World War Two – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

A Blitzkrieg Refugee Speaks
(The American Magazine, 1941)

One of Hitler’s refugees from Warsaw recalled the terror of the Nazi attack on her city:

In a mad panic I ran through streets that were a sea of flames, dragging by the hand my two children, aged eight and three. I have seen wounded and dead. I lost many friends and all my belongings. I was a refugee. And for months I suffered hunger and cold… I can still see myself pressed against the wall, holding the children tight, and waiting, waiting for the bomb to crash…

Click here to read about the fall of Paris…

‘Why Hitler Thinks He’ll Win”
(The American Magazine, 1942)

This is a great article, penned by an American correspondent who had actually sat face-to-face with Hitler on numerous occasions. He tells the reader many of his observations concerning the man’s personality, expressions and what he has observed regarding the German people:

I have presented [in this article] the essential psychological and material factors in Hitler’s conviction that he will still win the war. There were signs even while I was still in Germany that the German people have given up the dream of a ‘total victory’ to follow their total war.

More about Adolf Hitler can be read here…

Rome Falls
(Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

The capture of the Eternal City – first Axis capital to fall to the Allies – came on the 275 day of the Italian invasion and realized the political and psychological objective of the entire campaign. Yet, for the Allied Armies, the fall of Rome was rather the beginning than the end of the job. Paced by the air forces, without a pause the troops rolled on through the city and across the Tiber in a drive aimed at smashing completely the retreating German forces.

Front-Line Sergeants Talk Combat and Rant About Replacements
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The editors of Yank assembled six veteran platoon sergeants to talk about mistakes that most U.S. Army replacements make when they go into combat, and to speak seriously about which weapons and small unit tactics work best when confronting the German enemy:

The first mistake recruits make under fire began T/Sgt. Harry R. Moore, rifle platoon sergeant from Fort Worth, Texas, is that they freeze and bunch up. They drop to the ground and just lie there; won’t even fire back. I had one man just lie there while a German came right up and shot him. He still wouldn’t fight back.

<Click here to read about how the Army addressed the problem of soldiers who wouldn’t pull their triggers…

U.S. Post Office Stamps Honoring Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The philatelists in our audience know well the G.I. stamps issued by the U.S. Post Office in 1945; what they may not know are some of the stories that lay behind them (some stories are sad and some are merely pathetic).

The Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact
(Pathfinder, 1948)

During the April of 1945 elements of the U.S. First Army barreled across the countryside of central Germany. Coming across the chateau outside of the Harz Mountain village of Degenershausen it must have seemed to them to be just another pretty pile of high class European rocks, just like all the other ones they’d been stumbling upon since D-Day – but they soon found that the joint was used to house many of the records of pertaining to German diplomacy between the years 1871 through 1944. This article lays bare some of the hidden details in the agreement that was struck between foreign ministers Molotov and Ribbentrop in 1939; the treaty that came to be known as the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact.

Read about the earliest post-war sightings of Hitler: 1945-1955
<P

U.S. Army Casualties: 1941 – 1944
(United States News, 1944)

Here are the U.S. Army casualty figures from December, 1941 through November, 1944. The provided graph points out the following major events that ushered in the larger numbers:

• The Philippine collapse

• The American landings in North Africa

• The Battle of Kasserine Pass

• The Sicily Landings

• Anzio

• D-Day

Shortly after this article appeared on the newsstands the Germans launched their winter counter-offensive in the Ardennes. The editors of this magazine anticipated the American losses for 1945 to be the highest yet.

Click here to read General Marshall’s end-of-war remarks about American casualty figures.

A G.I. Rememberance of the ETO dead…

‘Cash and Carry”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

Cash and carry was a diplomatic trade policy set in place by the FDR administration; it was crafted during a special session of the U.S. Congress on September 21, 1939, as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. It replaced the Neutrality Act of 1937, by which belligerent parties would purchase only non-military goods from the United States so long as the client states in question paid in cash at the time of purchase and assumed full responsibility for transportation. The 1939 Cash and carry revision allowed for the purchasing of military arms to belligerents on the same cash-and-carry basis. The purpose of the policy was to maintain neutrality between the United States and European nations while giving aid to Britain by allowing them to buy non war materials.

Shortly after the 1940 election, British Prime Minister Churchill told FDR that Britain could no longer afford to buy military supplies under the code of cash and carry and a new agreement needed to be agreed upon. The President then persuaded Congress to swap cash-and-carry with Lend-Lease – a new piece of legislation that granted the president authority to sell, exchange, lend, or lease war materiel to any nation whose defense was vital to U.S. security.

Highlights of the Lend-Lease Act
(Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Here is an article that was written on the third anniversary of the passage of the Lend-Lease Act and it lists the numerous munitions that were made available to the allied nations and who signed the agreement.

Anticipating Cell Phones in 1945
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

I recommend this article primarily for it’s three funny illustrations; the copy is not likely to hold your attention for too long. It concerns civilian applications for military technology, such as that era’s hand-held radios that were the wonder of the period. As you will see from the illustrations, the cartoonist recognized so well that such inventions could serve as the grandfather of the cell phone and he drew people on the street and driving cars -all chatting away on their walkie-talkies. Good fun.

Mid-War Production Figures
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)

During the Summer of 1943, James F. Byrenes, FDR’s Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization, gave a report on the wartime production output for that period. 1943 proved to have been a turning point for the Allied war efforts on both fronts.

1943: The Year Everything Changed for the Allies
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

By the Autumn of 1943 it was becoming apparent to both parties that the Allies were coming into their own. The Axis was discovering to their surprise that they were not the only ones who knew how to fight – they’d been routed from North Africa, creamed at Stalingrad and bloodied at the Bismarck Sea:

On every front in this global war Axis strategy is definitely on the defensive.

Similar articles can be read here and here…

One year later, this article would appear…

With the Brazilians in Italy
(Newsweek & Yank Magazines, 1944)

The attached YANK MAGAZINE article was written from the perspective of the American G.I.; it lays out a few peculiar facts about life in the World War Two Brazilian Army:

Every type of South American racial strain is represented. This gives a squad the appearance of a capsule League of Nations, except that there are no blonds.

Read about the day Brazil declared war on Nazi Germany…

Mexico preferred not to participate in the war, but they did kick all the Fascist spies out of their country, click here to read about it…

Mexico: American Ally
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

When Manuel Avila Camacho (1897 – 1955) came to power as the president of Mexico (1940 – 1946) he immediately went to work kicking out the Fascist spies from Japan and Germany

He banned Nazi newspapers and cut Nazis off the air. He squashed the anti-Semitic Gold Shirts of Monterey and purged fifth columnists in key positions. He washed his hands of the Nazis and extended a hearty handclasp to Roosevelt.

The Battle of Berlin
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

The long-awaited climax of the great Allied air offensive against Germany came like a thunderclap last week. It was the opening of the Battle of Berlin… According to the [British Ministry of Economic Warfare], the Germans have evacuated nonessential civilians (children, invalids and the aged) just as the British had from London three years before. But all evidence indicated that government officials and essential workers still remained in the German capital.

Berlin police counted 5,680 dead.

More on the bombing of Germany can be read here…

Who was Kilroy?
(Various Sources, 1945 -7)

The three articles attached herein serve as good examples that illustrate the wide-spread curiosity found in most quarters of the United States as to who was this G.I. who kept writing KILROY WAS HERE on so many walls, both foreign and domestic, during the past three and a half years of war? It was not simply the returning veterans who felt a need to know, but the folks who had toiled on the home front as well.

Is your name Anderson?

Hitler’s 1942 Challenges
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

The dilemma before Hitler is that he must marshall all his air strength to crush Russia. He cannot do so without weakening his air units in France or the Mediterranean. Such a move would threaten him either with an Allied invasion of the Continent or the disruption of the Axis supply lines to Africa… The Luftwaffe had lost 15,000 planes in Russia – and with them the hope of regaining air superiority in Russian skies.

The Man Germany Hates Most
(Collier’s Magazine, 1944)

This is the story of Bomber Harris, also known as Sir Arthur Travers Harris, Marshal of the Royal Air Force (1892 – 1984) between the years 1942 through 1945. He was the daily tormentor of Nazi Germany, striving relentlessly to bring an end to German hostilities by bombing their home front without pity. This article tells the tale of Harris the soldier and Harris the man: his W.W. I experiences, his inter-war training and Washington posting, his W.W. II contributions as Air Marshal as well as his family life.

Click here to read W.W. II articles about life in Harris-plagued Germany.

Click here to read about the 1943 bombing campaign against Germany.