1940 – Old Magazine Articles

Rationing on the Germn Home Front
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

A weird article. This journalist seemed to admire much of what he saw in Nazi Germany.

High Hopes for Child Welfare
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

In this 1940 article, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) argues for a benevolent government that would see to the prenatal needs of expectant mothers and their growing children:

“But all children, it seems to me, have a right to food, shelter, an equal opportunity for education and an equal chance to come into the world healthy and get the care they need through their early years to keep them well and happy.”

British Palestine, 1940
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

For the first time since the Balfour Declaration was decreed, the Jews in British Palestine organized an avenging force and attacked numerous Arab villages after suffering random murders for 23 years. This happened in May of 1939; Collier’s ran the attached article a year later – it concerned the slow-burn that was heating-up Jerusalem.

William Powell – Smooth Operator
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

This is a 1940 article that recalls William Powell’s climb to the top of the Hollywood pantheon:

“When the talking pictures came in, the transition didn’t bother him at all. Many of the silent stars turned out to have voices that squeaked like the brakes of a 1914 automobile. Powell had been training his voice ever since the fateful days of high school.”

Hitler’s Men in Mexico
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

This 1940 article covers the Nazi shenanigans that were regularly pulled by elements of the German Legation stationed in Mexico City during the late Thirties, early Forties. Within a few months, the Mexican authorities would banish the Nazi presence from their land; click here to read about that.

Mahatma Gandhi: ”Why I Cannot Hate Hitler”
(Liberty Magazine, 1940)

“If this war is fought to a finish, however, civilization may perish in the holocaust. God grant, then, that it shall be halted in time. But can it be halted while hatred remains in the breasts of men? And if I bear hatred for one man, will not this hatred spread out its roots and grow insidiously into a hatred for all the people of his country?”

Babies Wanted
(Liberty Magazine, 1940)

“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.”

Canada Steps Up for Britain
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

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?

Canada Steps Up for Britain
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

W.W. II: Where were the war poets?

Why Was The U.S. Last to Recover?
(Liberty Magazine, 1940)

As editor-in-chief of Liberty Magazine, Bernarr Macfadden (1868 – 1955) asked an important question:

“What is the matter with this country? Why is it we are credited with being the last to recover from the world-wide Depression? As the wealthiest nation in the world we should have been the first?”

Cars are Here to Stay
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

This article explains those heady days spanning the years 1900 through 1910 when the apostles of the automobile were given the task of telling anyone who would listen that the days of the horse were over:

“In the old days the salesmen had his problems. It took more than reason to get a sensible man in one of those contraptions with the motor under the seat and a water tank hanging from the rear. The salesman had to be a promoter, a mechanic, a ballyhoo artist, a stunt performer and a magician.”

He Saw the French Defense Implode
(Liberty Magazine, 1940)

“Probably never before has a country with three quarters of its army intact and the majority of its civilian population untouched by war surrendered so completely…In Tours, I ran into a French staff officer I had met on a trip to the Maginot Line in the quieter days of the war. It seemed incredible that then we had believed those fortifications would render France invincible. As we waited in a traffic jam, he told me the real story of the Ninth Army, which held the section adjoining the end of the Maginot Line, and which broke with such disastrous results…”

Germany Woos American Youth
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

“Hitler’s undeclared war against America includes the attempted wholesale corruption of U.S. youth.”

“Plans worked out over a period of years called for the selection of key Hitler leaders from U.S. youth in various cities and transporting them to Germany to be drilled in subversion…U.S. Nazis with college educations were sent to Stuttgart for a special eight-month course at the Propaganda Center.”

Cars are Here to Stay

This article explains those heady days spanning the years 1900 through 1910 when the apostles of the automobile were given

Canada Steps Up for Britain

In 1939, “Canada wisely decided that she could become an ideal training center for pilots and airmen generally. Canada could

The Mad Plaid of 1940
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

Fashion writer Henry Jackson had a few words to say concerning the importance of Glen Plaid in men’s fashions during the Fall of 1940.

The War in Northern Finland
(Liberty Magazine, 1940)

When Stalin decided to mess with the Finns in 1939 he failed to take into consideration one demographic that was accustomed to blood, and that was the seal hunters of Finland. Upon hearing of the invasion, these men immediately burned their houses and turned their rifles away from the seals, toward the Soviets. Liberty war correspondent Edward Doherty (1890 – 1975) witnessed much of the fighting.