Reasons for Rationing
(American Magazine, 1942)
Attached herein is a fun little chart laying out the reasons why commercial goods on the home front were scarce.
The American Magazine
Articles from The American Magazine
Ration Cheaters
(American Magazine, 1943)
For those blessed to live in a society with a free-market economy, we are pleased to pursue our whims daily – and eight times out of ten, they are made manifest before too long. Yet this was not the case for those living on the W.W. II home front. This article is about the black market that must have been a temptation for everyone back then. The reader will get a true sense of the tyranny Americans had to suffer when our economy was engaged in total war; it was written by one of the autocrats charged with enforcing the rationing laws.
An American Tank in Tunisia
(American Magazine, 1943)
Here is first-person account of life in an M3 Stuart tank fighting in Tunisia:
“We were ordered to hold, and hold we did. But we took a terrible shellacking. We dodged around, spitting at the Germans with our little 37mm gun. Every now and then one of their heavy tank shells or high-velocity 88s would hit one of our light tanks and smash it. The wounded would crawl out, and those who could walk would carry or drag those who couldn’t… In the afternoon, when we were finally ordered to withdraw, we had only 9 of 18 tanks left, and some of those were damaged. We took what wounded we could into the tanks and held them in our arms.”
‘The Black Brain Trust”
(The American Magazine, 1943)
The Black Brain Trust consists of about 25 Negro leaders who have assumed command of America’s 13,000,000 Negroes in their fight for equality. They hold informal meetings to plan their strategy, whether it is to defeat a discriminatory bill in Congress or to overcome a prejudice against a private [in the army]. Few white men know it, but they have already opened a second front in America – a front to the liberation of the dark races.
1950s Texas
(American Magazine, 1952)
Lost in wide-eyed wonder, this journalist reported all that he saw during his four-month journey through The Lone Star State, finding, to his astonishment, that everything those annoying men named Tex had told him throughout the years was absolutely true.
Don’t be offended if Texans fail to thank you for compliments about their state; they are weaned on a sublime conviction that everything in Texas is the biggest or best or both… Anything in Texas that isn’t the biggest or best is bound to be the smallest or the worst; there is no mediocrity.
Click here to read about the U.S. Border Patrol in Texas.
The Outcast Americans
(American Magazine, 1942)
Economically, the departure of the [Japanese-Americans] presented no particular problem in the cities… But it was different in the country. [They] had owned or controlled 11,030 farms valued at $70,000,000. They had produced virtually all the artichokes, early cantaloupes, green peppers and late tomatoes, and most of the early asparagus. They owned or controlled the majority of wholesale produce markets and thousand of retail vegetable stands. When they disappeared, the flow of vegetables stopped. Retail prices went up. Many vegetables vanished entirely. There were rumors of a food shortage.
‘I Backed Hitler”
(American Magazine, 1940)
German millionaire industrialist Fritz Thyssen (1873 – 1951) paid the way for the Nazi party from its earliest days all the way up to Hitler’s place in the sun. When Hitler attacked Poland, Thyssen bailed. In this column he confesses all:
I met Hitler for the first time in 1923… Ludendorf arranged my first meeting with Hitler at the home of a mutual friend. What a different character Hitler was then! He was deferential and anxious to learn. You may not believe me, but he had a sense of humor, actually telling many jokes… Hitler as a speaker was amazing. I asked him how he achieved such success addressing people. He said, ‘I don’t know, but after ten minutes, like a band leader, I usually make contact with the crowd, and then everything is all right.’
General George C. Marshall
(American Magazine, 1940)
A brief 1940 profile of the man President Roosevelt preferred over 33 other generals of higher grade: General George C. Marshall (1880 – 1959):
His most spectacular military feat occurred during the [First] World War, when, as operations chief of the First Army, he moved 500,000 men and 2,700 pieces of artillery from one battlefield to another without a hitch and without letting the enemy get wind of what he was doing.
‘We Raid The Coast of Japan”
(American Magazine, 1943)
Proceed at once to the coast of Japan
Sometimes it is difficult to repress an impulse to whoop with delight, and this was one of them. This was the moment we had lived for, the moment every submariner dreams about… We were ready. War was our trade… Now we were playing for keeps. We were eager to get at it.
Click here to read about the rise of naval aviation.
‘We Can Win On Both Oceans”
(The American Magazine, 1942)
Frank Knox was FDR’s Secretary of the Navy between 1940 through 1944. Arm and arm with his lieutenant, Under Secretary James Forrestal, the two men made good on the Two-Ocean Navy Bill passed by Congress during the summer of 1940:
I am proud of this Navy of ours. Every American has a right to be proud of it, to know that it is, up to now, the greatest navy in history. But we cannot afford to be complacent about it. It is still not the navy that our country needs and that our fighting men in the ships deserve.
Norman Thomas, Socialist Candidate For President
(The American Magazine, 1940)
Here is a profile of the American leftist Norman Thomas (1884 – 1968), who sought the U.S. presidency six (6) times on the Socialist ticket. He was a former clergyman and despite the fact that he wished to ban all private property, nationalize all businesses and put the kibosh on a free press – he still sounded like swell Joe to us.
The Re-Education of German Prisoners of War
(The American Magazine, 1946)
During the earliest days of 1944, the U.S. Army’s Special Projects Division of the Office of the Provost Marshal General was established in order to take on the enormous task of re-educating 360,000 German prisoners of war. Even before the Allies had landed in France it was clear to them that the Germans would soon be blitzkrieging back to the Fatherland and in order to make smooth the process of rebuilding that nation, a few Germans would be required who understood the virtues of democracy. In order to properly see the job through, two schools were set up at Fort Getty, Rhode Island and Fort Eustis, Virginia.
Restraining The Consumer
(American Magazine, 1942)
Click here food rationing at U.S. POW camps. Click here to learn more about the American W.W. II home front…Read
He Censored The Mail
(American Magazine, 1942)
During the Second Word War all mail headed out of the country and all inbound mail from foreign locales fell under the discerning eyes of U.S. Post Office censors. The censors, all 15,000 of them, were under the command a U.S. Army cryptologist named Colonel W. Preston Corderman; click the title link above to learn more about him.
Click here to read about censoring the mail during W.W. I.
Civil Defense Insignias
(The American Magazine, 1941)
Here are the sleeve insignia by which you can identify the various groups of U.S. Civilian Defense Workers – men and women, boys and girls, who volunteer for home duty to protect you in war [emergencies]
The American Draft Dodgers
(The American Magazine, 1942)
This article consists of assorted stories that illustrate the length some American men would go in order to stay out of the military during the Second World War. The article also tells of draft evasion during the First World War.
Click here to read a 1945 article about your average Massachusetts draft board.
The Japanese Home Front
(American Magazine, 1943)
This article was written by Max Hill, who was serving as the Tokyo bureau chief for the Associated Press at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. The column consists of his observations as to how the Japanese home front operated during his seven month incarceration.
Click here to read about the Japanese home front during the early period of the Sino-Japanese War.
Click here to read about the W.W. II German home front.
Ogden Nash on Fashion
(The American Magazine, 1940)
In one of his other verses poet Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971) wrote that women are not female men. In the attached poem he expanded on that thought to a greater degree as he observed women and their approach to fashion.