Author name: editor

1920s Chicago Gangsters | 1920s Chicago Bootleggers
1927, Prohibition History, Recent Articles, The Chicagoan

Prohibition – Chicago Style (The Chicagoan, 1927)

By /

By 1927 it was common knowledge to every Chicago-based journalist that any reporter who wrote truthfully or seemed in any way outraged by the business practices of Al Capone – and others of his ilk, was likely to be found face down in Lake Michigan. The writer who penned this piece probably had that fact in mind while sitting at the typewriter; it is not an apology for the Chicago gangsters, it simply implies that they are established, the police are complicit – so get used to it. The writer then begins to explain how the bootlegging and distribution business operated – some of the up-and-coming hoods of the day must have been gratified to read that there was plenty of room for advancement within each organization.


A history of Chicago vaudeville can be read here…

1941 Skirt Hemlines | Fashion Originators Guild Argument for Longer Hemline 1941 | 1940s Fabric Rationing and Hemline Length
1941, Fashion (WWII), Newsweek

A Patriotic Argument for Shorter Skirts (Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

By /

Months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Washington was gearing-up for the fight by restricting the availability of certain fabrics to the fashion industry and diverting these materials to the defense industry. This started an open discussion in fashion circles as to whether it would simply be best to raise the hemlines until the national emergency was over.

The Fashion Originators Guild termed shorter skirts silly and added that dresses ‘are just as short today as decency and grace will permit.

Erskine Caldwell War Reporting 1941
1941, Eastern Front, PM Tabloid

The Partisan War (PM Tabloid, 1941)

By /

A Red Army officer, who said the German Army was being constantly harassed behind its lines by partizan activities and guerilla warfare, told me details of a number of recent incidents in White Russia. He said almost every village in German-occupied territory had supplied one or more groups of partizans who lived in the woods and used every opportunity to waylay detachments of infantry patrols and tanks.

1940 Morale in Germany | Poor Morale in 1940 Germany
1940, German Home Front, PM Tabloid

Despair and Hunger (PM Tabloid, 1940)

By /

PM correspondent Richard O. Boyer (1903 – 1973) was in Berlin in June of 1940 when Paris fell to the German Army. He was dumbstruck by the surprising gloominess that hung heavily upon the German people the week of that great victory:

I could not understand it all and could scarcely believe the testimony of my own eyes. The scarlet banners with their black swastikas that garlanded the city everywhere in response to Hitler’s orders seemed only to emphasize the worried melancholy. The victory bells that rang each day at noon acquired the sound of a funeral dirge when one looked at the tired, pinched faces of the Germans hurrying along the pavements … When I expressed surprise to a glum man sitting near me he glanced impatiently up and only said, ‘We celebrated once in 1914’.


The Japanese home front suffered from tuberculosis – click here to read about it…

'No More Pearl Harbors'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)
1946, Pathfinder Magazine, Spying

‘No More Pearl Harbors” (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

By /

When the twenty-year-old editor at Yank Magazine wrote this editorial at the close of W.W. II he was expressing a belief that was shared equally with the members of the W.W. I generation who prosecuted and managed the war from Washington – and that was an understanding that the world is a far more dangerous place than we thought it was and it needs to be watched. This 1946 article is similar to other columns that appeared in 1947 (when the CIA was established) and 1952 (when the NSA opened its doors) in that it announced the creation of a government agency intent on global espionage in order to have done with all future concerns that another Pearl Harbor was in the planning.

Pearl Harbor Newspaper Article | Pearl Harbor Magazine Article
1942, Pearl Harbor, Yank Magazine

The Pearl Harbor Story (Yank Magazine, 1942)

By /

When this article went to press the Pear Harbor attack was already over a year old – and like the articles that came out in ’41, these two pages capture much of the outrage that was the general feeling among so many of the American people. The article serves to give an account as to how the ships that were damaged that morning have largely recovered and were once again at sea (excluding the Arizona).


Five months after the Pearl Harbor attack the United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Coral Sea, click here to read about it…

Japanese Economy W.W. II | 1930s Japanese Economy | 1941 Japan
1941, St. Louis Star-Times, World War Two

Japan Could Not Afford to Go to War (St. Louis Star-Times, 1941)

By /

The day following Japan’s debut performance at Pearl Harbor found American economists assessing the economic strength of that country in an effort to understand how long their military would be able to exert power:

Government economists doubted today that Japan’s economy could withstand a long war with the United States.


Four years after the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese newspaper editorial expressed deep regret for Japan’s aggressiveness in the Second World War, click here to read about it…

Scroll to Top