1943 – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

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.”

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

Soldiers Speak-Out About the Home Front
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“There is no other country at war with such an enormous gulf in sacrifice between fighting men and civilians. There is no other country where the men at the front have given up everything, while the people at home have given up practically nothing. And the soldiers know it…‘A few bombs would do this country a lot of good.’ I heard that in San Francisco from a curly-headed sailor who had been sunk in the Pacific, and I heard it again in Washington from a corporal who had left his leg on Hill 609. Both added, rather anxiously, that, of course, they wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”