Articles from The Literary Digest
An uncredited column by an American journalist who seemed to hold that the British Empire could do no wrong in their rule over the colony of India, and that the man who most vociferously opposed this governance, Gandhi, was an old-fashioned, eccentric monk with Bolshevik leanings…
Some of our music critics look askance at the Russian Ballet, and apparently, only deign to notice it at all because the music employed is such as falls within their province to review. Having the task forced upon them, they relieve their feelings by deploring the forced association of, for example, Schumann and patterning feet…
Hitler wasted little time in securing control over the Christian churches in Germany: within six months of taking power he began to put the screws to the Protestant churches. This article devotes much column space to the pastors who had no problem with any of Hitler’s commands.
The issue, then, is broader than the Reich. Jews, Protestants and Catholics the world over have seen another scrap of paper torn up in Hitler’s repudiation of his pledge on taking office that the Nazi regime would respect the freedom and legal rights of German churches… Hitler modified an order requiring all Protestant pastors on a recent Sunday to display Nazi banners from their church spires…. The Nazis have also suppressed the German branch of International Bible Students’ Society, outlawed the Boy Scouts, and, to make their program more effective – given a Nazi cast to the Lord’s Prayer.
By 1917 an visible anti-conscription movement had taken root throughout much of French Canada that was encouraged by the Quebec Archdiocese.
In 1944, many French Canadians would be doing the same thing…
A news article from a 1937 issue of LITERARY DIGEST pertaining to Mahatma Gandhi‘s ongoing struggle to break free from the bonds of English imperialism:
The basic policy of this Congress, Nehru admonished, is to combat the ‘Government of India Act’ (the Federal Constitution); resist in every way the attempt by British imperialism to strengthen its hold on India and its people; stress a positive demand for a constituent assembly, elected by adult suffrage.
The attached 1936 magazine article presents a picture of the Polish city of Danzig as it was during the mid-thirties. It was a city in which Danzig Nazis, like Arthur Karl Greiser, spoke of making that town a part of Germany once more (it was ordained a Polish city as a result of the Versailles Treaty) and Minister Joseph Beck who liked everything just the way it was, thank you very much.
NAZI PATIENCE: Neither Beck nor Hitler is anxious to come to a break over Danzig. Hitler, a sworn enemy of Soviet Russia, advises his Danzig Nazis to forbear from mentioning their intention of completely abandoning League control for secession to Germany…
Hitler’s troops invaded Poland on August 31, 1939.
This article is a simply wonderful read for many reasons and the chief among them is that the journalist hated Los Angeles. The New York writer Karl K. Kitchen was dispatched to Beverly Hills to interview the recently divorced Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and he seemed to have had a nice enough time with the estranged couple, so much so that the Hollywood Royals invited him to dine at their house. The whole article is written in a very chatty way and there is one small, but distinct, slanderous aside referring to Jewish power in the nascent film industry.
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Here is one of the earliest reports from Hitler’s Germany on the the Nazi hierarchy butting-heads with the Christian churches. As the fascists forced the Catholic and Protestant clergies to coerce, the churches reminded the new government of the autonomy they have always enjoyed (more or less).
Another article on this site marks 1912 as being the year that saw the first airborne wedding ceremony; but this article reported on the first wedding to be performed in a Fokker Monoplane with the added benefit of a wireless radio transmitter that broadcast the event to numerous well-wishers down below. The wedding was officiated by non-other than the Flying Parson himself, Belvin W. Maynard. Maynard was a legend in early aviation and he died in a crash some four months later.
The number of in-flight nuptials that have been performed since the first in 1912 are too numerous to count; however the last high-profile event took place in the Fall of 2007, when Sir Richard Branson (b. 1950) of Virgin Airlines presided over an in-flight wedding ceremony at 35,000 feet en route from San Francisco to Las Vegas.
An overview of the technological advancements that had been introduced in the aviation community in 1912. References are made to the superiority of the Pneumatic Flying Helmet, and the installation of the W. I. Twombly Safety Harness, oil gauges, self-acting gas pumps, double-cables, self-starting motors and heavily re-enforced wheels.
References are also made to the 1910, twenty-two mile flight across the English Channel by a pilot named Bleriot.
This is a wonderful read in which the American World War One fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker (1890 – 1973), recounted his experiences in the skies above France.
I learned pretty fast. Long practice in driving a racing-car at a hundred miles an hour or so gives first-class training in control and judging distances at high speed…
Attached is a 1927 illustration depicting that broad expanse that separates the continents of Europe and North America and presents for the viewer the various transatlantic routes chosen not only by Charles Lindbergh but other pilots as well.
…since the Depression began one out of every six banks has failed, one out of every forty-five hospitals has closed, one out of every twenty-two business and industrial concerns has become bankrupt…
– for those living in the digital age, the quote posted above is simply another mildly interesting, stale line from American history – but when those words were written in 1932 it meant for those who read it that there world was falling apart. So much of what they were taught to believe in was collapsing before their very eyes and as a result they felt a need to know God – and know Him they did; half way through 1932 churches and other religious bodies showed a total net gain of 929,252 members thirteen years of age or over – one of the largest gains ever recorded – and the total membership, thirteen years or more of age, reached the record figure of 50,037,209.
Click here to read about the American South during the Great Depression.
Shortly after Adolf Hitler took charge in Germany, a law was passed that forbid the hiring of foreign artists, composers, writers and performers. As the attached article clarifies, there were exceptions, but all concerned recognized that it was a new day in Germany but not necessarily a better one. Writing for the New York-based magazine, MODERN MUSIC, German arts critic Hans Heinsheimer (1900 – 1993) wrote:
The aim of the National Socialist is to push us back into the Middle Ages. Their politico-culture demands are radical… They set us up as the German Superman against the ‘inferior foreigners.’
Guns instead of butter! was the slogan General Hermann Goering, Commissar, sounded for the Four Year Plan destined to control production and slash imports as an aid to the Reich’s fantastic rearmament program.
For the great mass of Germans, however, the most serious food shortage since the war cast a pall over Christmas. Housewives got orders to specify their favorite dairy store, and to patronize it exclusively. By prohibiting any shopping around, officials found it possible to limit the distribution of butter and other fats. A census of of the size of families has already been taken, and, beginning January 1, every housewife must limit fat purchases to at least 80 per cent of her October buying.
Guns instead of butter! was the slogan General Hermann Goering, Commissar, sounded for the Four Year Plan destined to control production and slash imports as an aid to the Reich’s fantastic rearmament program.
For the great mass of Germans, however, the most serious food shortage since the war cast a pall over Christmas. Housewives got orders to specify their favorite dairy store, and to patronize it exclusively. By prohibiting any shopping around, officials found it possible to limit the distribution of butter and other fats. A census of of the size of families has already been taken, and, beginning January 1, every housewife must limit fat purchases to at least 80 per cent of her October buying.
Shortly after that infamous day when Hitler was sworn into power in the offices of Paul Von Hindenburg, this article hit the newsstands in North America about the new mood that was creeping across Germany:
At no time since the war – not even during the occupation of the Ruhr – it is said, has there been so much militarist and nationalist propaganda in Germany as there is now.
Anti-militarist newspapers, it appears, are afraid, in Berlin at least, to raise their voice in protest because of the continual and ruinous suspensions by the authorities…
During the summer of 1938 the Nazis allowed one of their photo journalists out of the Fatherland to wander the American roads; This is what he saw…
