Articles from 1945
A member of the 34th Infantry Division wrote to the editors of YANK to let all members of the Army know how much respect he had for the Nisei soldiers in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
In late April of 1945, American tank crews south of Torgau (Germany) began to pick up the chattering of Soviet infantry units on their radios – the transmissions were generated by the advanced units of Marshal Konev’s (1897 – 1973) First Ukrainian Army and both the allied units were elated to know that the other was nearby, for it meant one thing: the end of the war was at hand.
Thankfully, Yank‘s correspondent Ed Cummings was with the U.S. First Army when the two groups met at the Elbe River and he filed the attached article.
An eyewitness account accompanied by a wonderful Howard Brodie sketch describing the enthusiastic rush enjoyed by all the wounded GIs in the dayroom at the 108th General Hospital in London:
The war was over, and I was still alive. And I thought of all the boys in the 28th Division band who were with me in the Ardennes who are dead now.
Click here to read a short notice about how Imperial Japan took the news of Germany’s surrender.
The 625th issue of Newsweek marked their twelfth year on the newsstand:
The first issue, dated February 17, 1933, was a workmanlike job of news digesting by a staff of 22, and for four years it faithfully followed this pattern [until a new publisher took the helm in 1937 and it really kicked into high gear].
The attached 1945 article from COLLIER’S by George Creel (1876 – 1953) was one of the very first pieces of wartime journalism to report on the Nazi atrocities committed in the forest of Babi Yar, just outside Kiev, Ukraine. Under the command of Reichskomissar Erich Koch (1896 – 1986) 33,000 Ukrainian Jews were slaughtered by German soldiers over a five day period during the month of September, 1941; this brief article tells the tale of Ukrainian partisan Yefim Vilkis, who resisted the Nazi occupation and witnessed the massacre.
During the late war period, leftist playwright Lillian Hellman (1905 – 1984), was twice denied permission to travel to war-torn Britain on the grounds that she had been recognized as an active communist. Yet, ironically, those same pencil-pushers in the State Department turned around a few months later and granted her a passport to visit the Soviet Union in August of 1944 – as a guest artist of VOKS, the Soviet agency that processed all international cultural exchanges. It was during this visit that she penned the attached eyewitness account of the Nazi retreat through Stalin’s Russia:
Five days of looking out of a train window into endless devastation makes you sad at first, and then numb. Here there is nothing left, and the eye gets unhappily accustomed to nothing and begins to accept it…
Click here to read a 1939 STAGE MAGAZINE profile of this writer.
Here are a few fast facts about the African-Americans who served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War (it should be noted that the record keeping in 1945 was not nearly as accurate as they had hoped; the number of Black servicemen and women was way off compared to what is known today. Pentagon figures today number W.W. II African-American service at 1.2 million).
Those councilors who advised FDR on all matters African-American were popularly known as the Black Brain Trust…
As far as superstitions and clothing are concerned, hats seem to be the one garment that has the most unfounded and irrational precepts attached to their existence. Plentiful are the dictates pertaining to where hats should never be placed or worn – these superstitions existed centuries before the Second World War, but for one citizen of San Angelo, Texas, he had his own beliefs where hats are concerned and some believed that, as a result, he was able to save the lives of 56 American servicemen…
Halfway through 1944 American magazines began their individual count-downs until the war’s end; running with articles about the post-war world, the end of rationing, the demobilized military and the guaranteed boom that would come in the menswear industry. The attached fashion editorial appeared early in 1945 promotes the versatility of gabardine wool, it’s earliest appearance in the Middle ages, it’s use in uniforms and it’s newest application in sportswear.
The article is illustrated with five terrific color photographs.
A one page article explaining what fabric rationing was and how it effected the fashion landscape of 1940s America.
Read a 1940s fashion article about fabric restrictions and the War Production Board.
This was an unusual article for Yank to run with but it is a wonderful read nonetheless. The column concerns fashion as a reliable barometer of societal direction and starts out with a quote from Basil Liddell-Hart (1895 – 1970) on this issue. The writer then goes to the author and all-around fashion philosopher, Elizabeth Hawes (1903 – 1971) who proceeded to speak thoughtfully on the topic of fashion in wartime. Hawes remarked that the clothing of the leaders can be read as an indicator of forthcoming events.
CLICK HERE to read about the beautiful Blonde Battalions who spied for the Nazis…
A printable one page article that expounds on the evolution of the P-47 Thunderbolt through varying stages of development into the fuel-efficient juggernaut called the P-47N. Remembered in the World War II annals as the dependable escort of the B-29 Super fortresses that bedeviled the axis capitals during the closing months of the war.
No sacrifice was made in ammunition, guns or protective armor to provide the P-47N with this long range. It still carries eight 50.-caliber guns, four in each wing. It also can carry 10 five-inch rockets which pack the destructive power of five-inch artillery or naval shells.
In a land where white is the color of mourning and black is the color of ceremony, where newspapers are read from right to left, this may have been a logical strategy. It was annunciated last week by the head of the Japanese government, Premiere Kantaro Suzuki… The upside-down Japanese mind could make the cost of conquest terribly expensive in American lives.
YANK correspondent Mack Morris wandered through the fallen Nazi capital of Berlin two days after it’s collapse and recorded his observations:
There were Russians in the the square, dancing and a band played. In Unter den Linden were the bodies of dead civilians, the dust of their famous street like grease paint on their faces.
Click here to read about the German surrender proceedings that took place in the French city of Reims on May 6, 1945.
Click here to read about the inmate rebellions that took place at Auschwitz, Sobibor and Triblinka.
Berliners with an ear cocked to the cold east wind could hear the drums of doom: The heavy roll of Russian artillery along the Oder River. By night, flares from Soviet planes bombing the Berlin-Frankfurt highway lit up the eastern horizon.
During the summer of 1945, Yank reporter Corporal Howard Katzander, spent some time among the Third Army’s prisoners of war where he happened upon a German senior officer who was in a very talkative mood:
The story he was telling was the story of why the war did not end last July. It was the story of the attempt to assassinate Hitler and he knew all about it. Because this was Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Kuebart, a member of the Wermacht General Staff, and one of the original plotters.
Published in June of 1945, this must have been the first English language article about the Valkyrie plot.
The last flight was coming home. The planes circled through the thick mist toward the stern of the Essex-class carrier. One by one they hit the deck: Hellcats, Corsairs and EBMs, with names like ‘Hydraulic Bess’, ‘Miss Fortune’, ‘Sweater Girl’ and ‘Kansas City Kitty’…When the air-crewmen came back from their low low-level raids, the thing they talked about most was the lack of Jap opposition.
Click here to read an interview with a Kamikaze pilot.
I recommend this article primarily for it’s three funny illustrations; the copy is not likely to hold your attention for too long. It concerns civilian applications for military technology, such as that era’s hand-held radios that were the wonder of the period. As you will see from the illustrations, the cartoonist recognized so well that such inventions could serve as the grandfather of the cell phone and he drew people on the street and driving cars -all chatting away on their walkie-talkies. Good fun.
