“Womanhood is industrialized in Germany today. The Führer has decreed that maternity is a state function, subject to production regulations like any part of the planned economy of the Third Reich. Sex has been regimented no less than the airplane industry. Love is now mechanized and runs on a twenty-four-hour schedule, with the slogan: Germany needs children.”
During the second week of February, 1945, the men of the U.S. Ninth Infantry Division ran across one of the six Leadership Academies run by Nazi King-Pin, Robert Ley (1890 – 1945; you can read about him here). Among the papers they liberated was a public relations pamphlet explaining what was required of each candidate and what would happen to them if they want out:
“These men must know and realize that from now on there is no road back for them. When the party takes the Brown Shirt away from anybody, the man involved will not only lose the office he holds, but he, personally, and his family, wife and children, will be destroyed.”
An eyewitness recalled Hitler as a boy…
Retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler (1881 – 1940) was well known for his 1935 book, War is a Racket in which he summed-up his military career as one in which he served as “a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers”; he wrote of the importance of removing the profitability from war and cautioned his countrymen to be weary of American military adventurism. In this essay, Butler warned of well-healed, deep-pocketed “peace” organizations and prophesied that institutions like the League of Nation and the U.N. would be incapable of stopping wars (he got that right).
“The motto of the Engineer Amphibian Command is “Put’em Across”, and its principle is aptly put by Brigadier General Daniel Noce (1894−1976) , chief of the U.S. Army’s amphibious operations in the European theater, who built this force from scratch. ‘Water between us and the enemy is an avenue, not an obstacle’ he says.”
To us, the most interesting part of this 1943 editorial is in the opening sentence, where an accounting is given as to the number of prisoners acquired after a full year and a half of war. The U.S. military had amassed 22,000 Germans, 14,000 Italians – yet only 62 (sixty-two) Japanese prisoners of war! This is famously due to the instructions given to the Emperor’s combatants to not be taken prisoner – but we certainly expected there to be more than that. The writer goes on speaking in favor of just treatment for Axis prisoners – but please don’t pamper our Nisei in Arizona.
Frank Coffyn (1878 – 1960) was one of the earliest pioneer aviators in the United States. In this article he recalls those heady days when he regularly broke bread and talked shop with the likes of Orville Wright and other assorted fathers of aviation. Coffyn has long been remembered for being the first pilot to fly his camera-mounted Wright Flyer over Manhattan and under both Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges in 1912 – which he recalls herein.
Here is the first half of the thrilling account of the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 23 – 26, 1944) as it appeared in two installments in Collier’s Magazine in January, 1945.
Here is the first half of the thrilling account of the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 23 – 26, 1944) as it appeared in two installments in Collier’s Magazine in January, 1945.
Here is the first half of the thrilling account of the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 23 – 26, 1944) as it appeared in two installments in Collier’s Magazine in January, 1945.
Here is the first half of the thrilling account of the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 23 – 26, 1944) as it appeared in two installments in Collier’s Magazine in January, 1945.
Here is the first half of the thrilling account of the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 23 – 26, 1944) as it appeared in two installments in Collier’s Magazine in January, 1945.
The attached editorial goes into some detail cataloging numerous U.S. presidents and their assorted excuses for the economic depressions that kicked-in during their respective administrations. Hoover is included.
“[If not for the Allied air forces] Rommel might have reached his objectives – Alexandria, Cairo and Suez – had he not been able to plow through to the Nile Delta where he could resume his favorite kind of military football. He might have reached the flat, broad, green cool plains of the Delta had he been able to bring up water, food, fuel and reinforcements in men and weapons. It was precisely that which air power prevented…”
An occasion was provided to debate the pros and cons of American immigration policy at the National Immigration Conference that convened in New York City during December of 1923:
“Most of the speakers advocated restriction and selection, but as to the degree and variety of each there was no consensus of opinion. Especially, there were two different methods of attacking the problem – from the industrial standpoint, and from the standpoint of the welfare of the race and of citizenship.”
“Convinced that the best way to combat fifth columnists is to teach aliens how to become good citizens, the Department of Justice announced a $14,000,000 program to expand Works Projects Administration classes in ‘Americanization’…”
In 1939, “Canada wisely decided that she could become an ideal training center for pilots and airmen generally. Canada could produce munitions in her factories. Conditions were ideal for both pursuits.”
W.W. II: Where were the war poets?
In 1939, “Canada wisely decided that she could become an ideal training center for pilots and airmen generally. Canada could produce munitions in her factories. Conditions were ideal for both pursuits.”
W.W. II: Where were the war poets?
As the last year of the war began, the American home front turned their attention to all the various commercial products that would once again be offered in the shops. New cars were a popular topic, but the one subject Americans were most curious about was television.
