The Need For A New Word
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)
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1951
Articles from 1951
Picket’s Charge
(W.C. Storick, 1951)
[General] Picket’s column of assault consisted of 42 regiments: 19 Virginia, 15 North Carolina, 2 Alabama, 3 Tennessee and 3 Mississippi – a total of 15,000 men
Lee’s Report Regarding the First Day
(W.C. Storck, 1951)
The enemy was driven through Gettysburg with heavy loss, including about 5,000 prisoners and several pieces of artillery. He retired to a high range of his hills south and east of the town. The attack was not pressed that afternoon, the enemy’s force being unknown, and it being considered advisable to await the arrival of of the rest of our troops.
A Southern Spy in Pennsylvania
(W.C. Storrick, 1951)
In his Civil War memoir
Confederate General John B. Gordon (1832 – 1904) recalled leading the spearhead of Lee’s army through Gettysburg and on to the towns of York and Wrightsville on June 28th, 1863. While his procession was entering York a young girl ran up to him and handed him a large bouquet of flowers, which served to camouflage a letter from a Southern spy.
Click here to read more about Civil War espionage.
Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner To Wed
(Modern Screen, 1951)
Back in the day, some wise old sage once remarked:
It’s Frank Sinatra’s world; we only live in it.
-in 1951, Nancy Sinatra certainly thought these words were double-dipped in truth; married to The Voice since 1939, she tended to their three children devotedly, yet she was served with divorce papers nonetheless in order that Ol’ Blue Eyes could go keep house with the twice-married starlet Ava Gardner (1922 – 1990). The attached article will tell you all about it; it’s a juicy one – filled hearsay, innuendo and the knowing words of a Vegas odds maker as to whether the marriage will last:
Will Frank turn out to be a better husband than Mickey Rooney or Artie Shaw? Will Ava have more luck with him than Nancy had?
(they divorced in 1957)
Counter-Espionage
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)
This is the story of Harry Sawyer (real name William G. Sebold), a German immigrant to American shores. On a return trip to Germany to visit family in 1939, Sawyer was very reluctantly forced into service as a spy for the German SD (Sicherheitsdienst), the intelligence arm of Himmler’s SS. Sawyer was schooled briefly in the ways of spying, told what was expected of him and then let loose to set sail home.
Upon his return, Sawyer quickly explained his problem to J. Edgar Hoover, who masterfully turned the situation to his advantage, an advantage that led to the capture of 32 Nazi spies.
Click here to read about Lucy – Stalin’s top spy during the Second World War.
The Twilight of Segregated Baseball…(People Today Magazine, 1951)
An anonymous scribe at PEOPLE TODAY wrote this well-illustrated piece to mark the occasion that heralded the end of the Negro Baseball League – and the integration of major league baseball in America.
Click here to read a 1954 article about Willie Mays.
Anticipating Soviet Imperialism
(Quick Magazine, 1951)
A brief Quick Magazine report on the Christians who made their 1951 pilgrimage to Fatima, Portugal. In 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, it said that the Virgin Mary appeared before three children and interacted with them. Among other remarks, the Virgin is said to have made this warning:
Russia will spread her errors throughout the world and many nations will be annihilated.
Foreign-Aid on Behalf of the American Civil Rights Struggle
(Quick Magazine, 1951)
Recognizing that the United States has seldom ever been without civil libertarians, of one form or another, who could always be relied upon to file papers in the courts on behalf of one injured tribe or another – I often wondered why, if this was the case, was so much progress made in the American civil rights struggle of the 50s and 60s as opposed to other periods? This article answered that question.
Radio Moscow noted the warnings of a Klansman in South Carolina, that there will be bloodshed if Negro students attend white schools. But ignored the admittance of 1,000 Negroes to colleges in 15 Southern and Border states, schools formerly for whites only.
Vietminh Power Struggle?
(The New Leader Magazine, 1951)
During the earliest days of 1951 many journalists and intelligence analysts in the West thought Ho Chi Minh’s prolonged absence from public view meant a coup d’état had taken place within the Viet Minh hierarchy. These same minds held that the most likely candidate to launch such a power play was Ho’s number two: Dang Xuan Khu (1907 – 1988). This article goes into some detail explaining who he was and what he’d been up to for the past forty years.
A Hollywood Star Before the Committee
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)
Larry Parks (1914 – 1975) was an Hollywood movie actor. His career arched from bit player and supporting roles to top billing before his career was virtually ended when he admitted to having once been a member of the Communist Party USA; his candor soon led to his being blacklisted by all the Hollywood studios.
Stalin’s Nine Point Plan
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)
Joseph Stalin (1878 – 1953) is credited as the author of the attached article, Russia’s Plan for World Conquest, and it outlines all the various methods Soviet agents can subvert and curry-favor among the various youth and labor groups that are based in the industrialized democracies of the West:
…here is the Russian Dictator’s nine point program for world conquest, taken from his recorded writings, which are now on file in the Stalin Archives of the National War College in Washington, D.C. Italicized sentences have been inserted throughout the article in order to point up Stalin’s plan in the light of today’s crucial events. [ie. the Korean War]
As Lenin has said, a terrible clash between Soviet Russia and the capitalist States must inevitably occur…Therefore we must try to take the enemy by surprise, seize a moment when his forces are dispersed.
Click here to read about Soviet collusion with American communists.
The Musicians Duke Ellington Admired
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)
Of all the jazz musicians who link yesterday’s ragtime with today’s dance music, Duke Ellington is the dean. In his 27 years as a pianist and composer, the Duke has played alongside every great brass, reed, and rhythm man of his day. Now he picks those music makers who, ‘on the basis of their over-all contribution, their all-time record, consistently good performance, and love of music,’ constitute 1951’s All-American jazz band.
Duke Ellington made a list of his favorite eleven musicians; some of the names may surprise you.
American Resolve and the Draft
(Quick Magazine, 1951)
Illustrated with a chart that shows how much the U.S. Navy had shrunk after W.W. II and then expanded anew when faced with the war in Korea, this short article pertains to the various steps Congress was taking to meet the Soviet challenges abroad:
A $2.3 billion ship-building and repair program, just approved by President Truman, will add a 57,800-ton carrier and 172 other new vessels to the fleet. And 291 more are to be demothballed-including 6 carriers, 12 cruisers, 194 destroyers.
[Stalin was incapable of responding to such growth, so he simply ordered the production of additional A-Bombs]
Soviet and Nazi Rhetoric Compared
(The New Leader Magazine, 1951
A carefully compiled assortment of quotes that were voiced by Stalin and Hitler (or their assorted Yes-Men). These utterances were printed with Stalin’s poisonous pronouncements in red and Hitler’s sickening soliloquies in black – both shades refer to similar topics and show an identical manner of thought that is indistinguishable from the other.
Hitler used the Bolshevik lingo more often than you might have thought…
Unrepentant Fascists in Argentina
(People Today, 1951)
The pages of PEOPLE TODAY, a short-lived gossip rag and probable ancestor of today’s PEOPLE
Spotted in Argentina during the summer of 1951 was Mussolini’s daughter, Edda Ciano (1910 – 1995), Otto Skorzeny (1908 – 1975) and Croatian fascist Ante Pavelić (1889 – 1959). The murderous Pavelić was in the employ of the Argentine dictator, Juan Peron; the other two resided in Europe (Countess Ciano had recently served a two year stint in an Italian prison and Skorzeny, as an ODESSA flunky, was probably no stranger to South America).
Click here to read a related article from NEWSWEEK concerning the post-war presence of Nazis in Argentina.
Click here to read another article about the post-war whereabouts of another Nazi.
The San Fernando Valley
(Coronet Magazine, 1951)
During the Second World War, millions of American military personnel passed through Los Angeles. Many were attracted to the simple domestic architecture, the smell of orange blossoms, Hollywood, the glorious weather – all of these or none of these, but many of them promised themselves that if they survived the war, this is where they would want to start their lives.
Many of these men fulfilled that promise, and they brought with them the government guaranteed housing loans provided by the G.I Bill – and a dusty, arid flat land just over the hill from Los Angeles called the San Fernando Valley began to grow as a result. By 1951, just six years after the war, two thousand building permits were issued for this area each month.
The Reds Take it on the Chin
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)
United Nations patrols in Korea probed north last week seeking out an enemy that wouldn’t stand and fight. But early this week, after U.N. advance units had pushed to within eight miles of Seoul, the Communists suddenly stopped playing hide and seek and began to offer stiffer resistance…. The Communist reluctance to fight last week caused much speculation at Eighth Army headquarters. Some officers thought the Reds were regrouping for a major push down the center. Others felt the Chinese had pulled back to give weight to the cease-fire negotiations at Lake Success. But they all agreed on one point: the Communists have paid an appalling price for their Korean adventure.
In hindsight we can say that the musings of the first officers were correct: the Communists were indeed rearming for a major offensive that would begin the following May.
Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.