Articles from 1945
This was more than likely the very first mainstream magazine article to address the vital contributions that the Office of Strategic Service made in beating the Axis powers. It appeared on the newsstands just about six weeks after the end of the Second World War and lists various key operations and triumphs that had heretofore been secret.
In 1940 OSS chief Donovan wrote an article about the German-American Bund, Click here to read it.
The first use of napalm in the Second World War was by the U.S. Army Air Corps flying over Germany. This article reported that it was used by Navy over Saipan, the Army over Tinian and the Marines over Peleliu:
Now it is possible to tell one of the more dramatic fire-bomb stories: [During an eight day period] last October, on a section of Peleliu no bigger than a city block, the Death Dealer Squadron of the Second Marine Air Wing dropped more than 32,000 gallons of flaming gasoline on Jap cave positions and wiped them out.
Click here to read about one of the greatest innovations by 20th Century chemists: plastic.
The war was over when the U.S. Army Ordnance Department began snooping around all the assorted ÜBER-secret weapons labs and work shops where the pointiest headed Nazis were developing some truly far-seeing weaponry, inventions that they were never able to perfect (thankfully).
One of the most striking aspects of the attached article is the part when you recognize that it was the Nazi scientists who first conceived of such space-based weaponry as the Star Wars technology that was ushered in during the Reagan presidency (i.e.: the Strategic Defense Initiative). While in pursuit of their nefarious tasks, these same scientists also conceived of harnessing the powers of the sun in order to advance Hitler’s queer vision of the perfect world.
Click here to read about the firm belief held by the German Army concerning the use of motorcycles in modern war.
At 5:45 p.m. telephones rang simultaneously in the Washington bureaus of the AP, UP and [the International News Service] on a conference call from the White House. The familiar voice of Steve Early, who had retired only recently after twelve years as White House press secretary, called the roll to make sure all were listening. Then: ‘Here is a flash. The President died suddenly early this afternoon’
Swiftly the news went around the world… No president had meant quite so much to the press as Mr. Roosevelt. Few in history had been more consistently and bitterly opposed by a majority of publishers. Perhaps none had more admirers and fewer detractors among working newsmen. No president since his cousin Theodore, who coined the word ‘muckracker’, had on occasion denounced press and newsmen alike more harshly. Yet most newsmen forgave him his peevish moments. Certainly none had been more news-rich and none had ever received the voluminous coverage that President Roosevelt had. Over the years, the Roosevelt twice-a-week press conference was the Capital’s biggest newsmaker.
The Yank is not expert at deception, but he can change his plans rapidly. He is a wizard at handling machinery and he can build airfields, roads and advance bases with uncanny speed.
– so wrote one of the bewildered Japanese Army generals concerning his experiences with the American military in the Pacific.
A U.S. Government study regarding the conscription policies of the German Army during World War II. Attention is paid to the development of this policy from it’s earliest days in 1935, when the draft was introduced, to the total mobilization scheme that followed the battle of Stalingrad.
In the attached 1945 article an anonymous YANK MAGAZINE correspondent describes for his young readers how the last World War ended; the widely reported misinformation of a premature armistice treaty that was reported as being signed on November 7, 1918 – the retraction, and the subsequent announcement of the genuine armistice being signed four days later. General John J. Pershing recalled the scene in Paris:
It looked as though the whole population had gone out of their minds. The city turned into pandemonium. The streets and boulevards were packed with people singing and wearing all sorts of odd costumes. The crowds were doing the most clownish things. One could hardly hear his own voice, it was such bedlam.
Click here to read another article describing the Armistice Day celebrations in 1918 Paris.
Click here to read an explanation as to what was understood about the truce of November 11, 1918.
So they’ve given up.
They’re finally done in, and the rat is dead in an alley back of the the Wilhelmstrasse.
Take a Bow, GI – take a bow, little guy.
Far-flung ordinary men, unspectacular but free, rousing out of their habits and their homes – got up early one morning, flexed their muscles, learned the manual of arms (as amateurs) and set out across perilous oceans to whop the bejeepers out of the professionals.
And they did.
A printable piece from a 1945 COLLIER’S MAGAZINE outlining how Sergeant Edward F. Younger (died August 6, 1942) selected which of the four unidentified Doughboys set before him would be interred in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington Cemetery.
The attached article weighs the way infantry basic training was conducted at the beginning of the war and how it had changed as the war progressed, evolving into something a bit different by 1945. The training period was originally a 13 week cycle in 1941, yet in time after carefully watching the soldiers in the field and finding that infantrymen needed a broader understanding of the tools at hand, the infantry training at Camp Wheeler, Georgia, had been extended an extra two weeks. One of the obvious factors involved a far wider pool of combat veterans to rely upon as instructors.
Five years after the war, many infantry replacement camps had to reopen…
You might also like to read this article about W.W. II cavalry training.
Statistical data concerning the U.S. Army casualties in June and July of 1944 can be read in this article.
