World War Two – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

More Letters from the German Home Front

“The information in letters found on the German dead, intimate and personal as it is, leads to some striking deductions. […]

More Letters from the German Home Front
(American Magazine, 1942)

“The information in letters found on the German dead, intimate and personal as it is, leads to some striking deductions. The people inside Germany hate the war and want it to end. They are tired of hardships, sick of sacrifice. They lament the moral disintegration of their young women; they shudder at air raids; they weep over their dead. But nowhere do they betray the least suggestion of German guilt or regret for horrors which the German armies perpetrate on conquered countries. Hard as is their life, they know neither starvation nor desperation. Nor do they expect Germany to lose the war. To expect them at this time to revolt against Hitler is as futile and puerile to expect the Fuehrer to live up to his promises or the treatise he signs.”

One Year of War

“In the twelve months since Pearl Harbor the American family has begun to experience war on the home front… More

Prejudice on the Home Front

As the Allied Armies were nearing Berlin and Tokyo, U.S. magazines began running articles concerning the nation’s problems that had

Richard Wright on the Black Home Front
(Coronet Magazine, 1942)

Black author Richard Wright (1908 – 1960) clearly delineated for the readers of Coronet why African American participation in W.W. II was of great importance to the Black community.

Opinions on the Early Home Front
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

Newsweek‘s Raymond Moley (1886 – 1975) took a serious look at the year that had just passed, 1941, and concluded that the American people, as a whole, had had embraced the war as their own personal problem. He was impressed with the gravity with which the home front solved the problems that war brought to their doorsteps:

“The pre-Pearl Harbor issue has been liquidated, not because of an act of national will power. It had faded before the immediate tasks of war. The new year brought so many jobs to do, so many problems to grapple with that there was no time to remember 1941… At no time in the year has there been a real failure on the part of Americans to appreciate the gravity of the war job.”

One Year of War
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

“In the twelve months since Pearl Harbor the American family has begun
to experience war on the home front. Almost a full year has passed before gasoline rationing was extended to the entire country. More than a year will have passed before meat rationing begins next month. The sugar pinch has been only a gentle nip. The full extent of the fuel shortage has yet to be measured against the severity of the weather. The sign ‘one per customer’ appears on more and more shelves in the corner grocery, but except for extra cups of coffee the average menu isn’t too far from prewar. Thanksgiving of 1942 was hardly less than the usual feast day.”

”The New Order” in Japan
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

After reading this 1941 article you will come away with a full understanding as to how misguided Imperial Japan was to enter into a war with the United States and the British Empire. At the time of the printing, Japan had been engaged in its second war with a very underdeveloped China; even though Japan had held the momentum in that war, it had still driven the Japanese into a life of highly uncomfortable rationing, which would only get worse as their new war expanded.

The Axis PR Machine and the Pearl Harbor Attack
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

“The German and Italian propaganda ministries did their customary sister act today, shrieking in unison that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who started the war in the Pacific. But they didn’t accuse the President of bombing Pearl Harbor.”

The Nation’s Capital as ‘Boomtown’
(American Legion Magazine, 1943)

“Every day in Washington, and twice on Sundays, there will be parades. You love parades. You’ll never get tired of turning out for bands, even though they always stop playing just as they get opposite you…. Anyhow, there will always be the feel of parades in Washington, and the echoes of martial music, and the sight of waving flags. Where else, oh where elese, could they sing so fervently God Bless America?”

One Year of Military Expansion
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

When President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on December 8, 1941 – he was not the only one to do so; judging by the content of the attached article, and numerous others on this site, 100,000 other Americans did the same thing. This article is about the rapid growth of the United Sates military that took place between December of 1941 through December of 1942 – and boy, did it grow.

One Year of Military Expansion
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

The Sherman
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

“‘We’re so far ahead of that Heinie in tank design and production that he’s never going to catch us’ – that was the opinion expressed by Major General Levin H. Campbell (1886 – 1976), the War Department’s Ordnance Chief, in an interview in New York last week. He quoted a British officer as saying that the American M-4 General Sherman tank is the ‘answer to a tankman’s prayer.'”

Fort Des Moines
(Liberty Magazine, 1942)

“When recruits in the new Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps – commonly dubbed WAACS – reported for training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, women for the first time in American history became members of Uncle Sam’s Army.”

(The title concerning “the first woman in the Uncle Sam’s Army” is believed to go to a lass named Deborah Sampson who served in George Washington’s army in 1781, under the name “Robert Shurtliff”.)

Berliners Under the Bombs
(Liberty Magazine, 1944)

A Turkish diplomat explains all that he saw in the war-weary Berlin of 1944:

“You see children wildly seeking for their mothers, wives wildly seeking for their husbands. Women carry dead children in their arms and children weep beside their dead mothers.

The Late-War Era Brought Late-War Divorces
(Liberty Magazine, 1944)

“The divorce rate took a sharp upswing in all the warring countries after World War I, and another rise after this war is already being foreshadowed… Much of the post-war rise in the divorce rate is expected to come from the untying of knots too hastily tied as a result of [the 1941] war hysteria.”

Pants for Women Become a Thing
(Spot Magazine, 1942)

In the Digital Age we simply don’t think much about pants on women – but they sure thought about it in the Forties – and everyone was expected to have an opinion on the subject. This article is about the dust-up that was caused at a new Jersey high school when some of the girls came to school in pants.

Japan’s Industrial Shortcomings
(American Legion Magazine, 1943)

This article said nothing to the American home front readers that they didn’t already know, in fact the Associated Press ran a similar article that appeared on numerous front pages on December 8th of 1941. Simply stated, it reported that the Japanese were totally incapable of maintaining prominence in a war against the United States due to the fact that Japan’s war industry was far too small and they had few natural resources to rely upon. The reason that the subject was broached again in early 1943 was because it was all beginning to appear quite true. During the first 13 months of the war the Japanese let loose with everything they had, now they were on the defensive, and discovering that their industry was woefully inadequate.

Articles about the significance of 1943 can be read here can be read here and here…