1944

Articles from 1944

The German Portable Pillbox (Yank Magazine, 1944)

No doubt about it: for the fashionable, young Deutchen Soldaten on the go, the preferred choice in pillboxes is the portable variety! And you’d best believe that when those slide-rule jockeys back in Berlin lent their lobes to what the trendy book-burning crowed in Italy and Russia were saying, they jumped to it and created this dandy, 6,955 pound mobile pillbox that was capable of being planted almost anywhere. Better living through modern design!

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M8 Greyhound Armored Car (Yank Magazine, 1944)

Here is the skinny on the Ford Motor Company’s M8 Greyhound Armored Car as it was presented to the olive-clad readers of YANK MAGAZINE in the summer of 1944:

Armored Car, M8, 6×6: the Army’s latest combat vehicle, is a six-wheeled, eight-ton armored job that can hit high speeds over practically any type of terrain. It mounts a 37-mm cannon and a .30-caliber machine gun in a hand-operated traversable turret…

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The BMW Motorcycle Examined (Yank Magazine, 1944)

All global tensions aside, the U.S. Army could not find any faults at all with the motorcycles that BMW was making for Adolf Hitler during World War II. After having spent much time testing and re-testing the thing, they reluctantly concluded, This is as good as any motorcycle in the world (it was probably a bit better…).

Click here to read about the firm belief held by the German Army concerning the use of motorcycles in modern war.

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Nazi Justice On American Soil (Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Here was the first report on the kangaroo courts that were held at frequent intervals in the American POW camps that housed captured German soldiers and sailors. It seems that it was a common practice to level the charge of treason on one of the inmates, put him in the docket where, just like the courts at home, he would fail to present an adequate defense and soon find himself condemned to death by his fellows. Beaten to death by his former compatriots, the corpse would then be presented to the American camp authorities who would see to the burial.


Click here to read about the actual event…

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Commercial Profits Generated Within the Camps (U.S. Government, 1944)

Even under the gloomy conditions of the camps the wheels of commerce continued to turn ~and they turned out an impressive $3,526,851.77! As can clearly be seen in the plans of the camps that are offered on this site, the camps all had commercial districts where the interned families could purchase needed goods and services; the ten Japanese-American internment camps had 160 businesses operating within their gates that managed to employ 1,853 souls. The attached chart from the 1944 records of the War Relocation Authority serves to illustrate the productivity of all these assorted commercial operations that had once thrived in the camps.

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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.

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‘Assault Climbing” (Click Magazine, 1944)

One month after this article was seen on the newsstands, America would be reading a good deal about the U.S. Army Assault Climbers when they thirsted to read further about those hardy lads who climbed the steep cliffs at Point du Hoc on D-Day; but in May of 1944, the term was new to them. The article is well illustrated with two color images and a brief explanation as to what was involved in the training of those lucky souls who were charged with the task of learning how to climb the rocky terrain held by the Fascist powers.


Read what the U.S. Army psychologists had to say about fear in combat.

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D-Day with the Eighth Air Force (Yank Magazine, 1944)

D-Day for the lads of the U.S. Army Air Corps’ Eighth Air Force was a time of great excitement and anticipation. Despite the exhaustion that comes with a fifteen hour day, all concerned recognized well that they were participating in an historic event that would be discussed long after they had left this world, but of greater importance was their understanding that the tides of war were shifting in the Allies’ favor.


In his book Wartime, Paul Fussel noted that the Allies had placed as many as 11,000 planes in the skies above France that day.


Click here to read about the 8th Air Force and their bombing efforts in the skies above Germany.

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