1944

Articles from 1944

The Death of the German Seventh Army
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

A 1944 YANK MAGAZINE article concerning the destruction of the once mighty German 7th Army:

We have been told that the German Army, which fought so craftily and gave out to our men a share of death in Normandy, is now almost encircled by the great armored columns which broke through and swept around the enemy. But this army does not die easily…


Click here to read about the retreat of the Africa Corps.

The Bombing of Monte Cassino
(Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

The bombing of the Medieval abbey at Montecassino was one of the saddest tactical errors of the Second World War. The decision to bomb the structure was a result an error in translating an intercepted German communique that lead the Allies to believe that there was Nazi battalion contained within the abbey. This was not the case. When the Allies sifted through the rubble they were surprised to find the remains of numerous Italian civilians and very few Germans. The attached article recalls the fantastic view that was enjoyed by the assembled U.S. and British troops as the bombs fell.

Allied Overoptimism
(United States News, 1944)

The surprise that was Hitler’s December Offensive made many people think that the Allies were losing their edge and relying more on air power than infantry; Allies rather than our own divisions. The Battle of the Bulge shook all Americans out of their complacency.


More on the Battle of the Bulge can be read here…

Princess Elizabeth Comes of Age
(Click Magazine, 1944)

The attached article was about the Spring of 1944 and why it was such an exciting season for Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of England (b. 1926): the twenty-first of April marked her eighteenth birthday and her country was entering the last year of their bloodiest war, while the princess herself held two positions that she took quite seriously: Patrol Leader of the Buckingham Palace Girlguides, as well as Colonel-in-Chief of the Grenadier Guards. There were also times when she was required to join her father when he was in conference with his ministers.


Also addressed in these pages was the royal concern as to who was suitable to be her mate; a list of names was provided.

Sports in Japanese Prison Camps
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Assorted yarns told by liberated Allied soldiers as to the types of games played in Japanese prison camps between bouts of malaria, dysentery and gangrene:

We had a big fellow with us in camp, a guy named Chris Bell, who was 6 feet 2 and the rocky sort. The Jap guards were having a wrestling tournament at the guardhouse and they wanted Bell to come down and wrestle one of those huge sumo men. These sumo wrestlers weigh about 300 pounds and are very agile…


This was NOT the first time that a Japanese baseball team had faced Americans.

Click here to read about that game.


Suggested Reading:
POW Baseball in World War II: The National Pastime Behind Barbed Wirestyle=border:none

Martha Gellhorn Over Germany
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

An article by the W.W. II war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998) who rode with the crew of a P-61C Black Widow Night Fighter one evening as they made their rounds over what remained of Hitler’s Germany:

COLLIER’S girl correspondent sat on a wobbly crate and flew over Germany looking for enemy planes at night. Her nose ran, her oxygen mask slipped off, her stomach got mad, she was scared and she froze. They didn’t down any Germans, but otherwise that’s routine for the Black Widow pilots.

Click here to read additional articles about the war correspondents of the Second World War.


Click here to read Martha Gellhorn’s article about what she saw at Dachau.


Click here to read about the 1943 bombing campaign against Germany.

The First Two Weeks of the Battle of the Bulge
(United States News, 1944)

The American magazines that appeared on newsstands during late November and early December of 1944 are often found to have articles anticipating life in the post-war world or tips on how to welcome your returning husband home from the battle fronts. This line of thinking was put on hold in late December when the Germans launched their brutal counter offensive through the Ardennes Forrest in what has been nicknamed the Battle of the Bulge.

Warnings From A Soviet Defector
(Reader’s Digest, 1944)

A fascinating article written by a man who just seven years earlier had been a senior officer in Stalin’s army. In order to escape the dictator’s purges, General Alexander Barmine (1899 – 1987) defected to the West in 1937 and made his way to the U.S. where he began writing numerous articles about the NKVD operations in North America. This article concerns the Soviet infiltration of labor unions, the Democratic Party and the U.S. Government.

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