editor – Page 64 – Old Magazine Articles

Hitler's Slave Labor 1942 | Hitler's European Slaves

1942, PM Tabloid, World War Two

Europe Enslaved
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

By editor / October 6, 2021

Today in Europe there are more slaves than ever existed on any continent at any time. Hitler had to fight for every one of them… They used gangs, particularly in Poland, to round up workers from the streets, to drag them from churches and theaters and even from homes to go to work in Germany.

At the time it was estimated that there were as many as 6,000,000 slaves in Germany; half of them were prisoners of war.

Click here to read about the enslavement of France…

1943, Coronet Magazine, War at Sea

The War On U-Boats
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

By editor / October 6, 2021

Read the story of the CAMPBELL, a U.S. Coast Guard Cutter – she sank six German U-boats in twelve hours during one of the nastier moments that made up the Battle of the Atlantic.

CLICK HERE to read about the women of the U.S. Coast Guard during the Second World War.

1942, Hollywood, Photoplay Magazine, Recent Articles

Should Movie Stars Be Expected to Fight, As Well?
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

By editor / October 6, 2021

We were very surprised to read in the attached editorial that the whole idea of draft deferments for actors and other assorted Hollywood flunkies was not a scheme cooked-up by their respective agents and yes-men, but a plan that sprung forth from the fertile mind of the executive officer in charge of the Selective Service System: Brigadier General Lewis Blaine Hershey (1893 – 1977) in Washington.

Always one to ask the difficult questions, Ernest V. Heyn (1905 – 1995) executive editor of Photoplay posed the query Should Stars Fight? and in this column he began to weigh the pros-and-cons of the need for propaganda and an uninterrupted flow of movies for the home front, and the appearance of creating a new entitled class of pretty boys.

Twenty years earlier a Hollywood actor would get in some hot water for also suggesting that talented men be excused from the W.W. I draft…

Vladimir Lenin Interview 1921 | Washington D Vanderlip Meets Lenin |

1921, Recent Articles, Soviet History, The Literary Digest

The Conversational Lenin
(Literary Digest, 1921)

By editor / October 6, 2021

When Washington D. Vanderlip made his way to the nascent Soviet Union to secure mining rights in Siberia he wrote of his meeting with the nation’s first dictator, Vladimir Lenin, and revealed a Lenin that was seldom seen in print. He wasn’t blathering on about the proletariat or the bourgeoisie but rather musing about his pastimes and dreams for the future.

On his desk was a copy of the New York Times, well-thumbed. ‘Do you really read it?’ I asked. ‘I read the New York Times, the Chicago American and the Los Angeles Times regularly,’ he said.’Through the New York Times I keep track of the atrocities, the assassinations and the new revolutions in Russia. Otherwise I wouldn’t know where to find them.’

1945, Atomic Bombs, Commonweal Magazine, Recent Articles

Regretting the A-Bomb
(Commonweal Magazine, 1945)

By editor / October 6, 2021

An anonymous columnist at The Commonweal (New York) was quick to condemn the use of the Atomic Bombs:

… we are confronted with an obligation to condemn what we ourselves did, an obligation to admit that our victory has been sadly sullied not only because we used this weapon but because we have tacitly acceded to use it.

The Pentecostal Church in America | Fastest Growing Protestant Faith | History of the Assemblies of God Church

1958, Coronet Magazine, Faith, Recent Articles

Assemblies of God
(Coronet Magazine, 1958)

By editor / October 5, 2021

The fastest-growing Protestant religion today is the Pentecostal movement… In barely half a century this dynamic young version of old-time fundamentalism has produced spectacularly successful leaders such as Oral Roberts and the late Aimee Semple McPherson, has won the devotion of at least 2,000,000 Americans of every racial and religious origin and through zealous foreign missionary work, has gained thousands of converts on every continent.

1920 Book Review of Main Street by Sinclair Lewis | Main Street by Sinclair Lewis Summary | Primary Source Book Review of MAIN STREET

1920, Recent Articles, The New York Times, Twentieth Century Writers

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
(NY Times, 1920)

By editor / October 5, 2021

A remarkable book is this latest by Sinclair Lewis. A novel, yes, but so unusual as not to fall easily into a class. There is practically no plot, yet the book is absorbing. It is so much like life itself, so extraordinarily real. These people are actual folk, and there was never better dialogue written than their revealing talk.

Failure of Prohibition | Prohibition Made Gangsters Rich

1932, Pathfinder Magazine, Prohibition History, Recent Articles

The Non-Success of Prohibition
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

By editor / October 5, 2021

Prohibition had been in place for a little over eleven and a half years by the time this uncredited editorial was published. The column is informative for all the trivial events that Prohibition had set in motion and are seldom remembered in our own time – such as the proliferation of private golfing institutions; clubs that intended to appear innocent enough, but were actually created for Wet dues-paying golfers. A recently posted article (1917) that appeared in THE LITERARY DIGEST near the end of 1929 examined the astronomical wealth that had been earned by the gangsters in America’s biggest cities.

1922, Benito Mussolini, Recent Articles, The Literary Digest

Fascism’s Triumph Explained by Italian-American Journalists
(Literary Digest, 1922)

By editor / October 5, 2021

At the request of The Literary Digest editors, a number of Italian-language journalists working in North America were asked to explain the great success that the Italian Fascists were experiencing in 1922 Italy. This article lists an enormous number of Italian language newspapers that existed in the United States at that time; virtually every medium-sized to large American city had one. We were surprised to find that the most pro-Mussolini Italian-American newspaper operating in the U.S. was located in New York City.

In the late Thirties, early Forties the FBI began to monitor the Italian-Americans who adored Mussolini – Click here to read about it

Zaibatsu Family Power Ends 1945 | End of Japanese Economic Power Structure 1945

1945, Newsweek, Post-War Japan

Breaking Up The ‘Big Eight’
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

By editor / October 5, 2021

As the American effort to restructure a defeated Japan commenced, it seemed obvious to all that one of the first things to go was the Zaibatsu Family. Zaibatsu was the name given to the eight families which had held a monopoly on the manufacturing wealth and banking power in Japan since the mid-to-late Nineteenth Century. Made up of many names that you will recognize, this article goes into some detail explaining how the power structure worked and its relation with the Emperor.

General Hideko Tojo Attempted Suicide 1945 | General Hideko Tojo Hara-Kiri 1945 | General Hideko Tojo Seppuku 1945

1945, Post-War Japan, Recent Articles, Yank Magazine

The Capture of General Hideko Tojo
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

By editor / October 4, 2021

War correspondent George Burns reported on the momentous day when the American Army came to arrest the former Prime Minister of Imperial Japan, General Hideko Tojo (1884 – 1948). Tojo served as Japan’s Prime Minister between 1941 and 1944 and is remembered for having ordered the attack on the American naval installation at Pearl Harbor, as well as the invasions of many other Western outposts in the Pacific. Judged as incompetent by the Emperor, he was removed from office in the summer of 1944.

This article describes the efforts of Lt. Jack Wilpers who is credited for prolonging the life of Tojo after his amateur suicide attempt and seeing to it that the man kept his date with the hangman. Nominated for the Bronze Star, he was decorated in 2010: read THE WASHINGTON POST article.

1941, PM Tabloid, War Correspondents

Reporter Under Fire
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

By editor / September 30, 2021

CBS war correspondent Betty Wason (1912 – 2001) reported in a very chatty way about how the war was proceeding along the shores of the Southern Mediterranean Sea. Of particular interest was her observation regarding how thoroughly lame the Italian Army appeared to their opposite numbers in the Albanian Army. Rather than eliciting feelings of dread and hatred, the Italian soldiers were pitied for their poor skills – their bodies were plentiful on every battlefield.

Marilyn Monroe as Friend | Marilyn Monroe Insecure Woman

1971, Marilyn Monroe, Pageant Magazine, Recent Articles

Warm Recollections of Marilyn
(Pageant Magazine, 1971)

By editor / September 30, 2021

Nine years after Marilyn Monroe’s death, Hollywood reporter James Henaghan remembered his friendship with the star and their warm, unguarded moments together:

I guess I had known it all the time. I knew that I belonged to the public and to the world. The public was the only family, the only Prince Charming, and the only home I ever had dreamed about.

FDR and Hollywood | Hollywood ambitions of FDR | FDR Trivia 1923

1947, Coronet Magazine, Recent Articles, Silent Movie History

When FDR Wrote a Script…
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)

By editor / September 29, 2021

Here is an article by one of the foot soldiers of legendary silent movie producer Adolf Zukor, in which she recalled a time in 1923 when the future president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, mailed an unsolicited photoplay (ie. script) to their offices in hopes of securing some measure of Hollywood immortality.

Knowing that FDR had tremendous power in both New York and Washington, Zukor instructed her to let him down gently; twenty years later Roosevelt would chuckle about his ambitions with her at a White House party.

President Lincoln had his own dreams and aspirations…

1941, Collier's Magazine, German Home Front, Recent Articles

How Much Can the Germans Take?
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

By editor / September 29, 2021

The attached 1941 Collier’s Magazine article reported on how the people of Berlin were faring after one solid year of R.A.F. bombing. By war’s end it was estimated that as many as 580,000 Germans had been killed as a result of the Allied bombing campaign (many of them were children and far more women than men). This article examines what Berlin life was like when the bombs fell.

Click here to read about the bombing of Japan.

1917, D.W. Griffith, The Atlanta Georgian

Intolerance Reviewed
(The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

By editor / September 28, 2021

A short review of the silent classic film, Intolerance by D.W. Griffith:

For many years to come it is sure to be the last word in pictorial achievement. Not only is it deeply enthralling as entertainment, but it also carries a message of such power that pages of editorials have been written around its theme and its treatment.

1937 Birth of a Nation Study from Scribner's Magazine

1937, D.W. Griffith, Scribner's Magazine

More on Birth of a Nation
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1937)

By editor / September 27, 2021

An appreciation of Birth of a Nation written 20 years after its opening.

Mildred Gillars Treason | Axis Sally Treason

1949, American Traitors, Pathfinder Magazine

Mildred Gillars of Maine
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

By editor / September 27, 2021

How many times have we heard an actress or actor say, What the Heck, it’s work – plenty (if I had a nickle for every time… etc.). No doubt, this was the thought that tarried through the airy head of Mildred Gillars (né Mildred Elizabeth Sisk) when she agreed to broadcast Nazi propaganda from the heart of Germany on a radio program titled, the Home Sweet Home Hour (1942 – 1945). However, due to the fact that two witnesses must testify in order to prove the charge of treason, she was convicted in Federal Court for having performed in a 1944 Berlin Radio broadcast called Vision of Invasion. The Federal jury found her not guilty of committing seven other treasonous acts. Gillars served 12 years in Federal prison and was released during the Summer of 1961.

Author name: editor