World War Two – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

The Australian Soldier
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Attached is a two page article concerning the basic lot of the World War Two Australian soldier: his pay, his kit, his battles and the general reputation of the Australian Imperial Forces (A.I.F.):

…the Australian Imperial Forces who have – and are seeing action all over the world…has fought in every theater in which British forces have been engaged…They have especially distinguished themselves at El Alamein in the North African campaign and in the Papuan and New Guinea campaigns.

Four years after the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese newspaper editorial expressed deep regret for Japan’s aggressiveness in the Second World War, click here to read about it…

The Aussies Pull It Together
(The American Magazine, 1942)

The attached 1942 article tells the remarkable story of Prime Minister John Curtin (1885 – 1945) and his amazing Australians – together they redefined themselves as a wool-producing agrarian nation and began producing the necessary tools of war.

Killing
(Coronet Magazine, 1944)

A World War Two article by a young Polish guerrilla who graphically explains what it is like to kill a man, an experience he abhors:

…then all at once he gave a shiver and relaxed, I released my grip and he fell to the ground.

Brazil Goes to War
(Click Magazine, 1942)

The government of Brazil declared war on Hitler’s Germany on August 22, 1942, and you’d best believe that the over-paid photographers of CLICK MAGAZINE were Johnny-on-the-spot to document all the joyous mayhem that let loose on those flag-strewn boulevards of the Brazilian capitol:

Brazilians are fighting mad. When Brazil joined the United Nations in war on August 22nd, the formal declaration was a climax to the democratic action of its citizens who began, months ago, to let the world know how they felt about the Axis.

The pent-up rage of a sorely-tried nation burst in earnest when war was declared. With unanimous enthusiasm, the people mobbed the streets, cheering everything that was part of the Allied cause…Day after day, anti-fascist demonstrations, and pageants choked the streets of Rio de Janiero, where the pictures on this page were taken.

On that day, Brazil became the 32nd nation to declare war against Germany.

*Read a 1944 Article About the Brazilian Army in Italy*

Can The U.S. Stay Out of The War?
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Even as early as 1937, the dark clouds of war could be seen on the horizon. The U.S. Congress still smarted from the last world war and did not want to be lured in to newest installment. Six months after this article was first read the Neutrality Act of 1937 would be passed – this column explains much of the thought that went into it.

Europe Enslaved
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Today in Europe there are more slaves than ever existed on any continent at any time. Hitler had to fight for every one of them… They used gangs, particularly in Poland, to round up workers from the streets, to drag them from churches and theaters and even from homes to go to work in Germany.

At the time it was estimated that there were as many as 6,000,000 slaves in Germany; half of them were prisoners of war.

Click here to read about the enslavement of France…

The American Invasion of Saipan
(The American Magazine, 1944)

The battle of Saipan spanned the period between June 15 through July 9, 1944. Here is an eyewitness account of the three week battle:

Reveille for the Japanese garrison on Saipan sounded abruptly at five-forty that morning of D-Day minus one, with a salvo from the 14-inch rifles of one of our battleships. Other guns, big and small, joined the opening chorus and from than on we realized why we had stuffed the cotton in our ears. The bass drum jam session was to continue for hours.

More Boys Are Born During War
(Yank & Pic Magazines, 1945)

The fact that more boy babies are born during and immediately after major wars is a phenomenon that was discovered by the underpaid statisticians employed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1942. The articles that are attached are but two of what was probably four hundred articles that appeared on the topic that year. The writers and thinkers of the digital age continue studying this actuality – among them is the gang over at Psychology Today who wrote:

Scientists have known for a long time that more boys than usual are born during and after major wars. The phenomenon was first noticed in 1954 with regard to white children born during World War II in the United States. It has since been replicated for most of the belligerent nations in both World Wars. The phenomenon has been dubbed the ‘returning soldier effect.’ There is no doubt that the phenomenon is real, but nobody has been able to explain it. Why are soldiers who return from wars more likely to father sons than other men?

The Brutality of Combat
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)

The shock of modern battle is so severe to nervous systems that the hair color of thousands of young men in the Pacific and European theaters of war has turned gray overnight.

Not surprisingly, the young men in question had no interest in resembling their grandfathers
and so the services of a patriotic hair dye manu- facturing firm were secured.

Contest On Okinawa
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Writing about the bitter fighting on Okinawa some years after the war, Marine veteran Eugene Sledge remarked that he and his comrades had been reduced to Twentieth Century savages. Much of what he said is confirmed in the attached Yank article from 1945 that clearly illustrated the terror that was experienced by G.I.s and Marines on that island after the sun went down.

Ol’ Blood ‘N Guts Goes South
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

Here is the Newsweek obituary for the American W.W. II army commander General George S. Patton:

As spectacular in his tactics as in his speech, he used his armor as Jeb Stuart employed his cavalry… Time after time his divisions broke through and slashed forward in drives which made military history. After the victory, German generals said they had feared him more than any other American field commander.

Click here to read about Patton’s prayer for good weather during the Battle of the Bulge…

Click here to read about the Patton Tank in the Korean War…

The Japanese Did Not Like The Germans
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

A ranking member of of the German embassy staff in Tokyo told me a few weeks before Pearl Harbor, ‘If Japan goes to war against America and Britain, our days will be numbered here, too. Japan will wage a race war in which we Germans will be regarded as enemies along with the rest of the white race. It is only a matter of time. They intend to conquer all of us, but they are smart enough not to tackle all of us at once.’

Imperial Japan had a great many reasons to dislike their Nazi ally and most of them were far more legitimate than this one. All of them are are laid out in the attached article.

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?

The Films of the U.S. Army Signal Corps
(Click Magazine, 1943)

An article from Click Magazine designed for civilian consumption concerning the U.S. Signal Corps and their efforts to film and photograph as much of the war as was possible in order that the brass hats far off to the rear could sit comfortably and understand what was needed. The article is illustrated with six war photographs and the captions explaining what information was gleaned from each:

Every detail of these films is scrupulously studied by a group of experts, officers and engineers representing the Army Ground Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Army Air Corps, the Signal Corps the Armored Forces, the Quartermaster Corps and other military units. Naturally, these services are interested in different sections of every film. To facilitate their studies, a device known as the Multiple Film Selector is used.

The Signal Corps Movies of World War I were intended for different uses…

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…

34th Division: From Kasserine, All the Way up the Boot
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

On January 26, 1942 the long awaited boatload of U.S. troops to Great Britain had finally arrived. The first American G.I. to step off the plank and plant his foot on British soil was Pfc. Milburn H. Henke (1918 – 1998) of the 34th Infantry Division; and as the news spread throughout all of John Bull’s island that help had arrived and the first guy had a German surname, the Brits (always big fans of irony) had a good laugh all around.

This article tells the tale of the 1st Battalion, 34th Division which had the distinction of being the longest serving U.S. combat unit in the course of the entire war. It was these men of the Mid-West who took it on the chin that day at Kasserine (America’s first W.W. II battle, which was a defeat), avenged their dead at El Guettar, landed at Salerno, Anzio and fought their way up to Bologna. By the time the war ended, there weren’t many of the original men left, but what few there were reminisce in this article. Interesting gripes about the problems of American uniforms can be read.

The German Surrender
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The attached article is an eye-witness account of the World War II surrender proceedings in Reims, France in the early days of May, 1945. Written in the patois of the 1940s American soldier (which sounded a good deal like the movies of the time), this article describes the goings-on that day by members of the U.S. Army’s 201st Military Police Company, who were not impressed in the least by the likes of German General Gustav Jodl or his naval counterpart, Admiral Hans von Friedeburg:

Sgt. Henry Wheeler of Youngstown, N.Y., said, ‘The wind-up was pretty much what we expected. ‘Ike’ didn’t have anything to do with those phonies until they were ready to quit. Then he went in and told them to sign up. And what does he do as he comes out of the meeting? He shakes hands with the first GI he comes to.

Click here to read about the fall of Paris…