Articles from Yank Magazine
An excerpt from General Marshall’s introductory essay to his 1945 Biennial Report
Click here if you would like to read an article about 1940s fabric rationing and the home front fashions.
The destruction of Nagasaki looks nothing like the debris in Cassino or Leghorn. The strange thing here is the utter absence of rubble. You can see a couple of square miles of reddish-brown desolation with nothing left but the outlines of houses, a bit of wall here and half a chimney there. In this area you will see a road, and the road will be completely clean. It is too soon after the bombing for the Japs to have done any cleaning of the roads and you can’t see a single brick or pile of broken plaster or lumber on any street or sidewalk in town.
An eye-witness account of life in post-war Berlin: the rubble, the black-market, the politics, the night clubs, the newspapers, the natives and the four occupying armies.sumo men. These sumo wrestlers weigh about 300 pounds and are very agile…
You might also like to read articles about post-war Japan.
Here are two Yank Magazine articles from the same issue that report on the all-black combat units that fought the Germans on two fronts in Europe: one organization fought with the Seventh Army in France and Germany, the other fought with the Fifth Army through Italy:
Hitler would have a hemorrhage if he could see the white boys of the 411th Infantry bull-sessioning, going out on mixed patrols, sleeping in the same bombed buildings, sweating out the same chow lines with the Negro GIs.
Click here to read about the African-American efforts during the First World War.
Here are two Yank Magazine articles from the same issue that report on the all-black combat units that fought the Germans on two fronts in Europe: one organization fought with the Seventh Army in France and Germany, the other fought with the Fifth Army through Italy:
Hitler would have a hemorrhage if he could see the white boys of the 411th Infantry bull-sessioning, going out on mixed patrols, sleeping in the same bombed buildings, sweating out the same chow lines with the Negro GIs.
Click here to read about the African-American efforts during the First World War.
This column concerns Jackie Robinson’s non-professional days in sports; his football seasons at Pasadena Junior College, basketball at UCLA and the Kansas City Monarchs. Being an Army publication, the reporter touched upon Robinson’s brief period as a junior officer in the 761st Tank Battalion.
A 1951 article about the Negro Baseball League can be read here
In 1969, Jackie Robinson wrote about African-American racists, click here to read it…
Click here to read a 1954 article about Willie Mays.
Nobody has been able to figure out to anyone’s satisfaction why Sinatra has the effect he has on his Bobby Sox fans. One of his secretaries, a cute dish whose husband is serving overseas, said: ‘The doctors say it’s just because he’s got a very sexy voice, but I’ve been with him a year now and his voice doesn’t do a thing to me’.
Maybe it’s the war.
When the YANK staff writers asked the G.I.s to name the greater menace to our country and our values -most of the servicemen polled seemed to agree that the real enemies were from Japan; while Germany, it was believed by most, simply had to be brought back into the fold.
Another article contrasting the Germans and Japanese can be read here…
Attached is a stirring collection of eyewitness accounts by the American survivors of the Malmedy Massacre (December 17, 1944) that took place during the Battle of the Bulge.
The German officer in the car stood up, took deliberate aim with a pistol at an American medical officer in the front rank of the prisoners and fired. As the medical officer fell, the Germans fired again and another American dropped. Immediately two tanks at the end of the field opened up with their machine guns on the defenseless prisoners…
By thew war’s end it was revealed that 43% of American prisoners of war had died in Japanese camps; by contrast, 1% had died in German POW camps.
Click here to read about the Nazi murder of an American Jewish P.O.W.
A Yank Magazine interview with the author of Gone with the Wind (1936).
At the time this article was printed, Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949; Pulitzer Prize 1937) was an American publishing phenomenon; Gone with the Wind (or GWTW, to those in the know) was said to be the fastest selling novel in the history of American publishing. Her one book had a sales record of 50,000 copies in one day and approximately 1,500,000 during it’s first year. By May of 1941 the sales reached 3,368,000 in the English language alone (there were 18 translations made in all; the novel was a blockbuster in Germany, where 5000,000 editions were swiftly sold).
Available from Amazon: Gone with the Wind
