A chart produced by the editors of MEN’S WEAR MAGAZINE indicating the best-selling colored wool used in men’s suits spanning the years 1935 through 1950.
The pointy-headed soothsayers who attempt to predict which colors men would buy were very surprised to find that in the aftermath of World War II, American men were quite eager to buy browns and khaki-colored suiting after all.
On the matter of the American fashion designer Adele Simpson (1904 – 1995), it must be remembered that she was a prominent player in American fashion for many decades; a woman who had been awarded both a Coty Award (1949) as well as a Neiman Marcus Award (1946). Her creations were highly sought after by the crowned heads of both Europe and Hollywood.
Click here to read about wartime fabric rationing in the 1940s.
Don’t ya know that ever’ time a boy baby is born in a Cath’lic’ fam’ly they take and bury enough am’nition fer him to kill fifty people with!
Such thinking is part of the state of mind that accounts for the amazing growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the old Hoosier commonwealth; that enables Indiana to compete with Ohio for the distinction of having a larger Klan membership than any other state. It helped make possible the remarkable election results of last fall, when practically every candidate opposed by the Klan went down in defeat.
Written by Lowell Mellett (1886 – ?), hardy journalist and son of Indiana. Millett is primarily remembered for his W.W. II days serving at the helm of the U.S. government’s Office of War Information’s Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP).
The Klan has set New York by the ears; Mayor Hylan has ordered the police to investigate the activities of an accredited representative of the Invisible Empire, and, save in one instance reported in the press, the order has been denounced in Protestant, Catholic and Jewish circles alike…Exciting much comment was the accusation that Calvary Baptist Church, the largest of its denomination in New York, was a hotbed of Klan propaganda; but the charge was vigorously denied in a statement signed by leading members and by Dr. John Roach Straton, Pastor…
Leo Disher was among the war correspondents who sailed for Africa with the American invasion fleet late in October of 1942… Army authorities were so impressed with his conduct under fire that they presented him with a Purple Heart [he was the first W.W. II reporter to earn this distinction]. More important was the fact that the story he dictated from his hospital cot after the shooting was over was displayed on the front pages of most of the UP papers.
On the day following the first landing made by United States Marines on Guadalcanal, United Press’ Bob Miller accomplished something which probably no other war correspondent has ever done. Singlehanded, he captured a Jap prisoner.
During the six weeks he spent on Guadalcanal, Miller’s group was bombed almost daily during the entire time, and Jap ground forces were a constant threat.
Miller was known to one and all in the Pacific Theater as Baldy. Shortly before this article appeared in CORONET he had fallen victim to malaria and was returned to the U.S. for convelesence. In 1944 his dispatches to the UnitedPress would concern the liberation of France and the Nuremburg Trials.
Serving as the representative for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a special correspondent for THE CRISES MAGAZINE – and gathering information for his forthcoming tome on the African-Americans who served in the First World War, Dr. Dubois sailed for France in order to attend the Versailles Conference in Paris.
This small notice from a post D-Day issue of YANK announced the capture of a German woman sniper named Myra. It is interesting to note that she was captured in civilian clothing; a male sharp-shooter would have probably been shot immediately. The popular reasoning on all sides during war stems from the fact that snipers do not take prisoners themselves, therefore why should they be afforded the privilege?
If you would like to read an article about women soldiers in W.W. I, click here.
An early war (hand tinted) color image of Imperial Germany’s General Josais Von Heeringen (1850 – 1926) celebrating the Kaiser’s Birthday by distributing medals among deserving soldiers.
An early war (hand tinted) color image of German General Alexander Von Kluck (1846-1934), General Von Kuhl and General Walter Von Bergmann posing among various assembeled German staff officers.
A color photograph from the earlier part of the war, remarkable for it’s clarity and mood. It depicts ten German prisoners wearing their 1910 tunics, staring in a dazed stupor at eight truly bored Poilus struggling through their potato pealing detail.
As a wise, old sage once remarked: You don’t go to war with the army that you want, you go to war with the army that you have -no truer words were ever spoken; which brings us to this news piece from a popular American magazine published in 1910. The reader will be interested to know that just seven years prior to the American entry into World War One, the U.S. Army was lousy with deserters and it was a problem they were ill equipped to handle.
Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.
This article refers to a temperate review of Anglo-German relations as understood by Dr. Theodore Schiemann (1847 – 1921), confidant of Kaiser Wilhelm II and professor at the University of Berlin. Interestingly, the professor predicted some aspects of the forth-coming war correctly but, by enlarge, he believed Germany would be victorious:
A German-English war would be a calamity for the whole world, England included; for it may be regarded as a foregone conclusion that simultaneously with such an event every element in Asia and Africa that is hostile to the English would rise up as unbidden allies of Germany.
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.
From Amazon: Psychology for the Fighting Man
– also from Amazon: Cowardice: A Brief History
Although our friends in Asia, Europe and Canada had been fighting the Axis for at least a year and a half, American corporations continued to trade with the fascists all the way up until the U.S. declaration of war. This 1941 article, published seven months prior to that day, goes into some detail on the matter; although corporations are not named, it is pretty easy to identify them by their products.
One reason why America today is short of ships to fill Britain’s desperate needs is [due to] the fact that for six years or more, Japan and her scrap agents bought almost every American cargo vessel placed on the auction blocks, using them for scrap to feed the blazing steel mills of Nipon.
Following their enormous Hollywood hit, OKLAHOMA, composers Rogers and Hammerstein headed West in 1943 to make more films.Read more …
Shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, William H. Herndon (1816 – 1891), Lincoln’s law partner, devoted much of his life to collecting as much original source material on the man as he could possibly find. Indeed, scholars have pointed out that there never would have been an accurate word written about Lincoln if not for the efforts of Herndon. The following description of Lincoln is from a lecture delivered by Herndon in 1865.
Knowing, as they did, that the Broadway composer Oscar Hammerstein II (1895 – 1960) was no slouch when it came to writing hummable tunes with snappy lyrics, hundreds of people would write to him daily seeking advice as to how they might be able to do the same (indeed, the search logs at Google indicate that this question is asked 369,000 times each month). No doubt fed-up with these never ending solicitations – Hammerstein penned this article, What Makes Songs Popular: in four pages he spewed-forth all that he knew about writing music and lyrics:
It seems to me that the most important element in a lyric is subject matter. A song had better be about something fundamental – which is why so many songs are about love.
must have been fed up with answering the hundreds of letters that he received daily begging him for tips as to how best to write songs and lyrics – he turned to the editors of ’48 MAGAZINE who were happy to print his article in which answered those questions
