A segment from a slightly longer 1930 profile covering the high-life and Hollywood career of La Belle Swanson. Written by actor and theater producer Harry Lang (1894 – 1953), the article concentrates on her triumphs during her lean years, her assorted marriages and her healthy fashion obsessions.
Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York nightclubs of 1937.
Before there were diplomatic treaties between super powers on thermo-nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, there was the age of the Dreadnought: how many battleships should a country have? This article concerns the views of a Norwegian statesman named Erik Vullum (1850 – 1916) and his admiration for former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt and his understanding of armament arbitration agreements between the major European powers prior to the First World War.
This small piece from THE SPECTATOR magazine concerned the 1912 budget increase mandated by the Imperial German Defense Bills which called for a growth of the German army and navy. The expansion of the fleet was to include eight battleships and nine cruisers of various sizes and provide for further additions later. The German Army was to be furnished with two additional army corps.
The son and heir of the German Kaiser, Crown Prince Wilhelm III (1882 – 1951) was known well throughout the pre-war era for demonstrating his dislike of the German Government’s peaceful policies and especially for his belligerent, anti-British remarks, which caused tremendous embarrassment to the Imperial German Chancellor, while giving no end of pleasure to the hot-heads of Berlin.
Andrew Carnegie (1835 – 1919) tried his hand at clairvoyance and wrote this article in response to the constant plea for money from the U.S. Department of War, which he found completely unnecessary and excessive.
Our naval and military officials must dream of wars since most of them never even see one.
I have always said that there are no good Jews, but that boy proved me wrong.
-so spake the Nazi king-pin Julius Streicher (1885 – 1946) upon being confronted by the goodness of one American serviceman who went out of his way to be kind and identified himself as a Jew.
This small piece is an excerpt from a longer article; to read the entire magazine article, click here.
Julius Streicher had an IQ that measured 106 – click here to read about the IQs of the other lunatics in Nazi leadership…
Click here to read about the inmate rebellions that took place at Auschwitz, Sobibor and Triblinka.
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.
Assorted yarns told by liberated Allied soldiers as to the types of games played in Japanese prison camps between bouts of malaria, dysentery and gangrene:
We had a big fellow with us in camp, a guy named Chris Bell, who was 6 feet 2 and the rocky sort. The Jap guards were having a wrestling tournament at the guardhouse and they wanted Bell to come down and wrestle one of those huge sumo men. These sumo wrestlers weigh about 300 pounds and are very agile…
This was NOT the first time that a Japanese baseball team had faced Americans.
Click here to read about that game.
Suggested Reading:
POW Baseball in World War II: The National Pastime Behind Barbed Wire
Click here to read more about W.W. II prisoners of war…Read more …
For the 417,034 Axis prisoners of war in this country, the War Department last week had word that repatriation was in sight. The 362,170 Germans and 49,784 Italians definitely would be home by early Spring; the 5,080 Japanese, as soon as General of the Army MacArthur was ready to receive them.
Attached is an illustrated magazine advertisement from a polite, middle class American periodical which depicts two trim bucks in the full flower of youth wearing their under-lovelies so that all the internet gawkers can get a sense of how wildly uncomfortable men’s underwear used to be.
Click here to read about the introduction of the T shirt to the world of fashion.
The following must have been some sort of creative writing project for one of the many bored World War One Doughboys, however it clearly spells out how the necessities of modern war demanded that the wrist watch no longer be thought of as a piece of jewelry adorned only by fops and fems and evolved into a useful tool for soldiers on the field and men with masculine responsibilities. The column makes it quite clear that prior to the Great War, a good many wrist watch enthusiasts would have had their noses broken if they had worn the ‘gimmick’ into certain neighborhoods.
Although the attached cartoon illustrations from Volkischer Beobacher depicts a German soldier using a Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon, the intended readership was actually the old men and under-age boys who made up the out-gunned and under-manned Volkssturm militia units at the close of the war. The panzerfaust (tank fist) has been characterized as the first expendable anti-tank RPG. Also included in this file is the U.S. Army study concerning this weapon.
The three articles attached herein were printed five years apart and collectively recall three different events by three different arms of the American military, each claiming to have fired the opening salvo that served notice to Kaiser Bill and his boys that the U.S.A. meant business:
• The first article chuckles at the Army for insisting that the First Division fired the premiere shot on October 23, 1917 in the Luneville sector of the French front;
• The second article recalls the U.S. Merchant Marine freighter MONGOLIA that sank a German U-Boat on April 19, 1917 while cruising off the coast of England.
• following up with the absolute earliest date of American aggression being April 6, 1917 – the same day that Congress declared war – when Marine Corporal Michael Chockie fired his 1903 Springfield across the bow of the German merchant raider S.M.S COMORAN on the island of Guam.
In 1940, when America stood on the precipice preparing to enter another enormous conflict, the heretofore secret papers of Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, Robert Lansing (1864 – 1928), were released – shedding light on the government’s reasoning as to why they felt U.S. intervention in the European war was necessary.
Attached is a review of The American Era by H.H. Powers. The reviewer disputes the author’s argument that the First World War made Britain a weaker nation:
Mr. Powers’ interpretation of the war and it’s squeals is that the Anglo-Saxon idea, having triumphed, will set the tone for the whole world. He also believes that the real depository and expositor of this idea in the future must be America. Britain, he thinks,in spite of her great geographical gains from the war– he considerately exaggerates these, has sung her swan song of leadership.
A similar article about American power can be read here.
Pictured in this file is Sis Hopkin’s Middy Blouse for tennis. Cut to resemble a sailor’s jumper, a popular look for girl’s upper-class leisure attire, the ad ran in VOGUE and TOWN & COUNTRY:
A chic and charming blouse for the charming summer girlie at the paddle, in the tennis court or in the school room.
