1945

Articles from 1945

Air Force One – the First One
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

Two months after the death of President Roosevelt, and with W.W. II almost at an end, the censorship concerning FDR’s presidential aircraft was terminated. The reporters at Newsweek were not slow in reporting all that could be known about this comfy juggernaut that had spirited FDR to Malta, Yalta and Cairo. The plane was a Douglas C-54A, reconfigured to sleep five and was equipped with an inter-cabin telephone, radio, and a stateroom. The President had anticipated traveling hither and yon while planning the post-war world, but other plans got in the way.

1946: The Civilian Market Returns
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

During the Summer of 1945, with the Germans licked and the Japanese on the ropes, Ford announced that their first car for the post-war market would be produced the following year. It was called the Mercury and it came in hard top and convertible (don’t ask for seat belts).

The Terror of Buchenwald
(PM Tabloid, 1945)

Here is an eyewitness account of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp as experienced by U.S. Representative Clare Boothe Luce (R, Connecticut, pictured above):


“It was policy, Nazi policy, to work them and starve them and then throw them in the into the furnaces when they could no longer struggle to their feet. Dead men tell no tales. Well, the 51,000 dead of Buchenwald are talking now, and they are telling the people of the Democracies that they will have died in vain, unless we know and believe what excruciating sufferings they endured.”

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The Germans are Idiots
(PM Tabloid, 1945)

A PM reporter was present one day in Germany as a mixed mob of Third Army grunts and tank men had a tête-à-tête concerning their observations of the German people:


“Aren’t these Heinies the stupidest people you ever saw?”

The Germans are Idiots
(PM Tabloid, 1945)

A PM reporter was present one day in Germany as a mixed mob of Third Army grunts and tank men had a tête-à-tête concerning their observations of the German people:


“Aren’t these Heinies the stupidest people you ever saw?”

VE- Day in Sight
(PM Tabloid, 1945)

This report was filed shortly after the Soviet – U.S. link-up on the River Elbe and one week from the official Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945. The Red Army was in Berlin and the British and Americans were


“pressing relentlessly from all points of the compass on the Nazi Alpine redoubt. A second a third meeting between the Western and Easter Allies may have already taken place… To the south, General George S. Patton’s tank columns, sweeping across the Austrian frontier, were in field radio contact with the Soviets.”


Click here to read about the Soviet – U.S. link-up on the Elbe.

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VE- Day in Sight
(PM Tabloid, 1945)

This report was filed shortly after the Soviet – U.S. link-up on the River Elbe and one week from the official Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945. The Red Army was in Berlin and the British and Americans were


“pressing relentlessly from all points of the compass on the Nazi Alpine redoubt. A second a third meeting between the Western and Easter Allies may have already taken place… To the south, General George S. Patton’s tank columns, sweeping across the Austrian frontier, were in field radio contact with the Soviets.”


Click here to read about the Soviet – U.S. link-up on the Elbe.

VE- Day in Sight
(PM Tabloid, 1945)

This report was filed shortly after the Soviet – U.S. link-up on the River Elbe and one week from the official Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945. The Red Army was in Berlin and the British and Americans were


“pressing relentlessly from all points of the compass on the Nazi Alpine redoubt. A second a third meeting between the Western and Easter Allies may have already taken place… To the south, General George S. Patton’s tank columns, sweeping across the Austrian frontier, were in field radio contact with the Soviets.”


Click here to read about the Soviet – U.S. link-up on the Elbe.

VE- Day in Sight
(PM Tabloid, 1945)

This report was filed shortly after the Soviet – U.S. link-up on the River Elbe and one week from the official Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945. The Red Army was in Berlin and the British and Americans were


“pressing relentlessly from all points of the compass on the Nazi Alpine redoubt. A second a third meeting between the Western and Easter Allies may have already taken place… To the south, General George S. Patton’s tank columns, sweeping across the Austrian frontier, were in field radio contact with the Soviets.”


Click here to read about the Soviet – U.S. link-up on the Elbe.

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Eisenhower’s VE-Day Statement
(PM Tabloid, 1945)

“Though these words are feeble, they come from the bottom of a heart overflowing with pride in your loyal service and admiration as warriors. Your accomplishments at sea, in the air, on the ground and in the field of supply have astonished the world.”

”Terror in Japan”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

“On March 10, 1945, a group of Superforts crossed Japan’s coast line. Behind them came another group, and another in a line stretching far back toward Saipan. In a long, thin file they roared over Tokyo. They flew low and out of their open bellies spilled bombs of jellied gasoline. When they hit, they burst, spewing out billowing, all-consuming fire. The flames leaped across fire lanes, swallowed factories, destroyed skyscrapers.”


Click here to read about August 28, 1945 – the day the American occupation began.

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”Terror in Japan”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

“On March 10, 1945, a group of Superforts crossed Japan’s coast line. Behind them came another group, and another in a line stretching far back toward Saipan. In a long, thin file they roared over Tokyo. They flew low and out of their open bellies spilled bombs of jellied gasoline. When they hit, they burst, spewing out billowing, all-consuming fire. The flames leaped across fire lanes, swallowed factories, destroyed skyscrapers.”


Click here to read about August 28, 1945 – the day the American occupation began.

A New Kind of Fanaticism
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

“American troops on Okinawa thought they knew all there was to know about Jap fanaticism. But last week the Japs served it up with a new twist. The evening of May 24 started out like any other on the battle-torn island. The enemy sent its usual flight of Kamikaze suicide planes to strafe American airfields and dive into shipping offshore… At the height of the earsplitting air battle, the Japs played their trump card” – from the fuselage of a twin-engine bomber that had belly-landed on an American airfield, emerged Japanese infantry.

They Protected FDR
(Coronet Magazine, 1945)

Five months after the death of President Roosevelt, writer Michael Sayers (1911 – 2010) managed to get this FDR article to press while the public’s interest in the man was still hot. It addressed the tremendous lengths the Secret Service went to on a daily basis to protect President Roosevelt from Axis assassins and general kooks who wanted a shot at him:


“The White House detail, headed by six-foot Michael Reiley (1909 – 1973), stayed beside the President at all times. They became his shadows, unseen in the public glare, but always at hand… The President was not permitted to set foot in any place that had not been thoroughly investigated beforehand.”

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”School for Monsters”
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

During the second week of February, 1945, the men of the U.S. Ninth Infantry Division ran across one of the six Leadership Academies run by Nazi King-Pin, Robert Ley (1890 – 1945; you can read about him here). Among the papers they liberated was a public relations pamphlet explaining what was required of each candidate and what would happen to them if they want out:


“These men must know and realize that from now on there is no road back for them. When the party takes the Brown Shirt away from anybody, the man involved will not only lose the office he holds, but he, personally, and his family, wife and children, will be destroyed.”


An eyewitness recalled Hitler as a boy…

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