1944

Articles from 1944

Captured Hitlerjugend (Stars & Stripes, 1944)

Among the thousands of German POWs captured during the Normandy campaign was this 17 year-old alumnus of the Hitler Jugend program who is the subject in the attached column. The editors at The Stars and Stripes were dumbfounded to discover how thoroughly he had been brainwashed – to prove the point, they printed their interview with the teen.


Q. If Germany wins the war, will you punish the United States?


A. We want living space.

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John Riley Kane (Coronet Magazine, 1944)

John Killer Kane (1907 – 1996) proved his mettle numerous times throughout the Second World War, but it was on August 1, 1943 – above the blackened skies of the Ploesti oil refineries in Romania, that the brass caps of the U.S. Ninth Air Force sat up and truly took notice of his polished skills as a pilot of a B-24 bomber. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for the admirable mixture of confidence and ability that showed so clearly that day.


In the attached article, the pilot recalled the moment when he was made aware that the number four engine had been hit

and we increased power on the other three. As soon as we left the target we dropped down to tree-top level. We were right in the middle of the group and I could see other ships passing us as we lost speed. Then the Junker 88s and the ME 105s came to work on us. It was a sight I can never forget, seeing B-24s falling like flies on the right and left of us. But we were getting our share of fighters, too. It was a rough show.


High praise is heaped on Colonel Kane for all of nine pages – celebrating his enormous personality as much as his sang-froid in battle.

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The Death of the German Seventh Army (Yank Magazine, 1944)

A 1944 YANK MAGAZINE article concerning the destruction of the once mighty German 7th Army:

We have been told that the German Army, which fought so craftily and gave out to our men a share of death in Normandy, is now almost encircled by the great armored columns which broke through and swept around the enemy. But this army does not die easily…


Click here to read about the retreat of the Africa Corps.

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The Bombing of Monte Cassino (Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

The bombing of the Medieval abbey at Montecassino was one of the saddest tactical errors of the Second World War. The decision to bomb the structure was a result an error in translating an intercepted German communique that lead the Allies to believe that there was Nazi battalion contained within the abbey. This was not the case. When the Allies sifted through the rubble they were surprised to find the remains of numerous Italian civilians and very few Germans. The attached article recalls the fantastic view that was enjoyed by the assembled U.S. and British troops as the bombs fell.

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Princess Elizabeth Comes of Age (Click Magazine, 1944)

The attached article was about the Spring of 1944 and why it was such an exciting season for Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of England (b. 1926): the twenty-first of April marked her eighteenth birthday and her country was entering the last year of their bloodiest war, while the princess herself held two positions that she took quite seriously: Patrol Leader of the Buckingham Palace Girlguides, as well as Colonel-in-Chief of the Grenadier Guards. There were also times when she was required to join her father when he was in conference with his ministers.


Also addressed in these pages was the royal concern as to who was suitable to be her mate; a list of names was provided.

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Sports in Japanese Prison Camps (Yank Magazine, 1944)

Assorted yarns told by liberated Allied soldiers as to the types of games played in Japanese prison camps between bouts of malaria, dysentery and gangrene:

We had a big fellow with us in camp, a guy named Chris Bell, who was 6 feet 2 and the rocky sort. The Jap guards were having a wrestling tournament at the guardhouse and they wanted Bell to come down and wrestle one of those huge sumo men. These sumo wrestlers weigh about 300 pounds and are very agile…


This was NOT the first time that a Japanese baseball team had faced Americans.

Click here to read about that game.


Suggested Reading:
POW Baseball in World War II: The National Pastime Behind Barbed Wirestyle=border:none

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Martha Gellhorn Over Germany (Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

An article by the W.W. II war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998) who rode with the crew of a P-61C Black Widow Night Fighter one evening as they made their rounds over what remained of Hitler’s Germany:

COLLIER’S girl correspondent sat on a wobbly crate and flew over Germany looking for enemy planes at night. Her nose ran, her oxygen mask slipped off, her stomach got mad, she was scared and she froze. They didn’t down any Germans, but otherwise that’s routine for the Black Widow pilots.

Click here to read additional articles about the war correspondents of the Second World War.


Click here to read Martha Gellhorn’s article about what she saw at Dachau.


Click here to read about the 1943 bombing campaign against Germany.

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