1941 – Old Magazine Articles

Winston Churchill Recalled the U-Boat Problem
(Liberty Magazine, 1941)

Former Lord of the Admiralty (1911 – 1915), Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) wrote the attached article sometime after the First World war and recalled the tremendous difficulties faced by the Royal Navy when this new form of warfare came to the fore:

“There followed the fourth prime feature of the war — the grand U-boat attack on the Allied shipping and the food ships and store ships which kept Great Britain alive. Here again we were exposed to a mortal risk. Not merely defeat but subjugation and final ruin confronted by our country.”

”The New Order” in Japan
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

After reading this 1941 article you will come away with a full understanding as to how misguided Imperial Japan was to enter into a war with the United States and the British Empire. At the time of the printing, Japan had been engaged in its second war with a very underdeveloped China; even though Japan had held the momentum in that war, it had still driven the Japanese into a life of highly uncomfortable rationing, which would only get worse as their new war expanded.

The Axis PR Machine and the Pearl Harbor Attack
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

“The German and Italian propaganda ministries did their customary sister act today, shrieking in unison that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who started the war in the Pacific. But they didn’t accuse the President of bombing Pearl Harbor.”

The Arsenal of Democracy Kicks-In
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

Sitting before a senate committee, FDR’s Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1867 – 1950) warned the country that the United States will have a time trying to catch-up with the Germans, who have been producing armaments since 1933. Whether our factories are making weaponry for the Allies alone, or whether we enter the war and have to make ordinance for us and the Allies – a challenge has presented itself.

Nazis in Latin America
(Spot Magazine, 1941)

“The Bad Neighbor Policy of the Axis in Latin America, most sinister menace to Western Hemisphere Democracy, is shown here in a series of remarkable photographs. Hitler, realizing the vulnerability of the U.S. to attack from the south, planned far ahead when he began planting his agents as ‘tourists’ in Central and South American nations… The Chilean Defense League reports 5,060,000 Italians, 1,385,400 German and 200,000 Japanese in South America.”

Feeding American Paratroopers
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

With W.W. II just around the corner, the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps’ “subsistence laboratory” in Chicago was burning the mid-night oil trying to create a nutritious light weight ration with little bulk for the nascent paratrooper divisions.

Black-Owned Businesses and the War Effort
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

Eight months before the American entry to the war, FDR’s Commerce Department Office turned its attention to the thousands of Black-owned businesses throughout the country in order to help maximize their profits and bring them into the wartime economy.

The Beginning of the End
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

This article heralds the slippery slope in men’s fashion. Our’s is the era in which it is not odd to see billion-dollar businesses being run by men in flipflops and gym shorts – this is a far cry from how their grandfathers would have dressed were they in the same position. The well-respected fashion journalist (Henry L. Jackson, 1911 – 1948: co-founder of Esquire)
opined in this article that it was suitable for men to cease wearing the darker hues to the office and wear country tweeds; next stop – flipflops.

The Crisis Calendar Leading Up to the Attack
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

Listed herein are 17 events that transpired between the U.S. diplomatic corps and their opposite numbers representing the Empire of Japan.

Japanese Fleet Crossed the Sea While Kurusu Talked
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

“Don’t believe that the Japanese ordered their dawn assault only yesterday. The fact is that they ordered it not days ago but weeks ago. While Japan’s special envoy, Saburo Kurusu, was busy talking in Washington, the ships that were to attack us were already on their way. While he was staling and waiting ‘for instructions’, they were getting into position. More than that: they had their orders before Kurusu even started talking.”