1946 – Page 7 – Old Magazine Articles

General Hap Arnold, U.S. Air Corps
(Coronet Magazine, 1946)

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.

General Hap Arnold, U.S. Air Corps
(Coronet Magazine, 1946)

General Dai Li: ”The Himmler of The East
(Collier’s, 1946)

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.

Al-Husseini After the War
(Tribune, 1946)

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….

The Eichman Connection
(Tribune, 1946)

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.

Anita Colby
(Pageant Magazine, 1946)

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, has become a classic on 1950s style.

Hiding A Military Error
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

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 Beckman Since the War
(Art Digest, 1946)

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’.

The Abusive Occupying Army
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

This editorial lends credibility to Andrei Cherny’s 2007 tome, The Candy Bombers, in which the author states that there was no love lost between the Berliners and the occupying American army in the immediate aftermath of the German surrender:

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.

Louis L’Amour on Post-War Paris
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1946)

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.