1937 – Page 6 – Old Magazine Articles

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Here is a very thorough profile of Mustafa Kamel Atatürk (1881 – 1938), the first president of the Republic of Turkey (1923 – 1938). The article goes into some detail concerning his humble beginnings, his vices and his secret writings for the revolutionary Vatan ve Hürriyet (Motherland and Liberty) underground movement. His rise to power came with his assorted military triumphs in the Italo-Turkish War, the Balkan War, the First World War and most notably, the Greko-Turkish War. He came to power in 1922 and began reforming Turkish society in ways that rocked the nation to its very corps.

Click here to read a 1922 article about the Turkish slaughter of Christians.

A Most Dangerous Man
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Although Hitler was no mystery to the readers of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE (the editors had been following his trajectory since the early Twenties), the attached article tells of the maniac’s impoverished boyhood all the way up to his exulted status in 1937.

Dumping Justices
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

The attached editorial was intended to serve as PATHFINDER MAGAZINE‘s introduction to six pen-portraits that follow on the next webpage. In order to better serve their readers the editors provided profiles of the oldest Supreme Court justices who FDR wished to remove.

[Justices] McReynolds, Sutherland, Van Devanter, and Butler are generally conceded to be the court’s consistently conservative bloc. In some cases, this bloc is viewed as not only conservative but also reactionary.

Click here to read the profiles of the six justices…

Hitler Rejects Old Treaty Obligations
(Literary Digest, 1937)

This magazine article covered a speech made by Hitler four years into his rule:

In his efforts to wipe out the country’s status as a pariah among the nations, Hitler boasted Saturday, he had rearmed the Reich and seized the disarmed Rhineland. Still denouncing Versailles, he last week erased one of the most painful of the treaty’s blots on German honor with a few words:

‘I hereby and above all annul the signature extorted from a weak and impotent Government against its better knowledge, confessing Germany’s responsibility for the late war.’

Click here to read about Germany’s treaty violations…

Silent Film Library Established
(Delineator Magazine, 1937)

This article is about the 1935 founding of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library. Established with funding by the Rockefeller Foundation, today the MOMA Film Library is comprised of more than 14,000 films and four million motion picture stills.

Was Tobé the First Fashion Stylist?
(Delineator Magazine, 1937)

Here is a 1937 magazine article from the long forgotten pages of DELINEATOR MAGAZINE insisted that they found the very first fashion stylist -some lass named Tobé (born Taubé Coller, a.k.a. Mrs Herbert Davis, 1890 – 1962). They were very insistent on the matter, although they failed to explain the sources used to reach this conclusion:

This woman is the first official stylist…Now she is head of Tobé Incorporated, through which she does for more than a hundred stores in America and some in Canada, England, Australia, Norway and Sweden.

A Day in the Life of F.D.R.
(Literary Digest, 1937)

The attached article presented a dusk till dawn account of one day in the life of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 – 1945).
Written during his first term (prior to the war), the journalist recounted who the reoccurring players in his life were, the time of his rising, the preferred meals, the length of the meetings, distractions, recreations and other assorted minutia -but you’ll not read the word wheelchair once. This is a fine example of the press black-out that was in place in order to prevent the public any knowledge whatever of Roosevelt’s paralytic illness, which rendered him paralyzed from the waist down (he suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome which he contracted in 1921).

Read a 1945 interview with FDR’s economic adviser, Bernard Baruch; click here.
Click here to read about the four inaugurations of FDR.

The Coronation of George VI
(Stage Magazine, 1937)

An article by Rebecca West (1892 – 1983) in which she listed an enormous number of reasons as to why May 12, 1937 (the coronation date for George VI) will not be a good day to be in London. From time to time throughout the article she throws-in some bon mots:

This is a crucifixion as well as a coronation. The best kings we have ever had have been Queens, and every year Kingship becomes less and less suitable for a man. A constitutional monarch has constantly to behave as if he were a mindless puppet in circumstances which would prove fatal to everybody, including himself, if he really were a mindless puppet.

The King’s Speech

The Coronation of George VI
(Stage Magazine, 1937)

Hitler’s Earlies Years In Power
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

When Adolf Hitler was made chancellor of the Third Reich on January 30, 1933, he pledged his government would (1) unify the German people; (2) eliminate class distinction; and (3) secure equal rights abroad for Germany. At that time the Nazi leader addressed the nation: Now, German people, give us four years and then judge us!

That was four years ago.

‘Duce: Peeve No. 3
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

A sore humiliation to dictator Mussolini of Italy lies in the fact that what should have been a proud conquest has turned into a diplomatic white elephant. Only one democratic nation in the world – Switzerland – has recognized Italy’s claim to Ethiopia.

You can read about his violent death here…

The Moscow Show Trials Continue
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Of the 17 defendants in the Russian ‘circus trial’, four were still alive in Moscow last week. Thirteen others, convicted of having acted on the instigation of exile Leon Trotsky to sabotage Soviet railways, mines and factories, were taken to a cellar of Moscow’s Lubianka Prison, where they were yanked into cells to have have their brains blown out by pointblank pistol shots.

Another article about the show trials can be read here…

Gandhi’s Struggle Against British Imperialism
(Literary Digest, 1937)

A news article from a 1937 issue of LITERARY DIGEST pertaining to Mahatma Gandhi‘s ongoing struggle to break free from the bonds of English imperialism:

The basic policy of this Congress, Nehru admonished, is to combat the ‘Government of India Act’ (the Federal Constitution); resist in every way the attempt by British imperialism to strengthen its hold on India and its people; stress a positive demand for a constituent assembly, elected by adult suffrage.

Goering in Italy
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

The journalist who penned the attached article was in the dark as to the reasons why Reichsmarshal Herman Goring appeared in Rome during the opening weeks of January, 1937, but he wisely presumed that it had something to do with the Spanish Civil War – and he was right.

FCA: Not Going Anywhere
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Unlike the CCC, WPA, CWA, or DRA, you can type FCA.gov into a search engine and actually make contact with one of FDR’s multiple alphabet agencies. This 1937 article will tell you why it came into being – but it won’t tell you why the agency wasn’t done away with during any of the decades of plenty that followed.

Rumors of Hitler’s Favorite American Comedy Team?
(Photoplay Magazine, 1937)

The amiable Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. penned the attached article and it was written at a time in his life when the man simply had to know what movie was the preferred darling above all others for the hideous Adolf Hitler – so after some hard-charging investigative journalism, he discovered that Hitler would scurry-away with Herman Goering in order to yuck it up in the dark while watching his fave non-Aryan comedy team. Who do you think it was?

Hitler might have liked American movies, but there was one thing American he didn’t like: German-Americans drove him crazy.

Click here to learn about Stalin’s favorite movie.

Food Shortages in the Third Reich
(Literary Digest, 1937)

Guns instead of butter! was the slogan General Hermann Goering, Commissar, sounded for the Four Year Plan destined to control production and slash imports as an aid to the Reich’s fantastic rearmament program.

For the great mass of Germans, however, the most serious food shortage since the war cast a pall over Christmas. Housewives got orders to specify their favorite dairy store, and to patronize it exclusively. By prohibiting any shopping around, officials found it possible to limit the distribution of butter and other fats. A census of of the size of families has already been taken, and, beginning January 1, every housewife must limit fat purchases to at least 80 per cent of her October buying.