1943 – Old Magazine Articles

The Sullivans
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

In 1943, Twentieth Century Fox released a movie that told the story of one of the earlies heroes of the war, The Sullivans. These five Iowa brothers enlisted in the U.S. Navy just three weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack. Assigned to the cruiser Juneau, three were killed that summer during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (1942), and the two others died the next day. The nation as a whole was very moved by this saga and cherished their memory.

“Five unknown actors play the Sullivan lads. And because their faces are fresh and new, they seem amazingly convincing and real.”

A Mighty Voice Talent
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

“Eleven years ago, when Fred Allen, then a vaudeville star, was just starting in radio, somebody urged him to hire – as a screwball character – a certain young girl who weighed about a hundred pounds, stood scarcely five feet tall, and had about as much glamor as a sack of cement.”

– so begins the Liberty article about Minerva Pious (1903 – 1979), the zany comic, well-known back in the day for bringing to life some of the kookiest characters on radio.

A Nastier Enemy
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

The Germans we fought in World War Two were very different from the ones we fought twenty-one years earlier.

A Nastier Enemy
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

The Germans we fought in World War Two were very different from the ones we fought twenty-one years earlier.

Linda Darnell Downsizes
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Everyone on the home front was used to making sacrifices, and Hollywood star Linda Darnell (1923 – 1965) was no exception:

“Allowances must be made for Linda Darnell who has been sorely tried. Instead of six servants, she now has two – and she hears strange sounds from the kitchen that convince her she will soon be alone. Her chauffer has been drafted; her butler is working at Lockheed. Her flower gardens are a wreck because the Japs who once tended them are in internment camps… ‘Why, this gas rationing… it’s worse than being bombed!'”

The Nation’s Capital as ‘Boomtown’
(American Legion Magazine, 1943)

“Every day in Washington, and twice on Sundays, there will be parades. You love parades. You’ll never get tired of turning out for bands, even though they always stop playing just as they get opposite you…. Anyhow, there will always be the feel of parades in Washington, and the echoes of martial music, and the sight of waving flags. Where else, oh where elese, could they sing so fervently God Bless America?”

Japan’s Industrial Shortcomings
(American Legion Magazine, 1943)

This article said nothing to the American home front readers that they didn’t already know, in fact the Associated Press ran a similar article that appeared on numerous front pages on December 8th of 1941. Simply stated, it reported that the Japanese were totally incapable of maintaining prominence in a war against the United States due to the fact that Japan’s war industry was far too small and they had few natural resources to rely upon. The reason that the subject was broached again in early 1943 was because it was all beginning to appear quite true. During the first 13 months of the war the Japanese let loose with everything they had, now they were on the defensive, and discovering that their industry was woefully inadequate.

Articles about the significance of 1943 can be read here can be read here and here…

1943: The Year the Japanese Had Shot Their Wad
(American Legion Magazine, 1943)

“Japan in the first 13 months of war let loose virtually everything she had against us. Now she’s feeling the pinch, for her lack of industrial capacity makes replacements slow, and she hasn’t the savvy to keep up with her opponents in improving plants and weapons. This is particularly true in the all-important matter of aircraft.”

Jim Crow in Trenton
(PM Tabloid, 1943)

In 1943 the NAACP asked the administrators at Trenton’s New Lincoln Junior High School to explain why it should be entirely reserved for only Black students when such a practice was in violation of the State Civil rights Act.
The bureaucrats responded that ever since the school was built in the Twenties, that’s the way it had always been. Integration soon started.

Establishing a Jewish Homeland – But Not In Israel
(PM Tabloid, 1943)

Having no idea that The Great I Am had His own plans for the Jews of Europe, numerous heads of government convened to plan a homeland for the Jews – in Latin America.

“A vast plan for resettling thousands of Jews and other refugees in South America currently is being studied in several important Latin American capitals…”

Ration Cheaters
(American Magazine, 1943)

For those blessed to live in a society with a free-market economy, we are pleased to pursue our whims daily – and eight times out of ten, they are made manifest before too long. Yet this was not the case for those living on the W.W. II home front. This article is about the black market that must have been a temptation for everyone back then. The reader will get a true sense of the tyranny Americans had to suffer when our economy was engaged in total war; it was written by one of the autocrats charged with enforcing the rationing laws.

An American Tank in Tunisia
(American Magazine, 1943)

Here is first-person account of life in an M3 Stuart tank fighting in Tunisia:

“We were ordered to hold, and hold we did. But we took a terrible shellacking. We dodged around, spitting at the Germans with our little 37mm gun. Every now and then one of their heavy tank shells or high-velocity 88s would hit one of our light tanks and smash it. The wounded would crawl out, and those who could walk would carry or drag those who couldn’t… In the afternoon, when we were finally ordered to withdraw, we had only 9 of 18 tanks left, and some of those were damaged. We took what wounded we could into the tanks and held them in our arms.”

Red Victory South of Kharkov
(PM Tabloid, 1943)

“The Russians today apparently had stopped the German advance beyond Kharkov and had even regained the initiative on some sectors of the Donets. The turn of the tide came in Chuguyev, a town on the Donets River some 20 miles southeast of Kharkov. Yesterday the German radio said that Russin forces ‘encircled’ there had failed in attempts to break out.”

British Offensive to be Launched in Tunisia
(PM Tabloid, 1943)

Three months into 1943, the Allied Command announced that the British 8th Army would soon be on the march alongside the newly arrived Americans:

“It will be a tough battle against the best of Hitler’s fighting men and weapons, but there is no doubt among Allied militarists of the outcome. Even pessimists agree that the Axis will be driven into the sea. There is reason to believe that the Nazi command itself is resigned to the loss of its last foothold on the south shore of the Mediterranean.”

The Resistance of the Norwegian Church
(PM Tabloid, 1943)

The attached article is the PM review of The Fight of the Norwegian Church Against Nazism (1943). It was written by Bjarne Hoye and Trygve M. Ager during the midst of the German occupation. Their subject was the leading roll played by the Norwegian church the widespread anti-Nazi resistance.

“The book reveals that the earliest attempts at Nazification of Norway were met by a ‘general mobilization’ of the people under the leadership of the church. The Christian Council for Joint Deliberation was formed and ‘welded Norwegian Christians together in a single firm block of resistance.'”

What is an American
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

Here is a book review from the mid-war period covering The American by historian James Truslow Adams (1878 – 1949). Adams attempts to tackle the age old question as to why Americans are different from everyone else. The reviewer quotes the observations of Crèvecoeur, among others, before delving into the meat of Adams study.

Destroying Germany from Above
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“The Reich is being methodically pulverized. The Eighth U.S. Air Force by day and the R.A.F. by night have only begun their deadly round-the-clock job. The coming months will see them unleash a fury that surpasses all the world’s earthquakes.”

Life on a B-17 Base in England
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

This is an amazing article that recalls the open-all-night cities that were the B-17 bases in Britain during World War Two. Such were the lives of the ground crews, who worked all night and then found sleep impossible – preferring to stay-up and stare at the skies in anticipation for their returning bombers.

“A crew chief stumbles past you on his way to the hangar. He’s been going seventy-two hours without taking his shoes off; his face is unshaven, and his eyes look like holes burned in a blanket.”