Articles from Click Magazine
Attached is a Click Magazine photo essay of one of the seldom remembered heroes of W.W. II: John C. Garand – the gunsmith who tripled the firepower of the American foot soldier.
In 1939, a German spy almost succeeded in delivering the blueprints of the Garand rifle into the blood-soaked hands of his Nazi overlords: read about it here.
Click here to read about the Japanese Zero.
Almost entirely [composed] of wood, Britain’s Mosquito Bomber can sting the enemy out of proportion to its size and appearance. Thirty odd German cities already have felt the devastating, impressive bite of Mosquitoes in more than 150 bombing raids on the Reich.
They’re career women, housewives, professionals, factory hands, debutantes. They’ve taught school, modeled, supported themselves, as secretaries, salesgirls, mechanics. Single and married, white and colored, between the ages of 21 and 45, they’re corresponding with a beau, in Ireland, a husband Australia, or the ‘folks back home’ in Flatbush. But varied as their background may be, they’ve enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) with a common purpose: to get behind America’s fighting men and help win a lasting peace.
When well-versed in army-administrative methods, the WAAC will cause the transfer of 450 enlisted men to combat areas each week. It realizes full-well its responsibility and has dedicated itself to the idea that the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps will prove itself equal to the opportunity.
If you’ve been wandering the internet hoping to get some idea what the fair isle of Manhattan looked like on 1940s color film, then your search is over (for a little while). These color images first appeared in a 1940 issue of Click Magazine and you will get a glimpse of the Bowery, Broadway, and Fifth Avenue -there are also two color pictures of New York at night for all of you wanted to see what the door man at El Morocco wore or the club-crawlers in Harlem.
We are not sure how wide-spread boxing exercises were among all the U.S. Army infantry training camps during W.W. II, but the attached photo-essay will cue you in to the fact that it was mighty important at Camp Butner in 1943.
The government of Brazil declared war on Hitler’s Germany on August 22, 1942, and you’d best believe that the over-paid photographers of CLICK MAGAZINE were Johnny-on-the-spot to document all the joyous mayhem that let loose on those flag-strewn boulevards of the Brazilian capitol:
Brazilians are fighting mad. When Brazil joined the United Nations in war on August 22nd, the formal declaration was a climax to the democratic action of its citizens who began, months ago, to let the world know how they felt about the Axis.
The pent-up rage of a sorely-tried nation burst in earnest when war was declared. With unanimous enthusiasm, the people mobbed the streets, cheering everything that was part of the Allied cause…Day after day, anti-fascist demonstrations, and pageants choked the streets of Rio de Janiero, where the pictures on this page were taken.
On that day, Brazil became the 32nd nation to declare war against Germany.
The attached article tells the story of an organization that was formed by the German Foreign Office in order to steal the treasures of the occupied European nations. It was called the Nazi Art Corps and it was divided into four battalions of SS men; they stole manuscripts, sculpture, paintings, jewels etc, etc, etc. They answered to the Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893 – 1946).
Click here to read about the inmate rebellions that took place at Auschwitz, Sobibor and Triblinka.
Attached is a brief photo-essay documenting the short-lived experiment with women’s football in California:
Anything can and does happen in California, the proving ground for all sorts of fads and fancies. The latest craze sweeping the land of the Ham-and-Eggers is girl’s football. Discarding their all-revealing bathing suits, Hollywood and Los Angeles lassies have taken to padded moleskins, hip pads, shoulder pads, head gears and rubber-cleated brogans. The transition from beach nymph to gridiron amazon is called a revolution against oomph in the capital of streamlined pulchritude…regardless of what is said, powder-puff football seems destined to stay.
This photo-essay tells the story of the radical elements within the United States during the later period of the Great Depression – all of them were directed and financed by Georgi Dimitrov (1882 – 1949) in far-off Moscow. The leaders of the American Communist Party USA (CPUSA) were William Z. Foster, Earl Browder, and Ella Reeve Bloor.
In 1944, the city of Seattle, Washington elected a communist to the U.S. House of Representatives, click here to read about him…
Click here to learn how thoroughly the FBI had infiltrated the CPUSA.
Click here to read about an American woman who grew heartily sick of the socialists who pontificated on every street corner during the Great Depression…
Click here to read about the tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression…
From Amazon: Demagogues in the Depression: American Radicals and the Union Party, 1932-1936,
Illustrated with thirteen pictures of the most popular U.S. makeup products used throughout the Forties, this article provides a fascinating look at how World War II effected the American cosmetic industry and how that same industry benefited the American war effort.
The U.S. cosmetics industry was effected in many ways, read the article and find out.
Click here to read a 1954 article about Marilyn Monroe.
A Click Magazine photo-essay about the hard-charging WAACS of the Motor Transport School in glamorous Daytona Beach, Florida. Trained to operate and maintain two-ton trucks, the American women of the WAACs were mobilized to run the vast convoy system within the U.S. in order to free-up their male counterparts for more dangerous work in hostile regions.
Click here to read about the most famous woman truck driver in all of World War II…
In the Sixties the most popular fashion model was Twiggy (né Lesley Hornby, b. 1949), and in the Fifties the top model was Suzy Parker (1932 – 2003: truly the first Super Model). But in the 1940s the honor went to Jinx Falkenburg (1919 – 2003).
The 1940’s was the decade in which the advertising world began to gaze more favorably upon photographers rather than illustrators, who had long held the prominent place since printers ink was first invented. During the earliest days of her career Falkenburg’s likeness was often painted until the her bookings with photographers quickly picked up. She was the firstMiss Rheingold (appointed, not elected), she appeared in movies, entertained the troops and when she stood before the cameras she was paid all of $25.00 an hour (the term super Model wouldn’t come about until the Seventies).
The attached photo essay will give you some more information.
From Amazon:
Although the Selective Service agency granted 4,192,000 draft deferments to farmers throughout the course of World War II, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recognized that this number alone would never be enough to harvest the food necessary to feed both the home front and the armed forces. With this shortage in mind, the Women’s Land Army was created in 1943 to provide that essential farm labor that proved so vital in winning the war. Between the years 1943 and 1945 millions of American women from various backgrounds rolled up their denim sleeves and got the job done. The attached magazine article is one of the first to tell the tale of this organization, and was printed at a time when there were only 60,000 women in the field.<
During an informal conversation with his biographer, Stephen Ambrose, Dwight Eisenhower once remarked that it was Andrew Higgins (1886 – 1952) who had won the war for us. Knowing that such words do not flow from the lips of generals easily, Eisenhower went on to explain to Ambrose that if it were not for the creation of Higgin’s landing crafts, the architects of the Allied victory would have had to seize the existing, and well-fortified, harbors of Europe in order to unload their invasion forces – and who knows how the island-hopping war in the Pacific would been fought?
Attached is a five page photo-essay from the Fall of 1942 about the man and his early contributions.
Two million Americans have as their principal form of visual entertainment nomad movies, run by some 3000 road-showmen who present their motion pictures in tents, auditoriums or churches. Few city folks realize that this is the way in which entertainment is brought to about 5000 U.S. towns of less than 1000 population… Road-showmen say that the favorite shows are fast-action westerns and occasional comedies. Mushy love scenes are box-office poison among their clientele. During harvest seasons, when customers can best afford the ten to twenty-five cents admission charge, these showmen take in between $75.00 and $150.00 a week.
These were not the only traveling entertainers during the Thirties: the Federal Theater Project also sent hoards of players throughout the nation to amuse and beguile – you can read about that here
Click here to read about Marilyn Monroe and watch a terrific documentary about her life.
Author and radio commentator Emil Ludwig (1881 – 1948) recalled the economic catastrophe that devastated post-World War I Germany as a result of their inflated currency:
Inflation in Germany really started on the first day of the war in 1914 when the government voted a credit of five billion marks. This was not a loan…I saw the mark, the German monetary unit corresponding to the British shilling or the American quarter, tumble down and down until you paid as much for a loaf of bread as you would have paid for a limousine before inflation started.
An article from Click Magazine designed for civilian consumption concerning the U.S. Signal Corps and their efforts to film and photograph as much of the war as was possible in order that the brass hats far off to the rear could sit comfortably and understand what was needed. The article is illustrated with six war photographs and the captions explaining what information was gleaned from each:
Every detail of these films is scrupulously studied by a group of experts, officers and engineers representing the Army Ground Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Army Air Corps, the Signal Corps the Armored Forces, the Quartermaster Corps and other military units. Naturally, these services are interested in different sections of every film. To facilitate their studies, a device known as the Multiple Film Selector is used.
The Signal Corps Movies of World War I were intended for different uses…
This article about Adolf Hitler and women appeared on the newsstands two months prior the start of the Second World War, when the world learned how evil a man the lunatic truly was. The journalist wanted to confirm that there was no truth to the 1939 rumor that Hitler was dead and quickly began musing about other rumors:
More feasible is the theory that the sexless madman of Naziland is still alive and has merely discovered that he gets a vicarious thrill out of having women around him and likes to watch acrobatic dance routines.
Photographed in this article is Frau Scholtz-Klink, who had been dubbed the perfect Nazi woman by the Reichfuehrer, in addition to three curvy American burlesque dancers who performed before Hitler.
Click here to read about the dating history of Adolf Hitler.
