Articles from 1941
Here is an account of life during the Blitz, as written by sculptor Clare Sheridan (née Frewen; 1885 – 1970):
“I have from the very beginning put [poison] gas out of my thoughts and refused to carry a gas mask. But in a mad world growing madder daily who knows what the madmen may not resort to!… According to the gas booklet, the stuff will come through the window clacks, under the door and down the chimney.”
This 1941 Collier’s article looks at the British working class during the Blitz on London. Numerous men and women were interviewed concerning their aspirations and hopes for the post-war world. Much is written about the 300 free kitchens that were placed throughout London to accommodate them as well as the free schools that were instituted to train war plant workers how to use the various machines needed to create the necessary war materinél.
“Hitler isn’t making war against capitalism, as he says he is. He’s not the great proletarian he brags he is, but is instead deliberately bombing civilians, their schools, churches, homes and hospitals in order to throw the civilian population into despair and terror. Well, he has failed.”
This 1941 article lays out the brief history of airborne infantry before the author begins to recall the origins, training and victories of the W.W. II German paratroopers:
“The origin of parachute usage in warfare is obscure. They were extensively employed in the Great war to land spies and saboteurs. It is also of record that in 1917 General [Billy] Mitchell tried to persuade General Pershing to permit him to form an experimental troop of parachute fighters. Thus Mitchell was probably the first man professionally to express the notion of paratroopers… It was in 1935 that Hitler ordered Goering to organize paratroopers…[In Germany] the parasoldier is an object of curiosity to the elders, of envy to the youth. He is bound to be questioned and bound to do a sales job in educating the public, as you would say.”
It is not an interview with the Prime Minister. He is too busy to give interviews and his sense of fairness long ago forced him to make the rule of ‘no interviews’. If he couldn’t give an interview to all, he wouldn’t give an interview to one. But I spent two days with him and this story is of the Winston Churchill I got to know well in forty-eight hours.
Few Times Square tourists recognize Johnny Broderick, but New York mobsters cringe at the mention of his name. Meet Broadway’s one-man riot squad in his own bailiwick, where the lights are brightest.
The words and deeds of Johnny Broderick were so widely known that visiting politicians would request that he take charge of their security details and the broadcasting moguls wanted to make radio shows celebrating his daring-do. His round-house punch was known far and wide; cops like this one do not come along too often.
his brief notice is from a much admired American magazine containing many sweet words regarding the unstoppable Orson Welles (1915 – 1985) and his appearance in the Archibald McLeish (1892 – 1982) play, Panic (directed by John Houseman, 1902 — 1988).
The year 1941, Ano Domini, was another great year for the boy genius who seemed to effortlessly triumph with all his theatrical and film ventures. At the time this appeared in print, Welles was filming The Magnificent Ambersons, having recently pocketed an Oscar for his collaborative writing efforts in Citizen Cane. Highly accomplished and multi-married, no study of American entertainment is complete without mention of his name. The anonymous scribe who penned the attached article remarked:
No pretentiously shy Saroyan courtship of an audience about Welles! He really loves his relation to the public. He doesn’t flirt with it.
Eleven months before America’s entry into the war found sailor suits playing a heavy role in the thought processes of the Great American Fashion Designers.
Click here to read about the military influence on W.W. I fashion…
…And last week the Office of Indian Affairs, reporting results of a sampling of 26 out of 80 Indian jurisdictions, revealed that out of 7,407 Selective Service registrants, 547 had already volunteered against 37 actually drafted – a ratio of 15 volunteers for each draftee.
The Free German Movement is vigorously gnawing away at the very roots of Naziism with teeth filed to needle sharpness. Our organizations are fighting Hitler, at home or in South America with his own weapons. We have consolidated earlier gains against Hitler with important new gains.
So wrote Dr. Otto Strasser (1897 – 1974) who oversaw the Free German Movement, the Black Front and other Nazi resistance organizations. He must have been pretty effective, the Nazis put a half-million dollar price on his head.
This report appeared in the evening edition of the St. Louis Star-Times on December 8, 1941 and it serves as an eyewitness account as to how the St. Louisans reacted both during and after listening to the President’s declaration of war broadcast before Congress:
In downtown restaurants and taverns, people paused to listen to the dramatic broadcast from Washington. Work was at a standstill for those minutes in many office buildings and stores. Pedestrians crowded around newsboys to obtain the latest ‘extras’ and along the streets groups could be seen collected about radio-equipped automobiles.
Here are the sleeve insignia by which you can identify the various groups of U.S. Civilian Defense Workers – men and women, boys and girls, who volunteer for home duty to protect you in war [emergencies]
This unprepossessing place is the American survivor of a great international movement, the Bauhaus of Dessau, which filled the world with tubular chairs and sectional sofas. The Bauhaus, like so many other things German, drew Hitler’s ire because it was too intellectually independent. Hitler dissolved it in 1938…Some fragments of Bauhaus fled to America. Dr Laszalo Moholy-Nagy escaped with some remnants of students’ work and saught refuge in Chicago. There, in his concrete warehouse, Moholy-Nagy’s movement has taken root.
They do the oddest things…A chair might just be a double loop of shellacked plywood. It is steamed and shaped so that it has a seat, and a back, and stands on the floor…It doesn’t look like much of a chair. It will do the job for which chairs are sold.
Here is one of the reviews of Pattern of Conquest
Harsch says that German morale is ‘fundamentally unsound’ however, and that it took a bad beating when the RAF first bombed Berlin, which Marshal Goering had said would happen only ‘over his dead body’. (‘Have you heard the news?’ Berliners asked each other, after the first raids. ‘Goering’s dead.’)
Click here to read about the 1943 bombing campaign against Germany.
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.
This Newsweek article reported on the first Red Air Force bombing raid on the city of Berlin (August 11, 1941). The Soviets kept the pressure up for a few more weeks until their airfield was overrun in September.
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.
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…
