1945 – Page 19 – Old Magazine Articles

‘The Most Married Man in America”
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

As a result of the generous proxy-marriage laws allowed by the citizens of Kansas City, Kansas, many young women, feeling the urge to marry their beaus residing so far afield as a result of the Second World War, would board buses and trains and head to that far-distant burg with one name on their lips: Finnegan. This is the story of Mr. Thomas H. Finnegan, a successful lawyer back in the day who saw fit to do his patriotic duty by standing-in for all those G.I.s who were unable to attend their own weddings.

The Americans Who First Crossed the Rhine
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The attached article tells the story of the first Americans to cross the Rhine river into Germany following the capture of the Ludendorf Bridge at Remagen, Germany.

One of the most striking incidents of the first day’s action on the bridge was the way German snipers opened up on their own men who had been taken prisoners. As each batch of PWs was lead across the bridge, a storm of sniper fire from the surrounding hills swept its ranks. Several were killed.

Pictured on page two is a photograph of the first American to make it across: Sgt. Alexander A. Drabik (1910 – 1993) of the 27th Armored Infantry Division.

Click here to read about a popular all-girl band that performed with the USO.

1945 Victory Strategies for the Pacific Theater
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

At the time this article went to press the Nazis and their European allies had been defeated and all eyes turned to the Pacific Theater as to when that enemy would also be forced to quit.

Click here to read about a popular all-girl band that performed with the USO.

A Salute to D.W. Griffith
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1945)

To mark the 67th birthday of the silent film director D.W. Griffith, the editors of a once illustrious Hollywood literary magazine pasted his famous profile on their magazine cover and devoted four columns to his achievements.

Martha Vickers
(Pic Magazine, 1945)

Perhaps one of the first magazine articles about the beautiful actress Martha Vickers (1925 – 1971) who is best remembered by fans for her performance as the fabulously slutty Carmen Sternwood in the 1946 film The Big Sleep.

This article tells the tale of her early days in 1940s Los Angeles and her work as a photographer’s model, which turned more than a few of the crowned heads of Hollywood.

The Last 125 Days of the War
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A YANK staff writer Robert Bendiner (1910 – 2009), summed-up the eventful period that began with the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on
April 12, and ended with the Japanese surrender on August 10, 1945. He pointed out that within that period remarkable changes had been made; not merely the deaths of Hitler, Mussolini and the collapse of Imperial Japan, but it was clear to many that the stage was being set for a new world. The foundations were in place for the creation of a durable world security organization and as if that wasn’t enough, there was a new, hideous weapon called the Atomic Bomb that would cast a long shadow across the land and mark this new era as a unique period in world history.

After a streak like that it would not be surprising if a revulsion against big news should set in. It may well be that people long to pick up a paper in which nothing more cosmic is reported than the city’s reception of a visiting channel-swimmer, and nothing more violent than a tie-up on the Magnolia Avenue trolley line.

Click here to read how British women struggled to understand American slang.

Was Allied Air Power Decisive During World War II?
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A light and breezy review concerning the findings of a U.S. government study regarding the effectiveness of the Allied strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany:

…the survey authorities report that although air power might have been more advantageously applied in this case or that, its decisive bearing on the victory was undeniable…At sea, its contribution, combined with naval air power, brought an end to the enemy’s greatest naval threat -the U-boat; on land, it helped turn the tide overwhelmingly in favor of allied ground forces.

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

The Biased Military Courts of the U.S. Army
(G.I. Joe Magazine, 1945)

G.I. JOE MAGAZINE was established shortly after the war by a shrewd, commerce-driven soul who fully recognized that the American veterans of W.W. II would have a good deal to say about their military hardships, and would need a venue in which to do it. The attached article was written by a veteran who preferred to remain anonymous; the righteous indignation can be keenly sensed in his prose as he explained the three-tiered justice system that he believed to have been built into the offices of the U.S. Army military court system. The first tier meted out soft justice for officers, the second dispensed a harsh justice to White enlisted men, and the bottom tier dished-out a far more vile variety to the American soldiers of African descent.

Read an Article about Racial Integration in the U.S. Military

Laval Testifies in the Petain Trial
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

Neither the prosecution nor the defense wanted Henri Philippe Petain’s oily accomplice to testify in the trial of the old marshal. Both sides feared his slanderous tongue and his slimy skill for wriggling out of blame.

‘They, Too, Have Fought and Died”
(Maptalk, 1945)

You’re damn right those Nisei boys have a place in the American heart, now and forever. And I say soldiers ought to form a pickaxe club to protect the Japanese-Americans who fought the war with us. Any time we see a barfly commando picking on those kids or discriminating against them, we ought to bang them over the head with a pickaxe. I’m willing to be a charter member.

General Joseph W. Stillwell

Read the letters of American soldiers and Marines who recognized
the injustice that was done to the Japanese-Americans…

Buchenwald
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Howard Katzander of YANK filed this short dispatch regarding all that he witnessed following the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimer, Germany:

The camp is a thing that has to be seen to be believed, and even then the charred skulls and pelvic bones in the furnaces seem too enormous a crime to be accepted fully. It can’t mean that they actually put human beings –some of them alive –into these furnaces and destroyed them like this.

Zionist Battles in British Palestine
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

In the Holy Land are two organizations: the Stern Gang and the NMO, the members of which employ kidnapping, extortion and murder to gain their ends; civil war and independence for Palestine.

In the attached article COLLIER’S MAGAZINE foreign correspondent Frank Gervasi reported on who and what these organizations were.

Hitler’s Man in Buenos Aires
(American Magazine, 1945)

Here is the first inside story of South America’s leading arms producer, Fritz Mandl (1900 – 1977), who ‘fled’ from Austria with $60,000,000. On the U.S. black list, he has been called ‘one of the most dangerous men in the world’.

The New Commander-in-Chief: Harry S Truman
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A heavily illustrated, four page article that served to answer the U.S. serviceman’s questions as to who Harry S. Truman (1884 – 1972) was and why was he deemed suitable to serve as President?

Mr. Truman now occupies the Presidency, of course, because he won the Democratic Vice-Presidential nomination in Chicago last summer. Two things won him the nomination. First was the fact that he alone was acceptable to Mr. Roosevelt and to both the conservative element of the Democratic Party and its liberal wing. The second was the excellent performance of the Truman Committee in the investigation of our government’s spending money for the war-effort…One of the main themes of his campaign speeches last fall was that the U.S. should never return to isolationism.

Click here to read about the busy life of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Japan Calls It Quits
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

In a dismal forest near Vladivostok, Japanese commanders removed their caps, bowed low, and surrendered their entire Manchurian forces to the Russians… Growing numbers of enemy troops threw away their arms and joined the long lines of ragged Japs trudging down dusty Manchurian roads to Soviet Prison stockades. When a number of of Jap officers objected to the wholesale surrender, they were killed by their own men.

Among the surrendered was the Japanese puppet, Henry Pu Yi (1906 – 1967), eleventh and last Emperor of the Qing dynasty.

Late-War Draft Increase Announced
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Although the press questioned U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1867 – 1950) as to why the Selective Service Department had been ordered to call-up an additional 100,000 men when it was agreed that the U.S. military was already over strengthened with the full participation of 7,700,000 personnel currently under arms, Stimson made it clear in this notice from the Far East Edition of YANK, that he had his reasons – and this article lists a number of them.

Click here to read about a W.W. II draft board.

To read an article about American draft dodgers of W.W. II, click here.

Social Groups Within the Internment Camps
(U.S. Government, 1943-45)

A list provided by the War Relocation Authority of the seven groups that maintained ties and created various social and educational activities for the interned Japanese-Americans spanning the years 1943 through 1945. The Y.W.C.A., the Boy Scouts and the American Red Cross are just three of the seven organizations.

For years prior to W.W. II and the creation of the Japanese-American internment camps, the people of the United States had been steadily spoon fed hundreds articles detailing why they should be weary of the Japanese presence in North America; if you would like to read one that was printed as late as 1939, click here.

Nordhausen
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

Here is an account by a war correspondent who was a part of the Allied advance through Germany. He filed this chilling report about the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Nordhausen:

No one who saw the charnel house of Nordhausen ever will be able to forget the details of that horrible scene… The Yanks stood there stunned and silent,