World War Two

Find old World War 2 articles here. We have great newspaper articles from wwii check them out today!

Preparing for War with Motorcycles (Literary Digest, 1937)

A short news piece from The Literary Digest reported on an investment that the Nazi forces were making to insure a lightening-fast attack:

Motorcycles, a cool million of them, have become a German army specialty. The new Wehrmacht specializes in them. (it knows it will be short of horses; as when in March, 1918, the Teuton cavalry arm was virtually abolished, west front and east.) The British and French have only half a million machines apiece.


Read about the mechanics of W.W. II German motorcycles…

Preparing for War with Motorcycles (Literary Digest, 1937) Read More »

The Escaped P.O.W.s That The F.B.I. Never Found (Collier’s Magazine, 1953)

Unlike Reinhold Pabel, the W.W. II German P.O.W. whose story is told in the article posted above, the five escapees in this article remained at large long after the war ended. Five minutes researching their names on the internet revealed that every single one of them remained in the U.S. where they held jobs, paid taxes and raised families well into their golden years.

The Escaped P.O.W.s That The F.B.I. Never Found (Collier’s Magazine, 1953) Read More »

Friend of the Allies (The American Magazine, 1940)

Colonel William J. Donovan and Edgar Mower, writing of fifth-column activities at the direction of Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy, charged Fritz Wiedemann [as having been] praised by Hitler for helping to spike American legislation to aid the Allies in 1939.


Numerous nasty remarks were quoted in the attached article concerning the German Consul General in San Francisco, Fritz Wiedemann (1891 – 1970), but the journalist who penned the article could not possibly know that Wiedemann was at that time spilling his guts to the FBI. Having served under Hitler for some time as adjutant, by 1940 Wiedemann had denounced his devotion to the Nazi Party and told Hoover all that he Knew about Hitler and what the world could expect from the man.


In 1940, Japanese spies made the mistake of confiding in Wiedemann – more about this can be read here.

Friend of the Allies (The American Magazine, 1940) Read More »

Capturing The Largest Nazi Spy Ring (Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

Following swiftly on the smashing of a spy ring in this country, a Federal grand jury in Brooklyn, N.Y., last week leveled a unique indictment at the government of Nazi Germany: it baldly accused the Third Reich of conducting, in ten countries stretching from Peru to China, a worldwide espionage plot directed against the United States.


J. Edgar Hoover tells how this ring was broken up in this 1951 article…

Capturing The Largest Nazi Spy Ring (Newsweek Magazine, 1941) Read More »

Counter-Espionage (Coronet Magazine, 1951)

This is the story of Harry Sawyer (real name William G. Sebold), a German immigrant to American shores. On a return trip to Germany to visit family in 1939, Sawyer was very reluctantly forced into service as a spy for the German SD (Sicherheitsdienst), the intelligence arm of Himmler’s SS. Sawyer was schooled briefly in the ways of spying, told what was expected of him and then let loose to set sail home.


Upon his return, Sawyer quickly explained his problem to J. Edgar Hoover, who masterfully turned the situation to his advantage, an advantage that led to the capture of 32 Nazi spies.


Click here to read about Lucy – Stalin’s top spy during the Second World War.

Counter-Espionage (Coronet Magazine, 1951) Read More »

Finding Japanese Spies (The American Magazine, 1942)

Here is an interesting article by an American counter-espionage agent who tells several stories about the various Japanese spies he had encountered during the early months of the war. He wrote of his his frustrations with the civil liberty laws that were in place to protect both citizen and alien alike.


It was Mexican president Manuel Avila Camacho who chased the spies out of his nation – click here to read about it…

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The Road to Pearl Harbor (United States News, 1945)

It now becomes apparent that the U.S. Government, long before Pearl Harbor, knew Tokyo’s war plans almost as thoroughly as did the Japanese. To all practical purposes, Washington had ears attuned to the most intimate, secret sessions of Japan’s cabinet.


A year and a half before the Pearl Harbor attack, Naval Intelligence sold a Japanese agent some bogus plans of the naval installation – more about this can be read here.

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The Films of the U.S. Army Signal Corps (Click Magazine, 1943)

An article from Click Magazine designed for civilian consumption concerning the U.S. Signal Corps and their efforts to film and photograph as much of the war as was possible in order that the brass hats far off to the rear could sit comfortably and understand what was needed. The article is illustrated with six war photographs and the captions explaining what information was gleaned from each:

Every detail of these films is scrupulously studied by a group of experts, officers and engineers representing the Army Ground Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Army Air Corps, the Signal Corps the Armored Forces, the Quartermaster Corps and other military units. Naturally, these services are interested in different sections of every film. To facilitate their studies, a device known as the Multiple Film Selector is used.

The Signal Corps Movies of World War I were intended for different uses…

The Films of the U.S. Army Signal Corps (Click Magazine, 1943) Read More »