Articles from 1943
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.
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.
Berlin police counted 5,680 dead.
More on the bombing of Germany can be read here…
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!
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.
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.
Articles about the W.W. I Marines can be read HERE…
Read what the U.S. Army psychologists had to say about courage in war.
Read what the editors of YANK MAGAZINE thought about the Marine Corps Magazine, LEATHERNECK…
Read about the Women Marines of W.W. II HERE.
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.
U.S. submarines toll of Japanese ships reaches 256 since Pearl Harbor . Russell Islands are scenes of bitter dog-fights.
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.
You might also enjoy reading this article about the carrier pigeons of W.W. I.
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.
With the loss of Asian sources for rope fiber, the Department of Agriculture requested American farmers harvest marijuana to make up for the dearth.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the years to come, he would be known as the Oscar Award winning screenwriter for A Place in the Sun
(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…
1943 was truly the year that proved to have been the turning point in the war, click here to read about it…
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.
1943 was truly the year that proved to have been the turning point in the war, click here to read about it…
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.
