Jim Crow Officer Corps
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
The brainiac who wrote the Jim Crow rules for the U.S. Army officer corps forgot to segregate the officer’s clubs.
1945
Articles from 1945
The Two World Wars Compared
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
Using the most accurate figures available to them at the time, the editors at PM Daily News compared and contrasted the two world wars for their readers in their VJ-Day issue.
The American Leviathan
(Liberty Magazine, 1945)
Between the years 1941 and 1945 the United States achieved a level of power that the tyrants of yore only dreamed about:
“Clearly here was a phenomenon to make anyone sit up and take notice – a new kind of military machine, a new kind of global power that apparently could be delivered anywhere in the world, at any time… By building 75,000 to 100,000 planes yearly and by improving planes and motors, we have emerged suddenly as an air power…No other nation has made a comparable investment in carrier aviation. No other nation would dare to put an expeditionary force to sea against a nation strong in carriers and land -based aircraft…With the object of defending ourselves, we have solved one problem after another until we have stumbled on a formula for conquering most of the world.”
A similar article appeared twenty years earlier…
One Journalist’s Encounter with General Patton
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
We have no idea who Tom O’Reilly was – beyond what can be immediately conjectured, that he was a staff columnist with PM, and so admired that they thought it a grand idea to clean him up and send him off to see Nazi Germany in its death throes. O’Reilly had a very candid, off-the-cuff manner of writing, which came across as quite humorous when he explains how unimpressed he was with General Patton’s dramatic appearance.
Press Reviews from Coast to Coast
(PM Tabloid,1945)
Here is a smattering of editorial opinions collected from numerous newspapers across the United States concerning the Japanese surrender and the close of World War II.
Goering Captured
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“Reich Marshall Hermann Goering, No. 2 Nazi, wanted by civilization as directly responsible for the torture and death of millions innocent men, women and children, is well and not unhappy…Goering seemed delighted with his captivity and appeared unaware that he may be tried as a major war criminal.”
The Second Strongest in the West
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)
When Brazil joined forces with the Allies in 1942, they were soon lavished with numerous ships, submarines and armaments that would aid them in their struggle against global Fascism. By the time 1945 rolled around, it became clear to anyone in the region that Brazil had become the second mightiest nation in the hemisphere.
Violence Directed at Veterans
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
The White Crackers residing in California cared little about the triumphs of the 442: during the Spring of 1945, two honorably discharged Japanese Americans were fired upon by passing cars – the racists were never caught. Secretary of War Henry Stimson labeled the attacks as “an inexcusable and dastardly outrage.”
American Leviathan
“It is the purpose of this article to show how in three years we have broken the shackles of all
They Gave Their All for the Troops
(Liberty Magazine, 1945)
This is one of the more enjoyable reads on the site. Published during the Summer of 1945, with the war in Europe over and the Japanese capitulation only six weeks away, the Liberty editors saw fit to run an article that recalled the absolute devotion that so many USO performers displayed again and again in order to guarantee that American military personnel abroad was fully entertained and amused – no matter their proximity to the enemy.
An Eye-Full of Post-War Tokyo
An eyewitness account of the devastation delivered to Tokyo as reported by the first Americans to enter that city following the Japanese surrender some weeks earlier:
The people of Tokyo are taking the arrival of the first few Americans with impeccable Japanese calm. Sometimes they turn and look at us twice, but they have shown no emotion toward us except a mild curiosity and occasional amusement…They are still proud and a little bit superior. They know they lost the war, but they are not apologizing for it.
Click here to read about the humbled Japan.
Bill Mauldin of The Stars & Stripes
(Yank Magazine, 1945)
No other cartoonist during the Second World War ever portrayed the American GI so knowingly and with more sympathy than the Stars & Stripes cartoonist Sgt. Bill Mauldin (1921 – 2003), who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons in 1945.
Mauldin wrote the attached essay at the end of the war and gave the Yank Magazine readers an earful regarding his understanding of the front, the rear and all the the blessed officers in between
Click here to read a wartime interview with another popular 1940s American cartoonist: Milton Caniff.
He Died Badly
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)
An Italian partisan fighter described to an American correspondent exactly how Benito Mussolini met his end.
The U.S. Army’s Cannabis Study
(Newesweek Magazine, 1945)
Posted herein is a report on the seven-month study on the effects marijuana has on military personnel that was conducted in 1944:
A great many of [the participants] attempted to form a compensatory image of themselves as superior people. ‘I could be a general like MacArthur. He looks smooth – like he’s high all the time.’
Kicking God Out of the Schools
(Newsweek Magazine & PM Tabloid, 1945)
A religion-in-the-schools trial, held last week in the Champaign, Illinois Circuit Court, will probably make history. The plaintiff was Mrs. Vashti McCollum, 32, pert, wide-eyed wife of a University of Illinois professor, demanding that the Champaign School Board discontinue a five-year program of religious instruction in school buildings, on the ground that the constitutional separation of church and state is jeopardized.
Posted herein was one of the first of many articles concerning what would come to known as the landmark Supreme Court case McCollum v. Board of Education (1948): the court decided in her favor.
Click here to read about Darwin in the schools.
The King Tiger Tank
(U.S. Dept. of War, 1945)
This article is illustrated with a photograph of the King Tiger tank and accompanied by some vital statistics and assorted observations that were documented by the U.S. Department of War and printed in one of their manuals in March of 1945:
The king Tiger is a tank designed essentially for defensive warfare or for breaking through strong lines of defense. It is unsuitable for rapid maneuver and highly mobile warfare because of its great weight and and low speed…The King Tiger virtually is invulnerable to frontal attack, but the flanks, which are less well protected, can be penetrated by Allied antitank weapons at most normal combat ranges.
The American answer to the Tiger was the M26 Pershing Tank; read about it here.
If you wish to read about the only German tank of World War I, click here.
The Ex-Soldier-Goes Shopping
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)
In light of the fact that all Army personnel would be issued $300 with their honorable discharge papers, the fashion editor for Esquire Magazine, Henry Jackson, decided to moonlight at Collier’s in order to provide some solid fashion-tips on how best to spend that hard-earned cash.