Articles from 1940
“Hitler’s undeclared war against America includes the attempted wholesale corruption of U.S. youth.”
“Plans worked out over a period of years called for the selection of key Hitler leaders from U.S. youth in various cities and transporting them to Germany to be drilled in subversion…U.S. Nazis with college educations were sent to Stuttgart for a special eight-month course at the Propaganda Center.”
Wishing to avoid some of the taint of racism that characterized the American military during the First World war, Republican Senator William Barbour (1888 – 1943) announced that he intended to introduce an amendment to the 1940 conscription legislation that would open all branches of the U.S. Military to everyone regardless of skin color. The article goes on to list all the various branches that practiced racial discrimination.
Paris belongs to Adolf Hitler. Abandoned by the French and declared an open city to prevent its destruction, the capital of France was turned over whole to the Nazi invaders early this morning.
Click here to read about the 1944 liberation of Paris.
A year and a half before Pearl Harbor, many Americans, 10,000 to be exact, were active in welcoming British children, ages 5 – 16, to their homes. This was a time when it was widely believed that a Nazi invasion of Britain was imminent and the Battle of Britain was in full-swing:
Nobody knows how many will be admitted or how many will land in Canada on the first child-refugee ship, due three weeks from now.The quota for British children is 6,500 a-month; for children from other countries quotas are considerably lower.
To read about the short and productive life of New York’s PM, click here…
Coca-Cola may be the real thing, but in 1940 Pepsi had launched the ad that made Madison Avenue sit up and realize the true power of radio advertising. It was the famous radio jingle that we still hear today in every play, movie and TV show wishing to create the perfect Forties atmosphere – you know the one: Pepsi Cola hits the spot, etc., etc., etc. A real toe-tapper. The attached article will clue you-in to it’s significance.
PM correspondent Richard O. Boyer (1903 – 1973) was in Berlin in June of 1940 when Paris fell to the German Army. He was dumbstruck by the surprising gloominess that hung heavily upon the German people the week of that great victory:
I could not understand it all and could scarcely believe the testimony of my own eyes. The scarlet banners with their black swastikas that garlanded the city everywhere in response to Hitler’s orders seemed only to emphasize the worried melancholy. The victory bells that rang each day at noon acquired the sound of a funeral dirge when one looked at the tired, pinched faces of the Germans hurrying along the pavements … When I expressed surprise to a glum man sitting near me he glanced impatiently up and only said, ‘We celebrated once in 1914’.
The Japanese home front suffered from tuberculosis – click here to read about it…
Here is an article from the man who would shortly be America’s premiere spy-master: William Wild Bill Donovan. In this report he examined the Trojan horse tactics of the German Foreign Organization:
Children of Germans naturalized half a century ago are still counted German by Berlin and every effort is made to convince them of the fact… It is safe to say that a very fair proportion of the non-refugee Germans who have become American since Hitler came to power did so with the secret intention of turning free and democratic America into ‘their‘ – that is, Hitler’s – America.
Appearing in the pages of a slightly left-leaning New York paper was this obituary of Leon Trotsky (1879 – 1940):
Thus, at 9:25 last night, ended the life of the man who, with Lenin, brought about the world’s most profound revolution and with his death, ended the bitterest of modern feuds – Trotsky against Stalin.
To fulfill the [Pentagon’s requirements] the President plans to send Congress one more defense message asking for another $5,000,000,000. After that, with machine industries saturated with orders, Congress can sit back and survey the defense picture – provided England doesn’t collapse overnight… Acting Secretary of the Navy Compton announced yesterday the award of contracts for three aircraft carriers and two cruisers to the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co….
In spite of the incredible films that Hollywood churned out in 1939 – Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, it seemed that there were some folks in 1940 who just wouldn’t be satisfied. This completely irked the citizens of Hollywood. And so the editor of Variety dispatched pollsters hither and yon to ask why they
thought the movies stunk.
A British convoy in the Straits of Dover today ran the gauntlet of terrific cannonade of long range German artillery on the French cliffs from Calais to Boulogne. The spectacular Channel bombardment was witnessed by thousands on the Dover cliffs. They reported that none of the 18 ships in the British convoy appeared to have been hit.
In 1937 the elders of New Jersey passed a law that was tailor-made for the thugs of Camp Nordland. Knowing well who the Bundists were, the law clearly condemned
‘the unlawful assembly of three or more persons’ and ‘and the uttering of speeches, the sale of literature, display of emblems and uniforms which counseled… hatred, violence or hostility against groups of persons… by reason of race, color, religion or manner of worship.’
In 1940 the law netted a harvest of the three highest Bund leaders.
This is a report on the 1939 government-sponsored medical outreach program for California’s Grapes of Wrath migrants:
The counties of San Joaquin Valley have well organized health departments… [Migrants] are entitled to drugs, special diets, eyeglasses and appliances if authorized by the medical director. Since many patients are in need not so much of medicines than of food, the Association may pay a medical grocery bill just as it pays the druggist. It also provides school lunches and nursery meals.
More on migrant laborers can be read here…
From the 1940 editorial pages of PM came this column by Henry Paynter (1899 – 1960) who wrote amusingly about the many frustrations facing Japanese spies in North America.
The identity of almost every Japanese spy or saboteur has been known to U.S. authorities. Every instruction they have received or sent has been decoded…
At the height of their irritation, they confided in the German Consul-General stationed in San Francisco – only to learn after the war that he was an FBI informant (you can read about him here).
Sub-surface evidence that the war on the Russian Front is going into a more crucial phase is mounting… if the present German drive achieves the bulk of its objectives, the Russians will have had some of their resistance power taken away from them. They will not have quite the same communications, the same supply facilities or the same freedom of movement they have had to work with thus far.
The man who once peddled cleaning fluids on the crooked back streets of Vienna, today was preparing to march as conqueror into Paris beneath the arch built to commemorate the triumphs of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The week the French Army collapsed was the week Hollywood experienced the greatest number of production delays. Studio wags believed it was an indicator as to just how many European refugees were employed on their stages. Studio bosses banned all radio and newspapers from their properties in hopes that each production would maintain their respective schedules.
