1944

Articles from 1944

John Garand: Inventor of the M1 Garand (Click Magazine, 1944)

Attached is a Click Magazine photo essay of one of the seldom remembered heroes of W.W. II: John C. Garand – the gunsmith who tripled the firepower of the American foot soldier.


In 1939, a German spy almost succeeded in delivering the blueprints of the Garand rifle into the blood-soaked hands of his Nazi overlords: read about it here.


Click here to read about the Japanese Zero.

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Fashion Modeling in the 1940s (Coronet Magazine, 1944)

Inasmuch as this 1944 article sums up the bygone world of the New York fashion model, the terms heroin chic and bulimia are not found on any of it’s five pages (an over site, no doubt). The Forties were a time when a model would be just as likely to get a booking from a commercial artist as she would a photographer, and, unlike the Twenties and the earliest days of the Thirties, it was a time when a standardized image of beauty was well-established.

– five feet nine inches in height, weight 110 pounds, bust 33, waist 24, hips 34, blonde or a light shade of brown hair. She will have quick, clever eyes and a very expressive face.
Many of the models are bitter, unhappy girls inside. They soon grow disillusioned with their dream of modeling as a gateway to theatrical glory; they learn that their height is against them.


Read about the attack of the actress/models!

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U.S. Advertising During W.W. II (Yank Magazine, 1944)

If advertising is defined as the craft of convincing people they want something that they actually don’t care for, then World War II proved to have been the perfect challenge to the ad men of the 1940s. The wordsmith who penned this article regarding home front advertising chortled loudly when he saw the manner in which the bloodiest brawl in history was being marketed to the American consumers.

Advertising has gone to war… and the advertising profession not only knows what we are fighting for; it knows down to the last uplift bra, what we want when we come home…It is the copywriters of advertising who nurse the carefully guarded secret that this war is, in reality, a luxury cruise.


Articles about the importance of fashion models in 1940s advertising can be read here.

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The Australian Soldier (Yank Magazine, 1944)

Attached is a two page article concerning the basic lot of the World War Two Australian soldier: his pay, his kit, his battles and the general reputation of the Australian Imperial Forces (A.I.F.):

…the Australian Imperial Forces who have – and are seeing action all over the world…has fought in every theater in which British forces have been engaged…They have especially distinguished themselves at El Alamein in the North African campaign and in the Papuan and New Guinea campaigns.


Four years after the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese newspaper editorial expressed deep regret for Japan’s aggressiveness in the Second World War, click here to read about it…

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Harry Hopkins – FDR’s Right Hand (United States News, 1944)

This article makes it quite clear that Harry Hopkins (1890 – 1946) wore many hats in the administration of FDR.
During the first five years of the New Deal he had the unique title Special Assistant to the President, he not only wrote speeches for FDR – Hopkins also oversaw the goings-on at the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Between the years 1938 through 1940, he served as Secretary of Commerce and when the war came he supervised the Lend-Lease program, the Chairman of the Munitions Assignment Board and traveled frequently as the President’s representative to Moscow and London.


When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, it was discovered that one of his additional duties was being a Soviet agent.


Click here to read about another member of the New Deal Brain-Trust…


Read an anti-Gandhi article from 1921…

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Slim Aarons in Cassino (Yank Magazine, 1944)

Society photographer Slim Aarons (1916 – 2006) is remembered for chronicling the swells of Palm Beach and Newport during the 1960s for TOWN & COUNTRY, among other magazines, but before he was able to have those villa doors open for him he had to first pay his dues at Yank Magazine, photographing the dung and destruction of World War Two.
This is an article he wrote about all that he saw during the Battle of Monte Cassino (January 17, 1944 – May 19, 1944), accompanied by five of his photographs.

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Argentina: Silent Nazi Ally (Collier’s Magazine, 1944)

Just back from South America, COLLIER;S correspondent reports on the totalitarian government in Argentina, it’s link to Hitlerism, and what to do to guard our future security.

The Argentine government has harbored spies and saboteurs. Colonel Frederic Wolf, the Himmler of the German Embassy and the latest director of the real Nazi spy ring, remained in Buenos Aires until quite recently. Our military forces have plenty of evidence that Allied ships have been sunk, and American lives have been destroyed as a result of information broadcast from Argentina to U-boat commanders.


Click here to read about the headache that was Evita Peron.

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The American Invasion of Saipan (The American Magazine, 1944)

The battle of Saipan spanned the period between June 15 through July 9, 1944. Here is an eyewitness account of the three week battle:

Reveille for the Japanese garrison on Saipan sounded abruptly at five-forty that morning of D-Day minus one, with a salvo from the 14-inch rifles of one of our battleships. Other guns, big and small, joined the opening chorus and from than on we realized why we had stuffed the cotton in our ears. The bass drum jam session was to continue for hours.

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