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Find old World War 2 articles here. We have great newspaper articles from wwii
take a look today!
Moved by the devotion and fortitude of the U.S. Army combat medics serving in the New Guinea campaign, YANK correspondent Dave Richardson wrote this short article in praise of the selfless acts performed by four outstanding medics.
1943 was truly the year that proved to have been the turning point in the war, click here to read about it…
A nice piece of P.R. for the W.W. II Gyrenes:
Since the policy limits Marine Corps personel to 20 percent of the navy, no Marine can specialize as do other service men. He must be a crack rifle and pistol shot, a saboteur, a scout familiar with jungle and city alike. He must run, walk, swim, sail, shoot, and maim better than the men he’s fighting… He glories in this responsibility, as in his corp’s 167-year-old reputation as nonpareil shock troops. He’s never yeilded either that responsibility or reputation to his jealous friends in rough-and-ready Army and Navy units. They resent the Marine. He knows it and doesn’t give a damn, cocky in the knowledge that he’s relied on to pave the way for the Army’s operations and to finish up the Navy’s.
This is a six page photo-essay that is comprised of seventeen images (two in color) of the San Diego Marines, who are identified as the dirtiest and cockiest fighters in the nation’s arsenal.
Click here to read another article about the Marines.
Side by side with with the fighting men who ride to battle goes an army of men who fight with tools and machinery, instead of guns and tanks… That army of fighter-mechanics has grown in importance with the increase in the Army’s dependence on motorized equipment. They operate beyond the glow of headlines – but without the aid of mechanics the Army’s wheels would never turn.
The attached article tells the story of the first Americans to cross the Rhine river into Germany following the capture of the Ludendorf Bridge at Remagen, Germany.
One of the most striking incidents of the first day’s action on the bridge was the way German snipers opened up on their own men who had been taken prisoners. As each batch of PWs was lead across the bridge, a storm of sniper fire from the surrounding hills swept its ranks. Several were killed.
Pictured on page two is a photograph of the first American to make it across: Sgt. Alexander A. Drabik (1910 – 1993) of the 27th Armored Infantry Division.
Click here to read about a popular all-girl band that performed with the USO.
At the time this article went to press the Nazis and their European allies had been defeated and all eyes turned to the Pacific Theater as to when that enemy would also be forced to quit.
Click here to read about a popular all-girl band that performed with the USO.
A YANK staff writer Robert Bendiner (1910 – 2009), summed-up the eventful period that began with the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on
April 12, and ended with the Japanese surrender on August 10, 1945. He pointed out that within that period remarkable changes had been made; not merely the deaths of Hitler, Mussolini and the collapse of Imperial Japan, but it was clear to many that the stage was being set for a new world. The foundations were in place for the creation of a durable world security organization and as if that wasn’t enough, there was a new, hideous weapon called the Atomic Bomb that would cast a long shadow across the land and mark this new era as a unique period in world history.
After a streak like that it would not be surprising if a revulsion against big news should set in. It may well be that people long to pick up a paper in which nothing more cosmic is reported than the city’s reception of a visiting channel-swimmer, and nothing more violent than a tie-up on the Magnolia Avenue trolley line.
Click here to read how British women struggled to understand American slang.
A light and breezy review concerning the findings of a U.S. government study regarding the effectiveness of the Allied strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany:
…the survey authorities report that although air power might have been more advantageously applied in this case or that, its decisive bearing on the victory was undeniable…At sea, its contribution, combined with naval air power, brought an end to the enemy’s greatest naval threat -the U-boat; on land, it helped turn the tide overwhelmingly in favor of allied ground forces.
Articles about the daily hardships in post-war Germany can be read by clicking here.
G.I. JOE MAGAZINE was established shortly after the war by a shrewd, commerce-driven soul who fully recognized that the American veterans of W.W. II would have a good deal to say about their military hardships, and would need a venue in which to do it. The attached article was written by a veteran who preferred to remain anonymous; the righteous indignation can be keenly sensed in his prose as he explained the three-tiered justice system that he believed to have been built into the offices of the U.S. Army military court system. The first tier meted out soft justice for officers, the second dispensed a harsh justice to White enlisted men, and the bottom tier dished-out a far more vile variety to the American soldiers of African descent.
Read an Article about Racial Integration in the U.S. Military
Following his tour of the war fronts, U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (1902 – 1985) put pen to paper in an attempt to express his admiration for the brave and selfless acts that Americans were performing all over the globe:
If asked to say what impressed me on my recent trip to the war theater, my answer would be: the heroic qualities displayed by our American boys. My most lasting impressions were gained in the field and in the hospitals around the globe. It is there that one sees the kind of boy America produces.
Additional praise for the American fighting man can be read here…
The American military personnel who are wounded while fighting the terrorists in both Iraq and Afghanistan are today the beneficiaries of a field hospital system that was developed long ago in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The mobile hospitals developed by the U.S. Army Medical Corps has evolved into a unique life-saving force that has not simply relied on a trained staff but also a fast and well-fueled transportation system. This Yank Magazine article will give the reader a good look at how the medics and doctors had to work during the second War to End All Wars:
A portable surgical hospital is a medical unit of four doctors and generally 32 enlisted men. They’re supposed to work directly behind the line of battle and patch up casualties so they can be removed to an evacuation hospital. Sometimes part of the portable hospital personnel have to be removed, too.
Whatever became of the conscientious objectors?
Some of the men who registered as ‘conchies’ with their local selective service boards have been deferred because they are working in essential jobs. About 6,890 conchies have been interned and assigned to Civilian Public Service camps in the States. A handful, just 47, live and work in camps on Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the only places outside the continental limits of the States where they may serve. By act of Congress, conscientious objectors may not be sent to foreign lands, but Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, although overseas, are territories of the U.S.
Click here to read about the British conscientious objectors of World War I.
To read an article about American draft dodgers of W.W. II, click here.
Although the press questioned U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1867 – 1950) as to why the Selective Service Department had been ordered to call-up an additional 100,000 men when it was agreed that the U.S. military was already over strengthened with the full participation of 7,700,000 personnel currently under arms, Stimson made it clear in this notice from the Far East Edition of YANK, that he had his reasons – and this article lists a number of them.
Click here to read about a W.W. II draft board.
To read an article about American draft dodgers of W.W. II, click here.
Lieutenant K. F. Brandes of the German Army was killed on October 24 [1944] on the right bank of the Dnieper. A diary was found on him. I have seen many diaries of German officers and soldiers… It was written by a clever and educated man. Brandes was a Fascist. He calls the conquest of Europe the ‘German Spring’. Like his colleagues he came to Russia for ‘lebensraum’… But as distinct from other Hitlerites, Brandes saw the limit of his dreams. He faithfully described the disintegration of the German Army, showed the meanness of the men who are still ruling Germany. I will cite the most interesting excerpts from his diary.
Taking into consideration the state of Germany’s military forces on land, air and sea, as well as the fragile state of the German populace after three years of steady bombardment, this 1944 NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE article concluded that Germany’s end was nigh – really, really nigh:
Thus on the face of it, Germany’s situation is desperate. She is encircled by powerful nations that are allied against her. Her chance of creating dissension to split those allies is gone. She is being beaten on every front and in every phase of the fighting. Her last chance to win has disappeared.
Germany would fight on for another sixteen months.
By posting this notice that appeared in a 1944 issue of YANK, we had hoped to play a useful roll by bringing to an end some of the bar room arguments and late-night dorm bickerings that came about as a result of the unlikely story line that was presented in the movie, Saving Private Ryan (Paramount Pictures, 1998).
A 1944 YANK article tells the tale about a quiet little spot behind the front line where American GIs were able to enjoy 24 hours of peace before being returned to the meat-grinder:
Sergeant Carmine Daniello, of Brooklyn, New York, smoked a big cigar during the afternoon…he was taking it easy in his own way. He didn’t want to sleep just now. He said, ‘Just sitting around like this is all I want right now.’On the other side of the river it had been so bad…
CLICK HERE… to read one man’s account of his struggle with shell shock…
An eye-witness account of the first major American battle to be fought on German ground during World War II. Aachen, the Westernmost city in Germany was defended by some 44,000 men of the Wehrmacht as well as assorted elements of the First SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Division which combined to offer a stubborn defense that lasted nineteen days. This article, written by Bill Davidson, who witnessed the most vicious kind of street combat, believed that the battle for Aachen was simply a re-staging of the battle of Stalingrad and he supports this point throughout the article:
Godfrey Blunden,the Australian war correspondent, was here in Aachen…he was immediately struck by the similarity between the two battles. ‘There is is the same house-to-house and room-to-room fighting, the same combat techniques, the same type of German defense.’
Years later, historian Stephen Ambrose remarked that the Battle of Aachen was unnecessary.
Attached is a Phoney War magazine article by Major General George Ared White (1880 – 1941) in which he mused wistfully (as Oregon men are wont to do) as to all the various horrible choices that were spread before Herr Hitler in the early months of 1940. The General believed that France’s Maginot Line was impregnable and he did not think that Hitler would commit to such an undertaking.
