American Leviathan
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1945
Articles from 1945
Eating Crow (PM, & Newsweek Magazine, 1945)
Four years after Pearl Harbor, the editors of the Japanese newspaper Asahi gazed out of the windows from their offices and saw the charred remains of their enemy-occupied homeland and recognized that they’d made a fatal mistake:
We once more refresh our horror at the colossal crime committed and are filled with a solemn sense of reflection and self-reproach…
Eating Crow (PM, & Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
Eating Crow (PM, & Newsweek Magazine, 1945)
Four years after Pearl Harbor, the editors of the Japanese newspaper Asahi gazed out of the windows from their offices and saw the charred remains of their enemy-occupied homeland and recognized that they’d made a fatal mistake:
We once more refresh our horror at the colossal crime committed and are filled with a solemn sense of reflection and self-reproach…
Eating Crow (PM, & Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
An Eye-Full of Post-War Tokyo
An eyewitness account of the devastation delivered to Tokyo as reported by the first Americans to enter that city following the Japanese surrender some weeks earlier:
The people of Tokyo are taking the arrival of the first few Americans with impeccable Japanese calm. Sometimes they turn and look at us twice, but they have shown no emotion toward us except a mild curiosity and occasional amusement…They are still proud and a little bit superior. They know they lost the war, but they are not apologizing for it.
Click here to read about the humbled Japan.
An Eye-Full of Post-War Tokyo Read More »
Bill Mauldin Of The Stars & Stripes (Yank Magazine, 1945)
No other cartoonist during the Second World War ever portrayed the American GI so knowingly and with more sympathy than the Stars & Stripes cartoonist Sgt. Bill Mauldin (1921 – 2003), who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons in 1945.
Mauldin wrote the attached essay at the end of the war and gave the Yank Magazine readers an earful regarding his understanding of the front, the rear and all the the blessed officers in between
Click here to read a wartime interview with another popular 1940s American cartoonist: Milton Caniff.
Bill Mauldin Of The Stars & Stripes (Yank Magazine, 1945) Read More »
He Died Badly (Newsweek Magazine, 1945)
An Italian partisan fighter described to an American correspondent exactly how Benito Mussolini met his end.
He Died Badly (Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
The U.S. Army’s Cannabis Study (Newesweek Magazine, 1945)
Posted herein is a report on the seven-month study on the effects marijuana has on military personnel that was conducted in 1944:
A great many of [the participants] attempted to form a compensatory image of themselves as superior people. ‘I could be a general like MacArthur. He looks smooth – like he’s high all the time.’
The U.S. Army’s Cannabis Study (Newesweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
Kicking God Out of the Schools (Newsweek Magazine & PM Tabloid, 1945)
A religion-in-the-schools trial, held last week in the Champaign, Illinois Circuit Court, will probably make history. The plaintiff was Mrs. Vashti McCollum, 32, pert, wide-eyed wife of a University of Illinois professor, demanding that the Champaign School Board discontinue a five-year program of religious instruction in school buildings, on the ground that the constitutional separation of church and state is jeopardized.
Posted herein was one of the first of many articles concerning what would come to known as the landmark Supreme Court case McCollum v. Board of Education (1948): the court decided in her favor.
Click here to read about Darwin in the schools.
Kicking God Out of the Schools (Newsweek Magazine & PM Tabloid, 1945) Read More »
The King Tiger Tank (U.S. Dept. of War, 1945)
This article is illustrated with a photograph of the King Tiger tank and accompanied by some vital statistics and assorted observations that were documented by the U.S. Department of War and printed in one of their manuals in March of 1945:
The king Tiger is a tank designed essentially for defensive warfare or for breaking through strong lines of defense. It is unsuitable for rapid maneuver and highly mobile warfare because of its great weight and and low speed…The King Tiger virtually is invulnerable to frontal attack, but the flanks, which are less well protected, can be penetrated by Allied antitank weapons at most normal combat ranges.
The American answer to the Tiger was the M26 Pershing Tank; read about it here.
If you wish to read about the only German tank of World War I, click here.
The King Tiger Tank (U.S. Dept. of War, 1945) Read More »
The Ex-Soldier-Goes Shopping (Collier’s Magazine, 1945)
In light of the fact that all Army personnel would be issued $300 with their honorable discharge papers, the fashion editor for Esquire Magazine, Henry Jackson, decided to moonlight at Collier’s in order to provide some solid fashion-tips on how best to spend that hard-earned cash.
The Ex-Soldier-Goes Shopping (Collier’s Magazine, 1945) Read More »