Find old World War 2 articles here. We have great newspaper articles from wwii check them out today!
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…
The week the French Army collapsed was the week Hollywood experienced the greatest number of production delays. Studio wags believed it was an indicator as to just how many European refugees were employed on their stages. Studio bosses banned all radio and newspapers from their properties in hopes that each production would maintain their respective schedules.
The triumphs of the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day stand as a testament to the superb combat leadership skills of Lt. Colonel James E. Rudder (1910 – 1970), who is the subject of the attached article. As a participant in the planning the Allied invasion of Normandy, General Omar Bradley recognized that the German heavy guns situated above and between the Omaha and Utah beaches had to be silenced if the landings were to be successful; Bradley selected Rudder and his group to do the job, later remarking that this order was the most difficult he had ever, in his entire career, given anybody.
Written ten years after that historic day, this article is about Rudder’s return to Omaha Beach with his young son, and his recollections of the battle that was fought.
A good read; an even more in-depth study regarding the assault on Pointe du Hoc can be found at Amazon: Rudder’s Rangers.
More about Rangers can be read here…
During the closing weeks of the war it was estimated that the Germans lorded over as many as 65,000 American POWs. Likewise, in the United States, there were 320,118 German Prisoners of War held captive. This article compares and contrasts how each army chose to treat their prisoners.
The greatest deception deployed by the German Army during the the Ardennes Offensive was to parachute Nazi commandos into the American lines – men who had been raised in the U.S. and spoke the language well. They wore American uniforms and performed heinous acts of sabotage, and as this article spells out, lured many GIs to their deaths.
Two of these Germans attempted to kidnap and assassinate General Eisenhower, click here to read about it…
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.
On April 2, 1945, elements of the American First Army liberated a German prison camp adjacent to the little town of Orb, Germany:
What they found there appalled even the toughest GI and seemed to demonstrate that in some cases at least the Germans had treated British and American prisoners of war as badly as any of the pitiful slave laborers.
An article from the Fall of 1943 that reported on the second campaign fought by the men of the 82nd Airborne Division, the invasion of Sicily:
These air-carried forces were will be in a position to assist seaborne invaders not only by harassing the rear of the foe’s first lines, but by standing in the way of his attempts to bring up his reserves…These men were also to show that an airborne force can assail and capture and enemy’s strategic strong points, can man his bridges and his highways, can dominate his high-banked rivers and fight off his counterattacks.
In the fall of 1978 former TIME MAGAZINE war correspondent Bill Walton remarked privately about how wildly inappropriate it was to cast the pretty-boy actor Ryan O’Neal in the roll as General James M. Gavin (1907 – 1990) for the epic war film, A Bridge Too Far. Having dropped into Normandy in 1944 with a typewriter strapped to his chest, Walton witnessed first-hand the grit and combat leadership skills that made Gavin so remarkable. The attached YANK article tells the tale of Gavin’s teen-age enlistment, his meteoric rise up the chain of command and his early advocacy for a U.S. Army parachute infantry divisions.
Another article contrasting the Germans and the Japanese can be read here…
Five days into Operation Market Garden, this hastily written notice was dispatched by a Stars and Stripes reporter on assignment with the allied airborne forces in war-torn Holland.
The seasoned war correspondent explained in the attached article as to why Operation Market Garden was such a disaster (and the censors let him) and why the next ambitious Allied parachute assault, Operation Varsity, would be different. Reminiscing about all that he saw of the famed parachute jump beyond the Rhine prior to being forced to turn-tail and bail out over English-occupied Belgium, he observed:
…the C-46s come in and apparently walk into a wall of flak. I could not see the flak, but one plane after another went down. All our attention was on our own ship. It could blow up in mid-air at any moment. From the pilot’s compartment came streams of stinging smoke.
Here is an account of the earliest days of the paratrooper branch of the U.S. Army. It is told by a man who claims the unique distinction of being the first volunteer to be recruited into the organization, Captain William T. Ryder (1913 – 1992). At this point in history the word paratrooper was not is use – the author uses the term jump-fighter, instead.
By the time this article appeared at the New York City newsstands, the British had chased Rommel’s Afrika Korps out of Egypt, the Americans had suffered their first defeat at the Kasserine Pass and was in the process of walloping the Tenth Panzer at El Guettar. The anonymous general who penned this article took all that into consideration but believed there was much more fight left in the Germans than there actually was.
The U.S. 34th Division fought in Tunisia, click here to read about them.
On January 26, 1942 the long awaited boatload of U.S. troops to Great Britain had finally arrived. The first American G.I. to step off the plank and plant his foot on British soil was Pfc. Milburn H. Henke (1918 – 1998) of the 34th Infantry Division
This article tells the tale of the 1st Battalion, 34th Division which had the distinction of being the longest serving U.S. combat unit in the course of the entire war. It was these men of the Mid-West who took it on the chin that day at Kasserine (America’s first W.W. II battle, which was a defeat), avenged their dead at El Guettar, landed at Salerno, Anzio and fought their way up to Bologna. By the time the war ended, there weren’t many of the original men left, but what few there were reminisce in this article. Interesting gripes about the problems of American uniforms can be read.
The Army Nurse during World War II was at work in every quarter of the globe, serving on land, on the sea in hospital ships and in the air, evacuating the wounded by plane. Because of the rugged conditions under which she served, she was trained to use foxholes and to understand gas defense, to purify water in the field and to crawl , heavily equipped, under barbed wire.
By the time VJ-Day rolled around, the Army Nurse Corps was 55,000 strong.
(From Amazon: G.I. Nightingales: The Army Nurse Corps in World War II
The Story of G.I. Joe
Here is the PM movie review of At The Front North Africa directed by John Ford and produced by Darryl Zanuck for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The reviewer seemed irked that the film only showed the Germans having a difficult time.
Click here to read about the American Army in North Africa…
