World War Two – Page 22 – Old Magazine Articles

RAF Bombs Munich
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Throughout the course of the Second World War, the city of Munich was bombed seventy-four times by both the Royal Air Force as well as the U.S. Army Air Corps. The attached article gives an account of the third of these attacks.

Giant four-motored planes flew in over their targets so low that they could clearly see the Brown House and the Beer Hall where Hitler organized his 1923 putsch… The citizens of Munich will, no doubt, be thinking of their Fuehrer today as they survey the bombed-out buildings and piles of rubble in the streets where Hitler first harangued them about his political ideas.

Living Under the Bombs
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

Here is one of the reviews of Pattern of Conquest, a book by Joseph C. Harsch (1905 – 1998) – a CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR correspondent who had been posted to Germany during the earliest years of the war:

Harsch says that German morale is ‘fundamentally unsound’ however, and that it took a bad beating when the RAF first bombed Berlin, which Marshal Goering had said would happen only ‘over his dead body’. (‘Have you heard the news?’ Berliners asked each other, after the first raids. ‘Goering’s dead.’)

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

‘Eighth Over Berlin”
(Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Comparing the American [daylight] raids with the RAF [nighttime] incursions, it was certainly a great shock to Berliners to find their city now open to round-the-clock bombing.

We don’t mind the Yanks who come when the sun shines and it’s warm. It’s the Tommies sneaking in at night that we don’t like so much.

German Letters from Stalingrad
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

When 22 divisions were cut off by the Russians at the gates of Stalingrad, the Nazis had to rely on air transport for contact with the surrounded troops. One mid-December day a German cargo plane was shot down on its way from the ringed divisions. The wreckage yielded some three hundred letters from doomed soldier of der Fuehrer. The Soviets selected and published a typical one:

It is hard to confess even to myself, but it seems to me that at Stalingrad we shall soon win ourselves to death.

Click here to read an assessment of the late-war German soldier…

Red Army Gains at Stalingrad
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Soviet counterblows have thrown the Germans back in some places in the Stalingrad area. The early communique announced today that several of the city’s streets were recaptured in bloody hand-to-hand battles.

French Slavery Becomes A Reality
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Petain clamped the chains of Nazi slavery on the men and women of France today. The aged Marshal, Pierre Laval, and their quisling cabinet, promulgated a decree ordering all French men and women to compulsory labor. The decree, which the Government frankly admitted meant slavery in Germany for thousands of Frenchmen, was signed by Petain on Friday night.

Click here to read about the enslavement of Europe…

Red Drive Toward Rostov
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

The Red Army crossed the Don River at three points and advanced spearheads upwards of ten miles to the south of the Stalingrad Axis seige army, threatening it with more strict encirclement and at the time moving the key city of Caucacus. Moscow dispatches stressed the importance of this action which apparently swings a considerable weight along the railroad toward Rostov.

Who Was Tougher: The Japanese or The Germans?
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

By the end of 1943 Major General Joseph Lawton Collins (1917 – 1987) was one of two U.S. generals to give battle to both the Japanese in the East and the Germans in the West (Curtis Lemay was the other general). In this two page interview with Yank Magazine correspondent Mack Morriss, General Collins answered the question as to which of the two countries produced the most dangerous fighting man:

The Jap is tougher than the German. Even the fanatic SS troops can’t compare with the Jap…Cut off an outfit of Germans and nine times out of 10 they’ll surrender. Not the Jap.

Click here to read another article in which the Japanese and Germans were compared to one another.

Click here to read an interview with a Kamikaze pilot.

The American A-20 Havoc
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

An enthusiastic Yank Magazine article about the Douglas DB-7/A-20 Havoc (the British called it the A-20 Boston): throughout the course of the war, there was no other attack bomber that was manufactured in greater quantity than this one (7,477).

An eyewitness report of a pre-invasion mission over the continent in one of the newest and most effective U.S. air weapons, an attack bomber that looks like an insect but moves and hits with the speed of a meteor…

The Zoot Suit
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

This article tells of the origin and fast times of the zoot suit. Although the garment was popularized by Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, it had it’s origins in Harlem, New York, where it was known as the root suit.

A Patriotic Argument for Shorter Skirts
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

Months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Washington was gearing-up for the fight by restricting the availability of certain fabrics to the fashion industry and diverting these materials to the defense industry. This started an open discussion in fashion circles as to whether it would simply be best to raise the hemlines until the national emergency was over.

The Fashion Originators Guild termed shorter skirts silly and added that dresses ‘are just as short today as decency and grace will permit.

The Soviets Bombed Berlin, Too
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

This Newsweek article reported on the first Red Air Force bombing raid on the city of Berlin (August 11, 1941). The Soviets kept the pressure up for a few more weeks until their airfield was overrun in September.

The Partisan War
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

A Red Army officer, who said the German Army was being constantly harassed behind its lines by partizan activities and guerilla warfare, told me details of a number of recent incidents in White Russia. He said almost every village in German-occupied territory had supplied one or more groups of partizans who lived in the woods and used every opportunity to waylay detachments of infantry patrols and tanks.

Despair and Hunger
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

PM correspondent Richard O. Boyer (1903 – 1973) was in Berlin in June of 1940 when Paris fell to the German Army. He was dumbstruck by the surprising gloominess that hung heavily upon the German people the week of that great victory:

I could not understand it all and could scarcely believe the testimony of my own eyes. The scarlet banners with their black swastikas that garlanded the city everywhere in response to Hitler’s orders seemed only to emphasize the worried melancholy. The victory bells that rang each day at noon acquired the sound of a funeral dirge when one looked at the tired, pinched faces of the Germans hurrying along the pavements … When I expressed surprise to a glum man sitting near me he glanced impatiently up and only said, ‘We celebrated once in 1914’.

The Japanese home front suffered from tuberculosis – click here to read about it…

A Segregated WAAC
(Click Magazine, 1942)

A single page from the early war period tells the tale of Natalie Donaldson

Click here to read about the African-American efforts during the First World War.

‘No More Pearl Harbors”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

When the twenty-year-old editor at Yank Magazine wrote this editorial at the close of W.W. II he was expressing a belief that was shared equally with the members of the W.W. I generation who prosecuted and managed the war from Washington – and that was an understanding that the world is a far more dangerous place than we thought it was and it needs to be watched. This 1946 article is similar to other columns that appeared in 1947 (when the CIA was established) and 1952 (when the NSA opened its doors) in that it announced the creation of a government agency intent on global espionage in order to have done with all future concerns that another Pearl Harbor was in the planning.

The Pearl Harbor Story
(Yank Magazine, 1942)

When this article went to press the Pear Harbor attack was already over a year old – and like the articles that came out in ’41, these two pages capture much of the outrage that was the general feeling among so many of the American people. The article serves to give an account as to how the ships that were damaged that morning have largely recovered and were once again at sea (excluding the Arizona).

Five months after the Pearl Harbor attack the United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Coral Sea, click here to read about it…

Japan Could Not Afford to Go to War
(St. Louis Star-Times, 1941)

The day following Japan’s debut performance at Pearl Harbor found American economists assessing the economic strength of that country in an effort to understand how long their military would be able to exert power:

Government economists doubted today that Japan’s economy could withstand a long war with the United States.

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…