Articles from 1933
American columnist Walter Lippmann of the The New York Herald Tribune wrote:
They symbolize the moral and intellectual character of the Nazi regime. For these bonfires are not the work of schoolboys or mobs but of the present German Government acting through its Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.
CLICK HERE to read an article from 1923 about the abitious Adolf Hitler.
The Nazi Book Burnings (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
This article is about the diplomatic relationship that was maintained between the United States and Imperial Japan during the earliest months of the FDR administration.
Click here to read about the Japanese rejection of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1935.
Diplomatic Relations with Japan (The Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
Black shirts in Italy, Brown shirts in Hitlerite Germany and now comes a new imitator in Portugal’s Blue-Shirt Fascist movement known as National Syndicalism.
Portugal’s Fascism is described by a Lisbon correspondent of the London Morning Post as a blend of Hitlerite Fascism and Mussolini Fascism. Because it is called the National Syndicalist movement it must not be confused with the Red Syndicalism of Spain. Its leader is Dr. Roalo Preto, who is said to bear a personal resemblance to Hitler.
A movement of opinion and ideas toward a more just and equitable social organization…We aim at substituting the principle of liberty of work by a system of ‘harmony of direction’ under which capital, technical knowledge, and labor will cooperate under the protective care of the State in maximum productive return for the welfare of the nation.
The Fascist Blue Shirts of Portugal (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
Norman Bel Geddes (1893 – 1958) was one of the prominent industrial designers to practice a style known as streamline modern. Always mentioned in the same breath as Henry Dreyfuss and Raymond Lowey, Norman Bel Geddes opened his office in 1927 and helped to give the 1930s a defining look. He was the first of his kind to recognize that American manufacturers were sincerely interested in the marketing of modern design.
The sleek, aerodynamic lines of 1930s streamlining can clearly bee seen in the thirteen images illustrating the attached article about his work, which was written by Douglas Haskell, a well-known design critic active throughout much of the period spanning the mid-Twenties through the mid-Sixties; the column was intended to serve as a review for Geddes’ 1932 book, Horizons
Norman Bel Geddes (Creative Art Magazine, 1933) Read More »
Published in May of 1933, the attached article concerned the much anticipated London Economic Conference which was scheduled to convene the following month in London. The world leaders who agreed to assemble were all of one mind in so much as their shared belief that collectively they would stand a better chance in defeating the economic depression that was bedeviling all their respective countries. It was their intention to meet and review all existing international trade and tariff agreements and to make an effort at stabilizing the currency exchange rates.
The Economic Collapse of the World (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
A look at the observations made by a correspondent for The London Observer who compared the two dominate tribes found in 1933 Berlin and Moscow. The writer was far more distracted by the similarities in their street hustle and their sloganeering rather than their shared visions in governance and culture; for example, both Nazis and Communists were attracted to restrictions involving speech, assembly and gun ownership while sharing an equal enthusiasm for May Day parades and the color red. Additionally, both totalitarians had their preferred dupes:
Absolute ideas invariably demand victims; and the ruthless treatment which is deliberately meted out to Jews in Germany is closely paralleled by the creation in the Soviet Union of a sort of pariah caste of Lishentsi or disenfranchised persons.
Germany never celebrated May Day with public parades until Hitler came to power; May Day was made a national holiday and all employers were given the day off with pay.
Click here to read an article that explains in great detail how the Nazi economic system (with it’s wage and price controls) was Marxist in origin.
Nazism and Bolshevism: the Similarities (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
An excerpt from a longer article by Winston Churchill in which he praised the virtues of the Anglo-American alliance and the economic leadership forged by the two nations during the Depression. Four paragraphs are devoted to the confusion he experienced when stopping to consider some of President Roosevelt’s economic decisions and the roll played by his National Recovery Administration (NRA).
Like many presidents before and after him, FDR purchased many of his clothes from Brooks Brothers;
click here to read about the history of the store.
The Flaws of the NRA (Collier’s Magazine, 1933) Read More »
The war clouds may have been gathering over Europe in 1933, but in British Palestine the skies were blue and life was good. Just as this 1922 magazine article intimated eleven years earlier, British Palestine was continuing to flourish in ways that neither the resident Zionists or the overseers from the British Colonial Office ever anticipated:
Two years ago, [British] Palestine’s orange crop – its main source of income – filled 2,000,000 cases at most. The forecast for the coming year is 6,000,000. Tel Aviv, a Jewish settlement near Jaffa, had 2,000 inhabitants in 1919. Now it claims 60,000 with 100,000 close ahead…
The Bounteous Land (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
Can we trust him?‘
That is the question asked by some British and French editors as they consider Chancellor Adolf Hitler‘s speech on the disarmament question in which, while he firmly champions the German case for equality in armaments, ‘he broke no diplomatic china’
The German economist who made the Reich’s rearmament possible was named Hjalmar Schacht, click here to read about him…
What is Next for Europe? (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
This magazine article appeared on American newsstands not too long after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor in the office of President Hindenburg (Paul von Hindenburg 1847 – 1934), and presents a number of opinions gathered from assorted European countries as they considered just what a Nazi Germany would mean for the continent as a whole:
‘Whether or not Hitler turns out to be a clown or a faker, those by his side now, and those who may replace him later, are not figures to be joked with.’
With this grim thought the semiofficial Paris ‘Temps’ greets the accession of ‘handsome Adolf’ Hitler to the Chancellorship in Germany. The event, it ads, is ‘of greater importance than any event since the fall of of the Hohenzollererns.’
Click here to read a similar article from the same period.
1933: Hitler Comes to Power (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »
