Author name: editor

American Losses at Normandy (Yank Magazine, 1944)
1944, D-Day, Yank Magazine

American Losses at Normandy
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

In the July 22,1944 issue of YANK the editors saw fit to release the numbers of American casualties that were racked-up during the first eleven days of the allied Normandy Invasion. In the fullness of time, the numbers were adjusted to be considerably lower than the 1944 accounting; Pentagon records now indicate 1,465 were killed, 3,184 were wounded, 1,928 were registered as missing, 26 were taken prisoner.
It is interesting to note that YANK did not sugar coat the report.


Of the total US figure, 2499 casualties were from the US airborne troops (238 of them being deaths). The casualties at Utah Beach were relatively light: 197, including 60 missing. However, the US 1st and 29th Divisions together suffered around 2,000 casualties at Omaha Beach.

FDR’s D-Day prayer can be read here

Additional facts and figures about the U.S. Army casualties in June of ’44 can be read in this article.

General Patton's Weather Prayer 1944 | Battle of the Bulge Weather Prayer by Chaplin James O'Neil | Prayerful General Patton
1950, Battle of the Bulge, Faith is Power for You

General Patton’s Prayer for Battle Weather
(Faith Is Power For You, 1950)

The attached paragraphs tell the story of General Patton’s famous prayer for battle weather – who authored it and how many men recited it.

That prayer [and the accompanying Christmas] greeting were typically Patton. They [read as if they] were [pulled] from the Old Testament rather than the New and had the ring of Joshua and David at their militant best.They were not written for a soft time but for their occasion; they were words to make men strong – and they did.


FDR’s D-Day prayer can be read here

The GIs Hear About the Death of President Roosevelt (Yank Magazine, 1945)
1945, F.D.R., Yank Magazine

The GIs Hear About the Death of President Roosevelt
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Gathered from all the various battlefronts around the globe, the attached article serves as a archive of spontaneous reactions uttered by a smattering of stunned GIs when they heard that President Roosevelt had died:


Pvt. Howard McWaters of Nevada City, California, just released from the hospital and waiting to go back to the Americal Division, shook his head slowly. ‘Roosevelt made a lot of mistakes,’ he said. ‘But I think he did the best he could, and when he made mistakes he usually admitted it. Nobody could compare with him as President.’


Click here to read about President Harry Truman…

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WW2 Home Front Spy Fever | 1940s Spy-Hunters During WW II | Spy Tips Called In to the FBI During WW II
1944, Coronet Magazine, Home Front

Home Front Spy-Hunters
(Coronet Magazine, 1944)

Appearing in 1944, this article listed numerous reports relayed to the FBI by amateur spy-hunters of all the imagined foreign agents who they stumbled upon daily. Some of the accounts ended up being true and lead to actual confessions, but most were just plain silly – either way, the G-men had to investigate each account.

American Communists 1930 | How 1930 American Communism Was Structured | Communist Party of America 1930
1930, Scribner's Magazine, The Great Depression

Reds Among Us
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1930)

When the market crashed in the Fall of 1929, the Communist Party of America really thought their hour had arrived. They took to the streets with their red banners and set to work fomenting unrest in whatever factories were still afloat. Most Americans recognized their blarney as mere pie in the sky and would have none of it; still their membership lists were growing and many Americans were wondering how they should be dealt with. This article examined how the communists were organized, what they were up to and recommended that Americans should keep in mind that the Reds will go when prosperity returns – and not before.


We also have an article on The Daily Worker.

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United States Boy Scouts History
1947, Americana, Pathfinder Magazine

The Boy Scouts of America
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

When this article first appeared, the Boy Scouts of America, as an institution, was barely thirty-five years old:

The truth is that never in the history of mankind has a simple idea – an idea, incidentally, born in South Africa – so seized the imagination of boys the world over as has Scouting.


Both Boy Scots and Girl Scouts were active in the Japanese-American internment camps during W.W. II. Click here to read about that subject…

The Last Four Months of WW2 in Germany | Newsweek Article on the End of WW II
1945, German Home Front, Newsweek

The Last Three Months
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

From inside Germany last week emerged the picture of a state that by all normal standards was in the last stages of dissolution… All signs indicated a physical breakdown perhaps as great as that of France in 1940… Refugees, mostly women and children with blankets around their bodies and shawls on their heads to protect them from the sub-zero weather, queue up for hours outside bakeries to get a loaf of bread. Draftees ride tanks in never-ending columns.

Television History Facts | TV in the 1920s and 1930s
1954, Coronet Magazine, Early Television

The First Thirty Years of Television
(Coronet Magazine, 1954)

Countless scientists contributed to the phenomenon [of television]. Marconi gets credit, as do Farnsworth and Lee de Forest. But the real starting line was strung by an RCA scientist named Vladimir K. Zworykin in 1923, when he applied for a patent on a iconoscope…


Illustrated with 27 pictures, this article lists a number of historic and semi-historic events that were captured by the early TV cameras and seen by millions of souls who otherwise would have only had to read about them in their respective newspapers, if they cared to.

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A French Village Welcomes the Ninety-Second Division (The Crises, 1919)
1919, African-Americans, The Crises

A French Village Welcomes the Ninety-Second Division
(The Crises, 1919)

This is a lovely piece, originally written in French for a village paper, in which a journalist describes the collective excitement of the townsfolk in welcoming the Americans to their sleepy hamlet during the First World War, and how astonished they were to find that the arriving Doughboys were all of African descent!


Read an Article About American intervention in W.W. I and the Gratitude of France.

The Women of the U.S. Navy (Think Magazine, 1946)
1946, Think Magazine, Women (WWII)

The Women of the U.S. Navy
(Think Magazine, 1946)

The attached is a short article from THINK MAGAZINE that sums up the contributions made by the 87,000 American women of the U.S. Navy during World War II. These women were organized into a body called WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service):

In 500 shore establishments of the United States Fleet, women in navy blue released enough men from non-combatant duty to man all of America’s landing crafts in two important operations: the Normandy landings on D-Day and the invasion of Saipan.

Created July 30, 1942, the Corps completed more than three years of service while the nation was engaged in war. The director was Captain Mildred H. McAfee (1900 – 1994), former president of Wellseley College.

WWI European Aristocracy Deaths
1915, The New York Times, World War One

The Slaughter of the Aristocrats
(NY Times, 1915)

This 1915 article goes into great length listing the names of all the assorted European noblemen and plutocrats who fell during the first year and a half of the First World War.

The great world conflict which broke out soon after [the murder of Archduke Ferdinand] has placed the pall of mourning over every third home in the belligerent countries of Europe… The dreadful slaughter has fallen with especial heaviness on the upper and wealthy classes…


The writer, Charles Stolberg, also included the names of the most admired European athletes who gave their lives for king and country.

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Eleanor Roosevelt on Japanese-American Internment (Collier's Magazine, 1943)
1943, Collier's Magazine, Japanese-American Internment

Eleanor Roosevelt on Japanese-American Internment
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

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.

News of the World (Coronet Magazine, 1960)
1960, Coronet Magazine, Magazines

News of the World
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

Unlike other publications that enter this world with high ideals and lofty ambitions in matters concerning free-speech, the right-to-know, good form and all that sort of stuff – only to slowly devolve into petty, libelous innuendo rags before they cease publication altogether – the British daily The News of The World (1843 – 2011) made its appearance on Fleet Street seeming as if it was already on its way out. As the saying goes, it sold out early and beat the rush.


Although its earliest editions covered the Crimean War, as well as all the other Victorian military adventures, the paper’s editorial policy had always been positioned somewhere to the left of Whoopee.

An Interview with a Kamikaze Pilot (Yank Magazine, 1945)
1945, Kamikaze Attacks, Yank Magazine

An Interview with a Kamikaze Pilot
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

With the fall of imperial Japan, YANK correspondent Robert MacMillan was
one of the very first journalists to interview the Japanese Kamikaze pilot Norio Okamoto, which allowed his readers to gain some understanding as
to how the Kamikaze Corps operated:

Okomoto’s story took all the wind -the Divine Wind – out of the Kamikaze sails. Even the interpreter, a Japanese civilian, was surprised. He had worked for radio Tokyo and while he knew a lot of the propaganda stories were ridiculous, he had believed the Kamikaze legend.


Click here to read articles about post-war Japan.

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1947, 47 Magazine, Magazines

’47 Magazine

(’47 Magazine, 1947)

’47 Magazine was established in March of 1947 and it was their intention to change their name with the calendar year, year by year and on through the succeeding decades. We have in our vast periodical library a few copies of ’48 Magazine – but that is as far as they got before they were voted off the island.


It was a terrific magazine – and many of the names on their board of directors are recognized as some of the best literary minds that America had produced in the mid-Twentieth Century. But, as you’ll see when you read the attached manifesto (they called it a Statement of Intent, but I think that they really wanted to call it was a manifesto) they deeply desired to create an arts magazine that was entirely free of accountants, advertisers, lawyers, agents and, ultimately, profits; so they weren’t around very long.

Benny Goodman Magazine Article | King of Swing Benny Goodman article
1938, Big Band 1930s-1940s, Stage Magazine

Benny Goodman, The King of Swing, on Park Avenue
(Stage Magazine, 1938)

To mark the momentous occasion of Benny Goodman and his Band performing for the ‘corsage clique’ on Park Avenue in 1938, ‘the King of Swing’ wrote this short essay concerning all his good work and the enjoyment that it brought to the Jitterbuggers of the world:

Swing is violent, at least so they tell me. But I’m willing to bet that Society is going to toss aside its toppers and tippers and really cut loose. They’ll all come slumming and stay for dancing.

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