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Find old World War 2 articles here. We have great newspaper articles from wwii
take a look today!
“Lightning warfare suggests initiative and spirit of the offensive; it carries with it the element of surprise, not so much in the happening as in the speed and force with which the attack is launched and delivered.”
Click here to read about the nature of Total war.
Click here to read about a Kamikaze attack like no other…
“Lightning warfare suggests initiative and spirit of the offensive; it carries with it the element of surprise, not so much in the happening as in the speed and force with which the attack is launched and delivered.”
Click here to read about the nature of Total war.
Click here to read about a Kamikaze attack like no other…
Recalling the general melancholia that descended upon many societies following the slaughterous First World War, a former member of the British Parliament asked whether we should expect the same after an even larger world war.
If you would like to read 1920 article about the disillusioned post-war spirit, click here.
A PM reporter was present one day in Germany as a mixed mob of Third Army grunts and tank men had a tête-à -tête concerning their observations of the German people:
“Aren’t these Heinies the stupidest people you ever saw?”
“On March 10, 1945, a group of Superforts crossed Japan’s coast line. Behind them came another group, and another in a line stretching far back toward Saipan. In a long, thin file they roared over Tokyo. They flew low and out of their open bellies spilled bombs of jellied gasoline. When they hit, they burst, spewing out billowing, all-consuming fire. The flames leaped across fire lanes, swallowed factories, destroyed skyscrapers.”
Click here to read about August 28, 1945 – the day the American occupation began.
Flying home after bombing Tunis, the B-17 All-American with a full crew of ten onboard was sliced open at the rear by a nazi fighter plane that nearly severed her tail. How the craft stayed up in the air was anybody’s guess.
Here is an article from 1943, the year everything changed for the Axis. The article explains all that was involved with the stout-hearted raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania. 177 American bombers were sent to do the job.
“From Ploesti, the Nazis extracted oil and oil products which maintained the entire German and Italian fleets, and third of the whole German air force in Russia. Around the Ploesti installations, the Germans had raised a forest of antiaircraft guns of large and small calibers. They had built blast walls around plants’ vital parts and spotted airdromes from which fighters could rise to intercept our bombers.”
“Comparing the American [daylight] raids with the RAF [nighttime] incursions, it was certainly a great shock to Berliners to find their city now open to round-the-clock bombing.”
“We don’t mind the Yanks who come when the sun shines and it’s warm. It’s the Tommies sneaking in at night that we don’t like so much.”
Click here to read about the harried everyday life on a U.S. bomber base in England…
A report by a Swiss journalist as to what becomes of the Germans who are left homeless after the bombings:
“In most cities they immediately get 200 marks cash payment. The money is fresh and clean from the press… With cup in hand, the bombed-outers wait in the streets for the army goulash truck to drive up and give them a feed. Sometimes they wait for as much forty-eight hours. People who don’t like or cannot get the army goulash build themselves a fire and cook the horses, dogs and cats that lie around the street…”
American diplomats caught in Germany, Austria, Italy and other occupied lands at the time of FDR’s declaration of war were subject to five months of incarceration before they were repatriated. The attached article tells of the hardships and hunger experienced by the citizens of those nations as the war entered its third year. Also seen was the tremendous distrust that was developing between the Italians and the Germans.
“The motto of the Engineer Amphibian Command is “Put’em Across”, and its principle is aptly put by Brigadier General Daniel Noce (1894−1976) , chief of the U.S. Army’s amphibious operations in the European theater, who built this force from scratch. ‘Water between us and the enemy is an avenue, not an obstacle’ he says.”
This is a heartfelt memoir typed by one who knew the many purposes served by a U.S.N. troop transport ship during World War II. The author had served on many different troopships and seen them from all angels.
“A transport has to be a clean ship, but on D-Day no ship is clean. It isn’t dirt that gets into everything: it’s blood. All along the deck, the gangways, the passageways, there is the color and the smell of blood. Such things can’t be helped, even on the cleanest ships.”
As America was gearing up to fight another world war, the brass caps were reminded how incapable they were at identifying and isolating the mental incompetents during the last war, and they swore this war would be different. Numerous military and civilian psychiatrists were convened, and it was concluded that of the millions of men called, at least 15 percent would likely be off-their-rockers.
“Philadelphia Coast Guardsmen yesterday observed the surrender of Germany by recalling that their branch of service fired the first American shot in the war against Germany, capturing the first enemy ship and taking the first Nazi prisoner… It was in September, 1941, that the Coast Guard cutter Northland captured the Norwegian freighter Busko, loaded with equipment for a German weather station to be established in Greenland.”
This article was written during a time when guerrilla armies seemed to be popping up all over the globe, and, no doubt, many men and women must have been asking themselves, “What if it happens here? Could I fight?” And with that, out stepped Bert “Yank” Levy (1897 – 1965), a well-seasoned man of war who wrote a mass market paperback for the English speaking world: Guerrilla Warfare (Amazon). Attached are a few pages from his book.
Within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack, the nations of Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Dominion of Canada all declared war upon Imperial Japan. The United States wouldn’t do so until the next morning.
Although there were a number of Latin American countries that declared war on the Axis, only two, Brazil and Mexico, put men in the field (Mexican nationals served in the U.S. military)- click here to read about the Brazilians.
Five months before America entered the war, pollsters sallied forth onto the streets with numerous queries:
“On the question, ‘Shall the United States enter the war to help Britain defeat Hitler?’ The New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune found war sentiment ranging from 3 out of 10 voters in New York State to 2 out of 11 in Illinois.”
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.
