1945 – Page 17 – Old Magazine Articles

The End of the War in Berlin
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

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.

– When the Home Front Became the Front Itself
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

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.

The Plot to Kill Hitler
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

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.

Taking the War to Japan’s Doorstep
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

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.

Anticipating Cell Phones in 1945
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

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.

The Nimitz Strategy
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

An brief article by a former Chief of Naval Operations (1930 – 33), Admiral William V. Pratt praising the Pacific naval strategy of Fleet Admiral Nimitz.

‘Burial at Sea”
(Coronet Magazine, 1945)

This is a short anecdote that recalled a slice of life on board a USN troop ship as it ferried men from one bloody atoll to the next. The two speaking parts in this drama were both officers who butted heads regularly until they understood that what united them was the welfare of the
dying young men returning from the beaches who had given their last full measure.

To read articles about W.W. II submarines, Click here.

Leonard Bernstein
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

This Leonard Bernstein (1918 – 1990) profile is a real page turner – briefly explaining in four and a half pages all that this composer and conductor had been up to during the first thirty-eight years of his very productive life. The article appeared on the newsstands during the earliest days of 1957, when he was partnered with Stephen Sondheim on West Side Story and mention is made of his numerous other collaborations with the likes of Jerome Robbins (Fancy Free),
Comden and Green (On the Town), and Lillian Hellman (Candide).

The Hobo News
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

The Hobo News printed poems, cartoons, pin-ups, essays and news items that were useful to that unique class of men who rode the rails and frequent flop-houses. It was established in New York City by Pat The Roaming Dreamer Mulkern (1903 – 1948); the paper was run by hobos, for hobos and printed proudly across the awnings of their assorted offices were the words a little cheer to match the sorrow. Mulkern recognized that no self-respecting litigator would ever stoop to sue a newspaper with such a pathetic name, and so the paper was voluntarily in constant violation of U.S. copyright law by habitually printing the articles they most admired that had earlier appeared in Collier’s, The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post.

A Study of the German Tiger Tank
(The U.S. War Department, 1945)

Attached is the sweetest conte crayon illustration ever to depict a Tiger tank is accompanied by some vital statistics and assorted observations that were recorded by the U.S. Department of War and printed in one of their manuals in March of 1945:

This tank, originally the Pz. Kpfw. VI, first was encountered by the Russians in the last half of 1942, and by the Western Allies in Tunisia early in 1943…

Click here to read about the German King Tiger Tank.

Click here to read a 1944 article about the Tiger Tank.

The Returned P.O.W.
(Coronet Magazine, 1945)

Merchant Marine William T. Mitchell, having been locked-up for three and half years in a Japanese POW camp, recalled those terrible days intermittently as he explains what it was like to return to a changed America. One of the amusing stories concerned a time when his captors assembled the camp to announce [falsely] that movie stars Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin had been killed:

The Nips had lied to us, and I fell for it. You believe anything – almost – when you’re cut off from your home.

World War Two Hollywood
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The attached article is a swell piece of journalism that truly catches the spirit of home front America. You will read about the war-weary Hollywood that existed between the years 1941-1945 and the movie shortages, the hair-pin rationing, the rise of the independent producers and the ascent of Van Johnson (4-F slacker) and Lauren Becall:

Lauren, a Warner Brothers property, is a blonde-haired chick with a tall, hippy figure, a voice that sounds like a sexy foghorn and a pair of so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it eyes

Peace Comes to the United States
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Even though the war had ended some four months earlier, the American people were still receiving envelopes from the Department of War about the deaths and maimings of their sons when this article appeared.

These columns reported that peacetime took some getting used to, but day by day, the nation was slowly swinging into its post-war stride.

What if the Atomic Bomb had never been invented? When would the war have ended?

Articles about the daily hardships in post-war Germany can be read by clicking here.

VJ-Day and the End of the War
(Yank, 1945)

If you’ve been looking for a manifesto that would serve as a document of intention for the entire mass of Americans who make up the Greatest Generation, you might have found it.

While the other articles on VJ-Day on this site illustrate well the pure joy and delight that was experienced by so many that day, this editorial cautions the G.I. readers to remember all that they have learned from the war while laying the groundwork for the policy that would check Soviet expansion all over the globe.

Americans Tell of Japanese Prison Camps
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A well illustrated magazine article which relays the tale of two Marines who were captured at the fall of Corregidor in 1941 and spent the remainder of the war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp on the island of Honshu, Japan. The two men told Yank correspondent Bill Lindau all about their various hardships and the atrocities they witnessed as well as the manner in which their lot improved when their guards were told that Japan had surrendered.

Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.

Click here if you would like to read about a World War One German P.O.W. camp.

Prisoners of the Japanese
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

An escaped Australian Private, having been rescued by a U.S. Navy submarine, recalls how life was in the hell of a Japanese jungle P.O.W. camp, where all Allied prisoners were forced to build a railroad for the Emperor:

‘I often sit and wonder what I’m doing here’ reflected Pvt. James L. Boulton of Melbourne, Australia. ‘By the law of averages I should have been dead two years ago, and yet here I am smoking Yank cigarettes, eating Yank food with Yank nurses taking care of me. When I was a PW in the jungles of Burma I never thought I’d survive the beatings and fevers and ulcers.’

Click here to read articles about post-war Japan.

A Study of the Japanese Soldier
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Printed weeks before the close of the war, the carefully controlled presses at Yank printed this two page article explaining how the Japanese army worked and who exactly was the Japanese soldier.

Kamikaze Attacks
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A two page magazine article about the U.S. Navy destroyer Newcombe (DD-586), a hard-charging ship that suffered heavy damage from repeated Kamikaze attacks off of Okinawa on April 6, 1945 (the Ryukyu Islands):

Then the plane shot past them, ripped through the gun mount and shattered itself against the after-stack. There was a blinding flash. The Newcombe shuddered and rolled heavily to starboard.