled around each others elbows. To see submarine movies, you'd think the sailors spent their time bailing water, gasping, sweating, hammering on jammed doors and getting on each other's nerves."
"This is really a lot of Navy propaganda, designed to keep surface fleets from being stripped of their personnel by a rush of volunteers for submarine duty."
Click here to read about a Soviet submarine called the S-13...
During the Summer of 1943, James F. Byrenes, FDR's Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization, gave a report on the wartime production output for that period. 1943 proved to have been a turning point for the Allied war efforts on both fronts.
While speaking at the 141st anniversary of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Chief of Staff General George Marshall gave a great big shout out to three American generals. Pointing out that all of them were graduates of West Point (as he was) the general could not help but conclude that the Axis didn't have a chance.
"This account of life aboard a U.S. train carrying Nazi prisoners of war to prison camps is an authentic bit of after-the battle reporting by an army MP who was a civilian artist. That his eye missed no telling detail is evident from both his first-person story and his on-the-spot pencil sketches."
"The Nazis are extremely curious about America, they gaze out of the windows constantly...War plants along our routes are the real eye-openers to the Nazis; those factories blazing away as we travel across America day after day. At first the prisoners look with mere interest and curiosity, then they stare unbelievingly, and before we reach the camps they just sit dumbfounded at the train windows."
Click here to read about Hitler's slanderous comment regarding the glutinous Hermann Goering.
If you ever wondered how Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, Barbara Stanwyck, Carmen Miranda, Veronica Lake, Charlie McCarthy or Edgar Bergen prepared their respective meals during the bad ol' days of food rationing during W.W. II - then you'll get your answer here:
"Hollywood has done a complete about-face and banned the lavish, costly dish.... These days when the inhabitants of Glamor Town take off their faces and sit down to dine, the taste may be varied, but every meal is eaten with the full knowledge that a quarter of a pound of butter or a pound of ground steak is just as rare in Hollywood as Wheeling, West Virginia."
"Unlike most other musicians in Italy, Arturo Toscanini (1867 – 1957) refused to scramble onto the Fascist bandwagon. He refused to preface his concerts with the Fascist anthem and eventually was made a virtual prisoner at his home. When he was permitted to leave his country, he vowed never to revisit it so long as Fascism held it in bondage."
"Nowhere has the magic baton of Toscanini been more acclaimed than in the United States. Under its spell, the Metropolitan Opera made its highest artistic mark, and the New York Philharmonic became the world's greatest symphonic ensemble."
These are the observations of an American woman in fascist Japan; the writer was Joy Homer. In this article she tells of her travels to Tokyo in 1940 where she was asked to secretly address those small groups that confidentially wished for a republican form of government while silently opposing their country's imperial conquest of China.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Mangrum, USMC, was a seasoned veteran in "the Cactus Air Force" that fought the good fight at Henderson Field from Guadalcanal in 1942:
"For eight weeks the author and his fellow pilots shared the primitive life of the other Marines at Henderson Field. Some portion of his squadron was almost constantly in the air, attacking enemy reinforcements."
Attached is black and white diagram of the Walther P-38 pistol, with all parts named.
This diagram, accompanied by a few paragraphs concerning it's unique characteristics, appeared in the American Army weekly YANK MAGAZINE, and was intended to be read by all those who were most likely to stand before the business end of this German side arm.
We regret that the scan is not very clear and should be printed for better viewing.
"In the face of history's most brutal war, as men the world over live by the rule of kill or be killed, India's leader preaches a gospel of never lifting a weapon or pulling a trigger. Here he tells why":
"The principle of non-violence means, in general terms, that men will deliberately shun all weapons of slaughter and the use of force of any kind whatsoever against their fellow men...Are we naive fools? Is non-violence a sort of dreamy wishful thinking that has never had and can never have any real success against the heavy odds of modern armies and the unlimited application of force and frightfulness?"
Click here to read about the significance of prayer in Gandhi's life...
Here is a tidy little essay that explains the origins of the National Geographic Society and their well-loved magazine. The article begins with an interesting story about what this organization did to help the Pentagon during the Second World War.
When home heating fuel had to be rationed during the Second World War, a page was borrowed from Granny's play book and women once again began to sport crochet wraps, shawls and booties around the house.
The attached article tells the story of an organization that was formed by the German Foreign Office in order to steal the treasures of the occupied European nations. It was called the Nazi Art Corps and it was divided into four battalions of SS men; they stole manuscripts, sculpture, paintings, jewels etc, etc, etc. They answered to the Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893 – 1946).
Click here to read about the inmate rebellions that took place at Auschwitz, Sobibor and Triblinka.
Here is an eyewitness account of the bleak lives lead by Berliners during the summer of 1943:
"The food situation in Berlin is horrible. At the [Grand Hotel Esplanade] there was no choice on the menu. You either ate what was there or went hungry... There was no bread or butter served at the hotel... The people of Berlin were unfriendly and distant. Although I could not speak their language, I could sense their fear of bombing and disgust with the war. They seemed to be mechanical men, robots, just following daily routine."
In 1941 Hitler ordered the home front to send as much warm clothing as they could spare to the army on the Russian front - you can read about it here
The Yank Magazine editors remarked that this brief column, which was intended to help American G.I.s deal with panic attacks during combat, was written by the National Research Council and appeared in the Infantry Journal of 1943. It is a segment from a longer article titled, Psychology for the Fighting Man. The psychologists who wrote it presented a number of examples of soldier's panic (mostly from the last war) and illustrate how best the front-line soldier could deal with this stress while the bullets are flying. Happily, they made it sound so easy.
Click here to read about one other effect the stress of combat wrought upon the luckless men of the Forties.
Newsweek reporter Vera Clay was not slow in accepting the U.S. Army's invitation to don the khaki uniform and learn what goes into the training of a WAAC. In the company of fourteen other women reporters, she took the train to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, and for the next six days, the group began to learn about all things WAAC.
A well-illustrated article from the home front fashion-filled pages of Click Magazine that served to document the contradictory days when wartime button-rationing coincided with a wide-spread yen for decorating with buttons:
"In a frantic bid for individuality, fad-loving women are rediscovering the decorative button. Buttons are no longer just a practical devices for holding clothes together. They pep-up simplified silhouettes and restyle dated fashions.
This article will come as a surprise to the historical revisionists who run the Chiang Kai-Schek memorial in Taipei where U.S. involvement in W.W. II is oddly remembered only as having been the nation that sold oil to the Japanese. It is a well-illustrated Yank Magazine article filed from India regarding the military training of Chinese infantry under the watchful eye of General Joe Stilwell's (1883 – 1946) American drill instructors.
This photo essay from Click Magazine consists of six black and white images illustrating the Nisei officers and GIs toiling under the merciless sun at Camp Shelby, Mississippi prior to being shipped out for combat duty in Italy. The accompanying paragraph sums up quite nicely their devotion to the United States, declaring that for these Japanese-Americans, "democracy outweighs blood ties", yet says not a word about the internment camps.
CLICK HERE to read about the beautiful "Blonde Battalions" who spied for the Nazis...
"The reason the Nazis banned The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse was that it was a political preachment against Hitler 'socialism,' by a man [Fritz Lang] whose films were appreciated by the Germans as true interpretations of the social trends of post-war Germany... Lang's intention in the film was, in his own words, 'to expose the masked Nazi theory of the necessity to deliberately destroy everything which is precious to a people so that they would lose all faith in the institutions and ideals of the State. Then, when everything collapsed, they would try to find help in the new order.'
An article from Click Magazine designed for civilian consumption concerning the U.S. Signal Corps and their efforts to film and photograph as much of the war as was possible in order that the brass hats far off to the rear could sit comfortably and understand what was needed. The article is illustrated with six war photographs and the captions explaining what information was gleaned from each:
"Every detail of these films is scrupulously studied by a group of experts, officers and engineers representing the Army Ground Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Army Air Corps, the Signal Corps the Armored Forces, the Quartermaster Corps and other military units. Naturally, these services are interested in different sections of every film. To facilitate their studies, a device known as the Multiple Film Selector is used."
During the war years, the boys on the front loved reading about a juicy Hollywood scandal just as much as we do today, and Errol Flynn could always be relied upon to provide at least one at any given time. The closest thing to a Hollywood tabloid that the far-flung khaki-clad Joes could ever get their hands on was Yank Magazine, the U.S. army weekly that also provided them with the news from all battlefronts.
Movie star Flynn was tried by the California courts for having gained a fair measure of carnal knowledge from two feminine California movie fans who were both under the age of 18; said knowledge was gained while on board the defendant's yacht, The Sirocco.
Léon Degrelle (1906 – 1994) was a Belgian con-man and Nazi collaborator:
"Handsome, plausible and glib, politics eventually appealed to him as a field for his talents, but repeated bids for office resulted in defeat. Nothing seemed more certain than that the 'man with the electric voice' would remain a local windbag, but in 1935, Adolf Hitler began the development of fifth columns in other countries, and Léon Degrelle was his choice in Belgium."
In this article, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) attempted (very politically) to play both sides of the street, implying on the one hand that the creation of the Japanese-American internment camps seemed a reasonable measure in wartime; but the reader doesn't have to have a degree in psychology to recognize that she believed otherwise:
"'A Japanese is always a Japanese' is an easily accepted phrase and it has taken hold quite naturally on the West Coast because of some reasonable or unreasonable fear back of it, but it leads nowhere and solves nothing..."
during winter campaigns. The instructions in question concern:
(1945) by Helen Jones Campbell. The review narrates how the landlady who had the misfortune of renting a room to the Lincoln conspirators soon found herself swept up in the pervasive Confederate hatred that enveloped the capital city following the assassination. In no time at all she sat among the plotters in a military tribunal where she was quickly judged guilty and sentenced to hang. The book is still in print.
went on in later years to become a prolific historian and biographer.