Articles from 1943
When home heating fuel had to be rationed during the Second World War, a page was borrowed from Granny’s play book and women once again began to sport crochet wraps, shawls and booties around the house.
An enthusiastic piece that informed the folks on the home front that the days of the Japanese Zero were numbered:
Hellcat, daughter of battle, answers all the prayers of Navy pilots. She’s a low-winged Navy fighter; F6F, the Navy’s newest and the world’s best…F6F is a ship that can fight the Jap Zero on the Zero’s own terms, a plane that can stand up and slug, that can bore in with those terrible body blows.
This Collier’s article clearly illustrated the gloom that hung over the German home front of 1943:
Nobody escapes war service in Germany. Children serve in air-raid squads; women work very hard…The black market flourishes everywhere. More fats are required, as are fruits and vegetables, for the people’s strength is declining. A report I have seen of Health Minister Conti shows that the mortality rate for some diseases rose 49 percent in 1941 – 1942.
Click here to read about the dating history of Adolf Hitler.
During the war years, the boys on the front loved reading about a juicy Hollywood scandal just as much as we do today, and Errol Flynn could always be relied upon to provide at least one at any given time. The closest thing to a Hollywood tabloid that the far-flung khaki-clad Joes could ever get their hands on was Yank Magazine, the U.S. army weekly that also provided them with the news from all battlefronts.
Movie star Flynn was tried by the California courts for having gained a fair measure of carnal knowledge from two feminine California movie fans who were both under the age of 18; said knowledge was gained while on board the defendant’s yacht, The Sirocco.
More about this trial and Flynn’s other scandals can be read here…
General Sir Thomas A. Blamey, Australian commander of Allied ground forces in the Southwest Pacific, declared the Japs have massed 200,000 first-line troops on the approaches to Australia and might be expected to launch an offensive at any time.
Attached is small Yank Magazine article pertaining to a booklet titled, When You Meet an American that was distributed to assorted British girls by their government during the Second World War:
Try not to appear shocked at some of their expressions…if a lad from back home asks for a hot dog he actually means, ‘fried sausage in split rolls’…’Hi’ya baby!’ is legitimate.
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.
For those who survived it, the Second World War changed many lives – some for better, some for worse. Gale Volchok was rescued from a dreary job in New York retail and delivered to the proving grounds of two different infantry training camps in New Jersey. It was under her watchful eye that thousands of American soldiers learned to throw their enemies into the dirt and generally defend them selves.
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…
McMillan, who was [in 1914] the first accredited correspondent with the BEF in France, was sent by the United Press from London to Gibraltar in November, 1940, on what he thought would be a routine assignment. He expected to be back in England in two days. Instead, he stayed in the Mediterranean two years.
