Articles from 1946
When the our neighbors to the North first dipped their toe into the tepid waters of socialism, they they chose to do so with car insurance:
A law compelling automobile operators and public schools to buy insurance from a state-owned company.
An anonymous opinion piece that was published in the August 24, 1946 issue of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE in which the writer expressed his astonishment in finding that peacetime, after such a hard-fought victory, should seem so anti-climactic:
Consumers goods are so scarce everywhere that all major countries are suffering more or less inflation. A wave of big strikes in this country earlier this year slowed production badly, so that it seems impossible for us to freeze our own relatively mild inflation at its present point.
Technology blogs on the net have users who frequently post the question When will T.V. be able to ‘broadcast’ smells?: the ability existed as early as 1946 – but there was no interest – or so this article has lead us to believe:
Optimistic scientists visualized the day when television sets would come equipped with 200 to 300 different smells. (Aromas are automatically concocted by chemicals in the set, mixed by radio-remote-control from the studio.) Faint nostrils quavered at the thought of several odors on the same program…
Attached herein are two articles that tell the history of an organization that is still with us today: The League of Women Voters. At its birth, in 1869, it was a bi-partisan organization composed of women who made no stand as to which of the two political parties was superior – preferring instead to simply remind all ambitious candidates that American women were voiceless in all matters political and that this injustice had deprived them of a vibrant demographic group. Since women began voting in 1920, the League of Women Voters began promoting candidates from the Democratic party almost exclusively, while continuing to promote themselves with their pre-suffrage bi-partisan street hustle. No doubt, the League of Women Voters is an interesting group worthy of the news but it hasn’t been bi-partisan in over seventy years.
Counted among the hundreds of thousands of captured Nazi combatants during the war were thousands of anti-Nazi German draftees who were predictably alienated from the majority of German P.O.W.s in their respective camps. Subjected to kangaroo courts, hazings and random acts of brutality, these Germans were immediately recognized by their captors as a vital element that could prove helpful in the process of rebuilding Germany when the war reached an end.
And so it was early in 1944 when the U.S. Army’s Special Projects Division of the Office of the Provost Marshal General was established in order to take on the enormous task of re-educating these German prisoners of war
While the hunt for Nazis and hidden weapons cachés was taking place in allied-occupied Germany, a small number of U.S. Army detectives happened upon the entire archives of the Nazi Party.
The famous smile which has won General Arnold the nickname of Happy is a pleasant front for a shrewd and grimly purposeful character. His real nature shows in his determined stride, his set jaw. He’s a fighter. He’s been fighting for our safety for almost forty years.
In his direction of the Air Force’s gigantic growth, General Arnold’s first thought was always for his men. The Training Command he planned and organized turned out, swiftly and safely, the thousands of air crews needed. He demanded, and got, the planes his men needed where and when they needed them. He directed our best doctors and scientists in medical and technological research that kept his men and equipment in the peak of fighting condition.
The famous smile which has won General Arnold the nickname of Happy is a pleasant front for a shrewd and grimly purposeful character. His real nature shows in his determined stride, his set jaw. He’s a fighter. He’s been fighting for our safety for almost forty years.
In his direction of the Air Force’s gigantic growth, General Arnold’s first thought was always for his men. The Training Command he planned and organized turned out, swiftly and safely, the thousands of air crews needed. He demanded, and got, the planes his men needed where and when they needed them. He directed our best doctors and scientists in medical and technological research that kept his men and equipment in the peak of fighting condition.
Kind words are written herein by Lt. Commander Charles G. Dobbin regarding the Himmler of the East, General Dai Li(1897 – 1946), founder of China’s secret police under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887 – 1975). Written in 1946, this reminiscence concerns the tight cooperation that existed between General Li’s guerrilla units and the American military (Sino-American Co-Operative Organization: S.A.C.O.) during the later years of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Dobbins emphasized how deeply General Dai Li’s intelligence operatives were able to circulate during the period in which U.S. Rear Admiral Milton Mary Miles commanded the S.A.C.O. troops.
Appearing in a British labor weekly was this short column pertaining to the whereabouts of Haj Amin Al-Husseini and his appearance as the elected representative of the Palestine Arab Delegation in London:
Haj Amin Al-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Palestine, has had a varied and adventurous career. Few transformations in his fortunes, however, have been as startling as those of the last twelve months. Just before VE-Day, together with Rashid Ali, he gave himself up to French forces on the Austro-German frontier. In his wildest dreams at the time he could not have imagined that a year later he would be conducting Palestine Arab affairs from Cairo….
During the hunt for Holocaust architect Adolf Eichman, an SS veteran stepped forward to say that he had seen Al-husseini in Eichman’s company on several occasions throughout the years.
For a time, Jinx Falknenburg shared the high ground as the best-paid fashion model with a lass named Anita Colby (1914 – 1992). She was restless and highly ambitious beauty who recognized that her exulted position in the fashion world was only a temporary one – and by the time that the clock ran out on her, Colby’s resume would boast of numerous high-profile positions such as publicist, syndicated columnist, movie studio executive and T.V. talk show hostess.
This article pertains to her brief stint at the Selznick Studios as some sort of perfumed Über-Stylist who lorded over all the other glam-squad proletarians on the lot.
Her book, Anita Colby’s Beauty Book
This 1946 article puts a nice face on a subject that both American diplomats and military men were eager to hide from the world – the issue involving a total lack of military preparedness. The journalist reported on the military’s push to bulk-up the reserves to an acceptable level, but the real story was that all branches of the armed services were on a recruiting drive for more men (and women) to make up for the fact that the post-war deployment program had drastically reduced the combat effectiveness of practically every unit. Under heavy pressure from civil authorities to save money, military planners failed to retain the services of numerous combat veterans to train the newest recruits. This partially explains the lack of accomplishments attained by the earliest divisions deployed to halt the North Korean advances in 1950.
Max Beckmann (1884 – 1950), having fled to Holland from his native Germany in order to escape Hitler, arrived in New York shortly after the end of the war and wasted no time in securing an aggressive dealer eager to arrange liasons between him and the the post-war dollar.
The first exhibition of Max Beckman’s work since 1941 is currently being held at the Bucholz Gallery in New York. Director Kurt Valentin has assembled for this event important examples of Beckman’s brush dating from 1939 to the present…Among the many drawings particularly remembered are a satirical ‘Radio Singer’ and a tongue-in-cheek ‘Anglers’, along with ‘Head Waiters’.
This editorial lends credibility to Andrei Cherny’s 2007 tome, The Candy Bombers
Stories keep coming back to this country about American soldiers sticking up Berlin restaurants, or beating up German citizens, or looting German homes. How much of this stuff goes on, we don’t know. We do know that some of it goes on, and that any of it is too much. Not that we believe in sobbing unduly over the German people, they let themselves be razzle-dazzled into the war by Hitler and his mobsters.
During the course of the Second World War, Western fiction writer Louis L’Amour (1908 – 1988) served as a U.S. Army lieutenant in a transport unit. He penned this nifty article about 1946 Paris while waiting to return home:
It is cold in Paris now. There are chill winds blowing down those wide streets. The fuel shortage is serious, and will probably continue to be so as transportation is not yet what it should be.
Vivid with historical background, the city somehow remains modern. It has kept step with the world without losing its beauty or its patina…Easy enough when riding along the Rue St. Antoine to forget that where the jeeps and command cars roll now, there were once Roman chariots. No corner of Paris is without its memories.
All told, the animated cartoon series Tom and Jerry would be awarded seven (7) Academy Awards before Oscar’s attention turned elsewhere.
This 1946 article sings the praises of Fred Quimby (1886 – 1965), the animation producer who ran the shop at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio between the years 1937 and 1954:
Doff the cap to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Fred Quimby, producer of Tom and Jerry’, the only cartoon stars to have copped the coveted Oscar for two consecutive years. Even the distinguished Donald Duck has only been Oscarized once.
‘Tom and Jerry‘ reflect in broad comedy the faults and foibles of human beings, even as you and I. Here we have a thoroughly egotistical cat and a very shrewd mouse… a cartoon representation of the eternal conflict between HERO and VILLAIN. Toma always hopes to outwit Jerry who symbolizes the underdogs of the world.
This short notice appeared in The Lion’s Roar, which was the monthly publicity rag for M.G.M. Studio.
When the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics was let-in on the secret that the U.S. Army intended to manufacture and deploy wooden gliders, a red light went on in their collective heads as they all remembered how susceptible wood and canvas aircraft had been in attracting lightning bolts. This article outlines the steps that were taken to remedy the problem.
