“From businesslike German schools come the professional spy and the saboteur – cunning, ruthless, superbly trained for their specific tasks. They’ll be hard to stop, says Mr. Hoover, and catching them – in time – is a job in which every American can give the FBI a hand.”
This is one of the more enjoyable reads on the site. Published during the Summer of 1945, with the war in Europe over and the Japanese capitulation only six weeks away, the Liberty editors saw fit to run an article that recalled the absolute devotion that so many USO performers displayed again and again in order to guarantee that American military personnel abroad was fully entertained and amused – no matter their proximity to the enemy.
This is one of the more enjoyable reads on the site. Published during the Summer of 1945, with the war in Europe over and the Japanese capitulation only six weeks away, the Liberty editors saw fit to run an article that recalled the absolute devotion that so many USO performers displayed again and again in order to guarantee that American military personnel abroad was fully entertained and amused – no matter their proximity to the enemy.
The Los Angeles of the late Thirties was plagued by a small coterie of Nazis; they were not terribly visible, but they were around, nonetheless. From time-to-time real Fascists from Europe would blow into town and they would be met by such groups as the Jewish Labor Committee, the United Anti-Nazi Conference and the Los Angeles Jewish Community Relations Committee. This article concerns another organization that worked shoulder to shoulder with these groups, but with a little more style: the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. The League was 5,000 strong (likely an exaggeration) and within its ranks were Hollywood notables such as Herbert Biberman, Robert Rossen, Francis Edward Faragoh, Ring Lardner, Jr. and Dalton Trumbo.
In the wake of numerous air disasters involving the nascent passenger airlines, this article was produced to show readers that with each crash, steps were taken to make each flight safer. In 1938, the Federl Government stepped in and established the Civil Aeronautics Authority.
By cleverly borrowing from the state paper, letters and speeches of the Great Emancipator, a journalist from the usually pretty anti-New Deal Liberty Magazine was able to piece together a few paragraphs indicting
what they hoped Lincoln would think of the New Deal.
“The Brain Trust has devised a number of schemes for getting money away from the fellows who accumulated it during the Golden Age of Coolidge, and some of those schemes are working…”
Civil Rights leader Walter White (1893 – 1955) recognized an historic moment when he saw one: during the summer of 1944 he wrote about the first African-American general – Benjamin O. Davis (1912 – 2002; West Point ’36):
“He had endured snubs because of his color and seen less able men promoted over his head without complaint. Some soldiers of his own race charge that he is not as militant as they think he should be in redressing their grievances. Non of this disturbs him.”
“Six-pounder guns are being turned out in large numbers in one of the Royal Ordnance factories in England. Most of the workers who make them are women. The gun is highly mobile and is said to have a high rate of fire and remarkable armor penetration.”
Four years after Pearl Harbor, the editors of the Japanese newspaper Asahi gazed out of the windows from their offices and saw the charred remains of their enemy-occupied homeland and recognized that they’d made a fatal mistake:
We once more refresh our horror at the colossal crime committed and are filled with a solemn sense of reflection and self-reproach…
Four years after Pearl Harbor, the editors of the Japanese newspaper Asahi gazed out of the windows from their offices and saw the charred remains of their enemy-occupied homeland and recognized that they’d made a fatal mistake:
We once more refresh our horror at the colossal crime committed and are filled with a solemn sense of reflection and self-reproach…
Somebody said The Lord’s Prayer as the meeting broke up. I walked three blocks to the subway station. Just as I was about to go down the stairs – bang! – It happened! I don’t like the word miracle, but that’s all I can call it. The lights in the street seemed to flared up. My feet seemed to leave the pavement. A kind of shiver went over me and I burst into tears…I haven’t touched a drop in four years and I’ve sent four other fellows on the same road.
So horrid was the terror of World War I trench warfare that more than a few of the Frenchmen serving in those forward positions (and others who were simply overcome with life in the military) began to post personal ads in French newspapers, volunteering to marry widows and divorcees with large families in order to be absolved of all military duty.
Read what the U.S. Army psychologists had to say about courage.
With the Korean War in full-swing, Major General Edward E. MacMorland (U.S.A.) recalled his experiences some forty years earlier when he was a field grade officer fighting the nascent Soviet Army on their own turf:
It was a tough and surprisingly well-equipped enemy that our soldiers faced in this region…
On page one of this three page guide, you will find some essential notes and illustrations from the editors of Vanity Fair regarding the good taste of 1918 (as well as the simply awful).
To be sure, the book review of Das Kapital by Karl Marx that appeared in The New York Times in 1887 was very different from the review that same paper would give that book today. For this reviewer, Marx was one of the advocates of chaos, and a militant political economist:
If he is anything, Karl Marx is a man in a towering rage. His paragraphs are replete with kicks and cuffs. He wants to slap your face if you are a bourgeois; to smash your skull if you are a capitalist.
Click here to read an article by Leon Trotsky.
