World War Two

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

Joan Fontaine Does Her Bit
(Liberty Magazine, 1942)

Whether Joan Fontaine (1917 – 1913) was pressured into writing this bitter-sweet article by her studio or some other Hollywood entity – we’ll never know, but this piece recalls her earliest days in Japan, where she was born, and all the sweet smiles and kind words that all of us are peppered with during our formative years. So much for the sweet part of the article – then she recalls her return trip in 1934-35 and what a bunch of Fascist skanks they all turned into (Japanese-Americans also feel her back hand).

Ration Cheaters
(American Magazine, 1943)

For those blessed to live in a society with a free-market economy, we are pleased to pursue our whims daily – and eight times out of ten, they are made manifest before too long. Yet this was not the case for those living on the W.W. II home front. This article is about the black market that must have been a temptation for everyone back then. The reader will get a true sense of the tyranny Americans had to suffer when our economy was engaged in total war; it was written by one of the autocrats charged with enforcing the rationing laws.

Feeding American Paratroopers
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

With W.W. II just around the corner, the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps’ “subsistence laboratory” in Chicago was burning the mid-night oil trying to create a nutritious light weight ration with little bulk for the nascent paratrooper divisions.

More About the Seabees
(All Hands Magazine, 1945)

“From the start the naval Construction Battalions were unusual outfits, mostly because of the men in them and because theirs was a new kind of warfare… Every Seabee found himself doubling in various trades. It was thus the construction men developed their most important tools – improvisation, ingenuity and guts. Often parts, materials and equipment had to be manufactured on the spot in shops hastily thrown together from salvaged enemy materials and tools… But as the Seabee organization grew (from an original force of 3,300 to a peak of 247,155, of which 83 percent were overseas) and its activities increased, the battalions picked up plenty of know-how, enabling them to smooth out and speed up operations.”

An American Tank in Tunisia
(American Magazine, 1943)

Here is first-person account of life in an M3 Stuart tank fighting in Tunisia:


“We were ordered to hold, and hold we did. But we took a terrible shellacking. We dodged around, spitting at the Germans with our little 37mm gun. Every now and then one of their heavy tank shells or high-velocity 88s would hit one of our light tanks and smash it. The wounded would crawl out, and those who could walk would carry or drag those who couldn’t… In the afternoon, when we were finally ordered to withdraw, we had only 9 of 18 tanks left, and some of those were damaged. We took what wounded we could into the tanks and held them in our arms.”

The Seabees
(Pageant Magazine, 1944)

In another article on this site, these words were quoted from the captured dispatches of a Japanese general writing to his superiors:


“[The Yank] is a wizard at handling machinery and he can build airfields, roads and advance bases with uncanny speed.”


– he was, of course, referring to the famous Construction Battalions (Seabees) of the U.S. Navy. This article will tell you all about them.

The Seabees
(Pageant Magazine, 1944)

In another article on this site, these words were quoted from the captured dispatches of a Japanese general writing to his superiors:


“[The Yank] is a wizard at handling machinery and he can build airfields, roads and advance bases with uncanny speed.”


– he was, of course, referring to the famous Construction Battalions (Seabees) of the U.S. Navy. This article will tell you all about them.

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