World War Two – Page 83 – Old Magazine Articles

The Iwo Jima Invasion
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

Written by war correspondent Walter Davenport some thirteen months prior to taking the helm as editor-in-chief at Collier’s Magazine, this article gives the reader a sense as to what D-plus-one looked like from the fifty yard line at the Battle of Iwo Jima (Operation Detachment: February 19 – March 26, 1945):

There is no Jap navy here to stop us; no Jap air force, either… So you see Jap? On our way up here to Iwo we flew over more supply ships, more cargo carriers. Those decks carry concrete mixers, Diesel-powered road crushers and rollers. There aren’t many cliffs on Iwo to hide out in, Jap! You can’t live for weeks in the crevices of Suribachi. You can’t grow gardens on that rock. So, while you can still see, look down at what we’re seeing: An American city, a harsh, womanless city is moving in on you.

Davenport’s observations were no doubt a comfort to the Collier’s readers on the home front, but post-war accounting revealed that one quarter of the U.S. Navy’s losses took place at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Click here to read a unique story about the Battle of the Sula Straits…

Captured Hitlerjugend
(Stars & Stripes, 1944)

Among the thousands of German POWs captured during the Normandy campaign was this 17 year-old alumnus of the Hitler Jugend program who is the subject in the attached column. The editors at The Stars and Stripes were dumbfounded to discover how thoroughly he had been brainwashed – to prove the point, they printed their interview with the teen.

Q. If Germany wins the war, will you punish the United States?

A. We want living space.

Unrepentant Fascists in Argentina
(People Today, 1951)

The pages of PEOPLE TODAY, a short-lived gossip rag and probable ancestor of today’s PEOPLE, seldom reserved any column space to report on the whereabouts of all the various celebrity Nazis who had missed their date’s with the hangman – but for this scoop they made an exception.

Spotted in Argentina during the summer of 1951 was Mussolini’s daughter, Edda Ciano (1910 – 1995), Otto Skorzeny (1908 – 1975) and Croatian fascist Ante Pavelić (1889 – 1959). The murderous Pavelić was in the employ of the Argentine dictator, Juan Peron; the other two resided in Europe (Countess Ciano had recently served a two year stint in an Italian prison and Skorzeny, as an ODESSA flunky, was probably no stranger to South America).

Click here to read a related article from NEWSWEEK concerning the post-war presence of Nazis in Argentina.

Click here to read another article about the post-war whereabouts of another Nazi.

With the War Came Medical Innovations
(Pageant Magazine, 1945)

Four years of global carnage did not simply usher in an era of more destructive weaponry for the inhabitants of Earth to ponder; it also gave cause for tremendous improvements in medical care. This 1945 article anticipated a much better world that would be created from the smoldering remains of Europe and Asia – a world that was better prepared to address the health requirements of the diseased and the burned. The medical advancements that were forged between the years 1939 through 1945 saw remarkable improvements in surgery and anesthesia and brought new light on how the medical establishment understood blood and the treatment of venereal disease.

CLICK HERE… to read one man’s account of his struggle with shell shock…

June 6, 1945: the First Anniversary
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

YANK correspondent Dewitt Gilpin visited the Omaha and Utah beaches exactly one year after the 1944 Normandy Invasion. The journalist interviewed some American D-Day veterans as well as members of the local French population who recalled that bloody day -while others simply tried to forget.

Landing to the left of the Rangers on Omaha was the 116th Infantry of the 29th Division. Their 1st Battalion came in over a beach that had more dead men on it than live ones.

Read what the army psychologists had to say about fear in combat.

June 6, 1945: the First Anniversary
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Landing to the left of the Rangers on Omaha was the 116th Infantry of the 29th Division. Their 1st Battalion came in over a beach that had more dead men on it than live ones.

Read what the army psychologists had to say about fear in combat.

The Lay-Out Plan for Tule Lake
(U.S. Government, 1943)

A black and white schematic drawing depicting the Tule Lake Relocation Center, which was located in Tule Lake, California. The plan clearly illustrates how the residential huts were to be placed in addition to the churches, shops and schools.

Ranger School
(Yank Magazine, 1942)

The 76th Division at Fort Meade learns the latest scientific methods of hand-to-hand slaughter and free-for-all street fighting that will soon be taught to every infantry outfit in the Army. The article concerns the hand-t-hand combat instruction of one Francois D’Eliscu – a U.S Army major made famous for his 11-point training plan.

Major D’Eliscu is one of the toughest men alive. He can kill with a flick of his elbow, maim with a pinch of his fingers. He imparts this toughness into the course he gave to the 76th Division instructors and to the Special Service officers from the other divisions.

Audie Murphy: the Most Decorated
(Coronet Magazine, 1955)

Audie Murphy (1925 – 1971) was one of the most decorated American combat soldiers of the Second World War. This article appeared on the newsstands just in time to promote To Hell and Back, the Universal Studio movie based on Murphy’s 1949 wartime memoir of the same name. Some men fit quite comfortably into the public life of a celebrated hero, Audie Murphy was not one of them.

John Riley Kane
(Coronet Magazine, 1944)

John Killer Kane (1907 – 1996) proved his mettle numerous times throughout the Second World War, but it was on August 1, 1943 – above the blackened skies of the Ploesti oil refineries in Romania, that the brass caps of the U.S. Ninth Air Force sat up and truly took notice of his polished skills as a pilot of a B-24 bomber. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for the admirable mixture of confidence and ability that showed so clearly that day.

In the attached article, the pilot recalled the moment when he was made aware that the number four engine had been hit

and we increased power on the other three. As soon as we left the target we dropped down to tree-top level. We were right in the middle of the group and I could see other ships passing us as we lost speed. Then the Junker 88s and the ME 105s came to work on us. It was a sight I can never forget, seeing B-24s falling like flies on the right and left of us. But we were getting our share of fighters, too. It was a rough show.

High praise is heaped on Colonel Kane for all of nine pages – celebrating his enormous personality as much as his sang-froid in battle.