”Truman’s First Ten Days”
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
The left-of-center New York daily PM examined the liberal Bonafide’s of President Harry Truman and they liked what they saw.
1945
Articles from 1945
U.S. POWs Singled Out for Abuse
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
PM war correspondent Victor Bernstein filed this story three weeks before VE-Day concerning a 180-mile forced march that was the lot of assorted Allied prisoner of war in Germany. Numerous interviews with the survivors of the march revealed that the Nazis lording over as many as 4,000 POWs choosing to brutalize the U.S. prisoners in much the same way they abused Poles and Soviets. British POWs seemed not to attract their ire.
A Futile Defense Tactic
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“The Japanese are making frenzied and costly attempts at Okinawa to stem our advance toward the home islands, but their efforts appear no more successful than they were in the Philippines and Iwo Jima.”
The Ten Percent Factor
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)
Admiral Marc Mitscher (1887 – 1947), U.S.N., remarked in the attached article that Kamikaze attacks may be a menace, but only ten percent of them manage to get through.
A Great Time to be Alive
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
It is our wish to successfully give utterance to the true feelings from each era that we are able to represent on this website; for this reason, we posted the attached column by Max Lerner (1902 – 1992), in which he expresses his excitement as to how great it was to be alive in one of the Allied nations at the time of Hitler’s demise.
“The two big fascist leaders in whose shadow our whole generation has lived – Mussolini and Hitler – are now lying dead amidst the ruins of their empires, one following the other in the space of a few days…We are not only the anvil. We are the hammer. To know that is to grow in stature in a great time.”
The Drive on Berlin
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“Flags of two new kinds are flying in the city – white flags displayed by the panic-stricken populace, and the first Soviet flags that, Reuters says, are hoisted over what tall buildings are left within the captured districts. Three Soviet guards carried a blood-soaked banner 2000 miles from Stalingrad to Berlin. Pravda says the soldiers kneeled and kissed the flag and then raised it over a ruined building.”
Longing to Meet the Reds
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“The aspiration to be the first to meet the Red Army is aired all the way up and down the line, from division generals to the boys in the foxholes. And if the Yanks had their way, they’d hit the first road east and keep helling it eastward till they hit the vodka. As one soldier from an armored division put it:”
“‘This is what the hell we’ve been pushing across Europe for and I don’t want to lose the pie when I practically have it in my mouth.'”
Absolutely Walloped
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
A short article by a respected military journalist of the time, Max Werner, on how severely Nazi Germany had been beaten.
Click here to read other articles from 1945.
Game, Set, Match
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“The Red Army has Berlin. The once fat, strong heart of German power, now a wreck, was taken in 12 days of [the] bloodiest battle by the overwhelming might of Marshals Zhukov and Konev. The surrender of the remnants of the Nazis in the ruins of the Chancellery where Hitler is said to have his end, and the smashed-up Tiergarten turned a page in history>”
Shifting Men from the ETO to the Pacific
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
This article appeared two days before the German capitulation; the Allies were in Berlin, Hitler was dead and the Pentagon was planning to send some men home while shipping a million off to fight the Japanese.
The Japanese Planned to Fight Until the End
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
The American magazines and newspapers of late April and early May, 1945, were all about the end of the German Army and now its time to clobber the Japanese. The attached article, from May 6, addressed the subject that this would not be an easy task. If the Atom Bomb hadn’t come along, the Pentagon believed the war would have gone on for another two or three years, and the Japanese were determined to fight until the end:
“The influential Tokyo paper Sangyo Kezei said editorially on April 30: ‘Japan will fight on regardless of any sudden changes in Europe.'”
A similar article can be read here.
Geneva Red Cross Condemned
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“A bitter indictment of the International Red Cross Committee for its failure to tell the world what it knew about barbarous conditions in the prison camps of Nazi Germany, at a time when public indignation might have eased the tragic plight of millions, appears in the May issue of the magazine Jewish Frontier, out today.”
POW Abuse: What Did the Red Cross Know?
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
U.S. Representative Emanuel Cellar (1888 – 1981) and a number of senators were all in agreement that the International Red Cross had failed in their task to police Nazi P.O.W. camps for prisoner abuse:
“In accordance with the conditions of the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross has the right to visit prisoner-of-war camps… These killings, starvations, and abuses did not happen in one day. They were prolonged operations. Didn’t the Red Cross know about them?”
Auschwitz
(Coronet Magazine, 1945)
This is an Auschwitz testimony from a larger work titled The Camp of Disappearing Men. It was printed in 1944 by an organization called the Polish Workers Party and the singular voice giving the account is unidentified. This eyewitness does not explain how he made good his escape but the testimony was published in the Spring of 1945 – when the existence of the death camp was first discovered and made known to the world.
N.B.: Auschwitz was first called Oświęcim, named for the nearest Polish city.
”German Labor as Reparation”
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“War and the Working Class, Moscow publication, asserts that German labor must be used to restore the destruction wrought by the German Army in Europe…In an article entitled Labor Reparations, it contends that Using German labor for this purpose will achieve effective military and economic disarmament of Germany.”
Doenitz Not to be Tried as War Criminal
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
For reasons unknown, the men who ran the Allied war effort chose to ignore the fact that it was German Admiral Karl Doenitz who issued the order that German U-boats were to machinegun all Allied lifeboats after sinking their vessels. The attached journalist was right in pointing out that Doenitz was whitewashed. But it didn’t stick – he was found guilty at Nuremburg and served 12 years.
Doenitz: Hitler’s Successor
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
When Hitler blew his brains out (April 30, 1945), what was left of the baton was passed to the Nazi fleet admiral, Karl Doenitz (1891 – 1980). This article points out that the admiral was a predictable choice for Hitler to make and no one at SHAEF was surprised.
Red Flag Over Berlin
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“Berlin has fallen to all intents and purposes. Stalin in a May Day order announces that the victory flag of the red Army flies over the main part of the ruined Nazi capital.”