1945 – Page 11 – Old Magazine Articles

The African-Americans Fighting in France and Italy
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Here are two Yank Magazine articles from the same issue that report on the all-black combat units that fought the Germans on two fronts in Europe: one organization fought with the Seventh Army in France and Germany, the other fought with the Fifth Army through Italy:

Hitler would have a hemorrhage if he could see the white boys of the 411th Infantry bull-sessioning, going out on mixed patrols, sleeping in the same bombed buildings, sweating out the same chow lines with the Negro GIs.

Click here to read about the African-American efforts during the First World War.

Jackie Robinson: In the Beginning
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

This column concerns Jackie Robinson’s non-professional days in sports; his football seasons at Pasadena Junior College, basketball at UCLA and the Kansas City Monarchs. Being an Army publication, the reporter touched upon Robinson’s brief period as a junior officer in the 761st Tank Battalion.

A 1951 article about the Negro Baseball League can be read here

In 1969, Jackie Robinson wrote about African-American racists, click here to read it…

Click here to read a 1954 article about Willie Mays.

Discrimination Abroad
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

Much has been written and much more whispered about relations between American Negro soldiers and white girls in Britain and elsewhere. To get at the facts, Newsweek assigned William Wilson of its London bureau to a candid review of the subject. His findings , largely from the standpoint of the Negro soldiers themselves [are as follow].

The Guerrilla War That Never Was
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

During the Autumn of 1944, when the great momentum was with the Allies and the German Army was in rapid retreat, the SS newspaper Das Schwartz Korps declared that an Allied-occupied Germany would not be a placid land:

The Allied soldiers shall find no peace. Death will lurk behind every corner. They might establish a civilian administration, but its leaders would not live a month. Nobody could execute the enemy’s orders without digging his own grave. No judge could pronounce sentences dictated by the enemy without being crucified in his own window frame in the dead of night.

This article goes into great detail concerning how the SS intended to make good on these words.

Heroes of the Battle of Britain
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

A list of five outstanding Britons (two women and three men) accompanied by a description of their selfless acts performed during the Nazi Blitz on their homeland.

Who dares to doubt when Britons sing that there will always be an England?

Three Doolittle Raiders Released from Captivity
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

A report from Newsweek on the August 21, 1945 liberation of three Doolittle Raiders who had been in captivity since April 18, 1942.

Click here to read about the Canadian POWs who collaborated with the Nazis.

The Dos and Don’t in Men’s Suiting of the Forties
(Pic Magazine, 1945)

This article appeared in an issue Click Magazine that was deliberately edited to aid those young men who had been wearing uniforms for the past few years and, subsequently, had no knowledge whatever of tailoring or of fabric that was not government issued. It consists of a handy guide for the aspiring dandy showing just how a gentleman’s suit should fit if it is to be properly worn.

Read an article about the history of Brooks Brothers

Young Frank Sinatra
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Nobody has been able to figure out to anyone’s satisfaction why Sinatra has the effect he has on his Bobby Sox fans. One of his secretaries, a cute dish whose husband is serving overseas, said: ‘The doctors say it’s just because he’s got a very sexy voice, but I’ve been with him a year now and his voice doesn’t do a thing to me’.

Maybe it’s the war.

The Road to Pearl Harbor
(United States News, 1945)

It now becomes apparent that the U.S. Government, long before Pearl Harbor, knew Tokyo’s war plans almost as thoroughly as did the Japanese. To all practical purposes, Washington had ears attuned to the most intimate, secret sessions of Japan’s cabinet.

A year and a half before the Pearl Harbor attack, Naval Intelligence sold a Japanese agent some bogus plans of the naval installation – more about this can be read here.

Dancer Mia Slavenska
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

Here is a 1945 article about the Croatian-born American ballerina Mia Slavenska (1916 – 2002) and her popularity. The article divides its column space between telling us about the dancer and providing a brief history of ballet – and how it was once joined at the hip with opera.

Racial Double Standards in the War
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

When the YANK staff writers asked the G.I.s to name the greater menace to our country and our values -most of the servicemen polled seemed to agree that the real enemies were from Japan; while Germany, it was believed by most, simply had to be brought back into the fold.

Another article contrasting the Germans and Japanese can be read here…

‘Anger at Nazi Atrocities”
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

During the closing weeks of the war it was estimated that the Germans lorded over as many as 65,000 American POWs. Likewise, in the United States, there were 320,118 German Prisoners of War held captive. This article compares and contrasts how each army chose to treat their prisoners.

Nazi Infiltrators
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

The greatest deception deployed by the German Army during the the Ardennes Offensive was to parachute Nazi commandos into the American lines – men who had been raised in the U.S. and spoke the language well. They wore American uniforms and performed heinous acts of sabotage, and as this article spells out, lured many GIs to their deaths.

Two of these Germans attempted to kidnap and assassinate General Eisenhower, click here to read about it…

The Malmedy Massacre
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Attached is a stirring collection of eyewitness accounts by the American survivors of the Malmedy Massacre (December 17, 1944) that took place during the Battle of the Bulge.

The German officer in the car stood up, took deliberate aim with a pistol at an American medical officer in the front rank of the prisoners and fired. As the medical officer fell, the Germans fired again and another American dropped. Immediately two tanks at the end of the field opened up with their machine guns on the defenseless prisoners…

By thew war’s end it was revealed that 43% of American prisoners of war had died in Japanese camps; by contrast, 1% had died in German POW camps.

Click here to read about the Nazi murder of an American Jewish P.O.W.

Nightmare At Stalag IXB
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

On April 2, 1945, elements of the American First Army liberated a German prison camp adjacent to the little town of Orb, Germany:

What they found there appalled even the toughest GI and seemed to demonstrate that in some cases at least the Germans had treated British and American prisoners of war as badly as any of the pitiful slave laborers.

An Interview with the Author
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A Yank Magazine interview with the author of Gone with the Wind (1936).

At the time this article was printed, Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949; Pulitzer Prize 1937) was an American publishing phenomenon; Gone with the Wind (or GWTW, to those in the know) was said to be the fastest selling novel in the history of American publishing. Her one book had a sales record of 50,000 copies in one day and approximately 1,500,000 during it’s first year. By May of 1941 the sales reached 3,368,000 in the English language alone (there were 18 translations made in all; the novel was a blockbuster in Germany, where 5000,000 editions were swiftly sold).

Available from Amazon: Gone with the Wind

The Jumping General: James Gavin of the 82nd Airborne
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

In the fall of 1978 former TIME MAGAZINE war correspondent Bill Walton remarked privately about how wildly inappropriate it was to cast the pretty-boy actor Ryan O’Neal in the roll as General James M. Gavin (1907 – 1990) for the epic war film, A Bridge Too Far. Having dropped into Normandy in 1944 with a typewriter strapped to his chest, Walton witnessed first-hand the grit and combat leadership skills that made Gavin so remarkable. The attached YANK article tells the tale of Gavin’s teen-age enlistment, his meteoric rise up the chain of command and his early advocacy for a U.S. Army parachute infantry divisions.

Another article contrasting the Germans and the Japanese can be read here…

Is your name Anderson?

Operation Varsity: The Last Parachute Drop of the War
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

The seasoned war correspondent explained in the attached article as to why Operation Market Garden was such a disaster (and the censors let him) and why the next ambitious Allied parachute assault, Operation Varsity, would be different. Reminiscing about all that he saw of the famed parachute jump beyond the Rhine prior to being forced to turn-tail and bail out over English-occupied Belgium, he observed:

…the C-46s come in and apparently walk into a wall of flak. I could not see the flak, but one plane after another went down. All our attention was on our own ship. It could blow up in mid-air at any moment. From the pilot’s compartment came streams of stinging smoke.