PM Tabloid

Stalingrad Exordium
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

A short article explaining the significance of Stalingrad to Stalin (aside from its name) and the battle that took place there 24 years earlier during the revolution – when the city was called Tsaritsyn.

RAF Bombs Munich
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Throughout the course of the Second World War, the city of Munich was bombed seventy-four times by both the Royal Air Force as well as the U.S. Army Air Corps. The attached article gives an account of the third of these attacks.

Giant four-motored planes flew in over their targets so low that they could clearly see the Brown House and the Beer Hall where Hitler organized his 1923 putsch… The citizens of Munich will, no doubt, be thinking of their Fuehrer today as they survey the bombed-out buildings and piles of rubble in the streets where Hitler first harangued them about his political ideas.

A Most Memorable Jingle
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

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.

Red Army Gains at Stalingrad
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Soviet counterblows have thrown the Germans back in some places in the Stalingrad area. The early communique announced today that several of the city’s streets were recaptured in bloody hand-to-hand battles.

French Slavery Becomes A Reality
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Petain clamped the chains of Nazi slavery on the men and women of France today. The aged Marshal, Pierre Laval, and their quisling cabinet, promulgated a decree ordering all French men and women to compulsory labor. The decree, which the Government frankly admitted meant slavery in Germany for thousands of Frenchmen, was signed by Petain on Friday night.

Click here to read about the enslavement of Europe…

Red Drive Toward Rostov
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

The Red Army crossed the Don River at three points and advanced spearheads upwards of ten miles to the south of the Stalingrad Axis seige army, threatening it with more strict encirclement and at the time moving the key city of Caucacus. Moscow dispatches stressed the importance of this action which apparently swings a considerable weight along the railroad toward Rostov.

The Partisan War
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

A Red Army officer, who said the German Army was being constantly harassed behind its lines by partizan activities and guerilla warfare, told me details of a number of recent incidents in White Russia. He said almost every village in German-occupied territory had supplied one or more groups of partizans who lived in the woods and used every opportunity to waylay detachments of infantry patrols and tanks.

Despair and Hunger
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

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…

Nighttime Tank Battle
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Canadian war correspondent M.H. Halton reported from the Egyptian desert concerning one of modern war’s most dramatic spectacles – [a] battle of tanks in the dark.

The Man Who Stopped Rommel
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

– from Amazon:Read more …

Brereton Steps Up
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Major General Lewis E. Brereton (1890 – 1967) is the new commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Women In The War Effort
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Eight months into America’s entry into the war came this article from PM reporting the War Manpower Commission and their data as to how many American women up to that point had stepped up to contribute their labor to the war effort (over 1,500,000):

Women have been found to excel men in jobs requiring repetitive skill, finger dexterity and accuracy. They’re the equals of men in a number of other jobs. A U.S. Employment Service has indicated women can do 80 percent of the jobs now done by men.

Americans Answered The Call
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

When it came across the wire that Fall of 1942 saw the U.S. Navy enlistments increase by 150%, the editors of PM were not slow to dispatch a team down to the induction center to check it out (at 67 Broad St., NYC).

Many, many African-Americans answered the call as well, but with understandable reservations…

More about W.W. II induction can be read here

The Dangers of the Bund
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

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.

Saboteurs to be Tried in Military Court
(PM Tabloid & Yank Magazine, 1942)

The eight Nazi agents, who landed from U-boats on the shores of of Long Island and Florida, planning to cripple American war production, are in jail here [Washington, D.C.] under heavy guard, awaiting military trial on four charges that carry the death penalty.