World War Two

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

British Civilians Trained to Use Gas Masks
(The Literary Digest, 1936)

This article appeared in 1936 and reported that the populations of both England and France were being trained in the general use of gas masks in anticipation of a German invasion.

Even babies will be protected in covered perambulators, into which masked ‘Nannies’ can pump air, forcing it through filter cans. Researchers are working on an infant’s mask with a nipple attachment.

VJ-Day in London
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

…There were crowds in Piccadilly Circus and Leicester and Trafalgar Squares. Quite a few people got rid of their waste paper by throwing it out the windows, a sign that the need for saving such things for the war effort was just about over.


Click here to rrad about VE-Day in London.

VE-Day in London
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Hundreds of GIs were gathered at the Rainbow Corner Red Cross Club in Piccadilly when bundles of Stars and Stripes extras were tossed out free. The paper bore a huge banner headline, ‘Germany Quits!’ and contained the official Ministry of Information announcement which all England had just heard on the air.

News of the Reich’s final and complete surrender found Piccadilly, Marble Arch and other popular intersections jammed with people. At first incredulous, the cautious British worked up to a pitch of demonstrative joy…

Click here to read about VJ-Day in London.

Hiroshima
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Walking into Hiroshima in broad daylight, wearing an American uniform and knowing that you were one of the first Americans the people in that utterly ruined city had laid eyes on since the bombing, was not a comfortable feeling.


After the war it was discovered that one quarter of the Hiroshima dead were Koreans who were there as slave laborers.


The October 3, 1946 issue of the Atlanta Constitution ran a front page headline declaring that Imperial Japan had successfully tested their own Atom Bomb during the summer of ’45. Click here to read more on this topic.


Click here to read General Marshal’s opinions regarding the Atomic Bomb.

The German Portable Pillbox
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

No doubt about it: for the fashionable, young Deutchen Soldaten on the go, the preferred choice in pillboxes is the portable variety! And you’d best believe that when those slide-rule jockeys back in Berlin lent their lobes to what the trendy book-burning crowed in Italy and Russia were saying, they jumped to it and created this dandy, 6,955 pound mobile pillbox that was capable of being planted almost anywhere. Better living through modern design!

The Battle of Berlin
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

The long-awaited climax of the great Allied air offensive against Germany came like a thunderclap last week. It was the opening of the Battle of Berlin… According to the [British Ministry of Economic Warfare], the Germans have evacuated nonessential civilians (children, invalids and the aged) just as the British had from London three years before. But all evidence indicated that government officials and essential workers still remained in the German capital.


Berlin police counted 5,680 dead.


More on the bombing of Germany can be read here…

M8 Greyhound Armored Car
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Here is the skinny on the Ford Motor Company’s M8 Greyhound Armored Car as it was presented to the olive-clad readers of YANK MAGAZINE in the summer of 1944:

Armored Car, M8, 6×6: the Army’s latest combat vehicle, is a six-wheeled, eight-ton armored job that can hit high speeds over practically any type of terrain. It mounts a 37-mm cannon and a .30-caliber machine gun in a hand-operated traversable turret…

The BMW Motorcycle Examined
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

All global tensions aside, the U.S. Army could not find any faults at all with the motorcycles that BMW was making for Adolf Hitler during World War II. After having spent much time testing and re-testing the thing, they reluctantly concluded, This is as good as any motorcycle in the world (it was probably a bit better…).

Click here to read about the firm belief held by the German Army concerning the use of motorcycles in modern war.

How to Drive W.W. II Axis Vehicles
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

This posting remarks about a number of concerns: assorted factoids about the German PZKW II tank and it’s 1944 down-graded status as an offensive weapon to a reconnaissance car; tips for GIs as to how to drive German vehicles and, finally, the German interest in salvaging tank parts from captured enemy armor:

Scroll to Top