Collier’s Magazine – Page 12 – Old Magazine Articles

Paris Is Back!
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

Having no foresight as to the fashion juggernaut that would commence in one year with the appearance of Christian Dior’s New Look, the journalist puts all her credibility in one basket by declaring that all eyes are on the French fashion designer Madame Marcelle Dormoy. Much ink is spilled concerning the bleakness that clouded fashionable Paris during the occupation and the difficulty all fashion houses experienced in 1946 securing suitable fabric for their creations (at black-market prices).
The writer recovered some of her street-cred anticipating the meteoric career return of the well-loved French film actress Edwige Feuillère (1907 – 1998), who is personified herein as the epitome of French Glamour returned.

Click here to read a 1946 article about Le Corbusier.

The German Who Escaped
(Collier’s Magazine, 1953)

Read this unbelievable adventure by a former Afrika Korps Panzer Grenadier who, having been captured and subsequently shipped to the U.S., made good his escape from an Illinois prisoner-of-war camp – whereupon he assumed a fake identity and easily acquired a Social Security number. After having rented an apartment and worked several jobs in Chicago, he started a successful business just two years after his escape, married an American woman, sired a daughter – and he might very well have eluded the FBI entirely if he hadn’t insisted all the while on sending foodstuffs to his mother in war-ravaged Germany.

Martha Gellhorn Over Germany
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

An article by the W.W. II war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998) who rode with the crew of a P-61C Black Widow Night Fighter one evening as they made their rounds over what remained of Hitler’s Germany:

COLLIER’S girl correspondent sat on a wobbly crate and flew over Germany looking for enemy planes at night. Her nose ran, her oxygen mask slipped off, her stomach got mad, she was scared and she froze. They didn’t down any Germans, but otherwise that’s routine for the Black Widow pilots.

Click here to read additional articles about the war correspondents of the Second World War.

Click here to read Martha Gellhorn’s article about what she saw at Dachau.

Click here to read about the 1943 bombing campaign against Germany.

Henry Wallace: Was He Red?
(Collier’s Magazine, 1948)

Henry Wallace (1888 – 1965) was FDR’s second Vice President (1941 – 1945) and as a seasoned Washington politician he must have known that his political career was coming to an end when the attached editorial hit the newsstands in early October of 1948. Written by William L. Chenery, publisher of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE, one of the most staid, middle class news and fiction organs around – it was not the sort of organization that looked upon libel lightly; Chenery meant what he wrote when he slandered the former vice president as the spokesman of Russia.

Wallace, who at the time was taking a licking as the Progressive Party nominee for president in the 1948 race, left politics shortly afterward. In 1952 he wrote a book in which he admitted how wrong he was to have ever trusted Joseph Stalin.

Captain Edward Steichen of the U.S. Navy
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

As informative as this World War Two article about photographer Edward Steichen (1879 – 1973) is, it fails to convey to the reader what an interesting soul he must have been. Steichen was a respected photographer in modernist circles prior to volunteering for service in the First World War, and by the time he joined the U.S. Navy for the second go-round, his stock was even higher.

‘Fascist Finale”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

They killed Mussolini and his henchmen. They killed 1,000 persons in five days in and around Milan. Some Partisans thought the city was still not cleaned of Fascists when the American Army finally entered on Sunday afternoon April 29 and by their presence ended the assassinations.The fighting was about over; the even more difficult struggle was for stability was already beginning but with less excitement.

‘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.

‘Our Balance Sheet In Japan”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

Here is an honest report card concerning the first six months of the American occupation of Japan. The list of things that we did successfully at that point were considerably shorter than the list of our failings. Much is said concerning the Japanese deep state and their resistance to the new order.

Lena Horne
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Widely seen mid-way through the year 1943 was this COLLIER’S MAGAZINE profile of singer Lena Horne (1917 – 2010) who impressed the the West-coast press corps in the same way she did the ink-stained wretches of the East:

When she was sixteen she was in the chorus at the Cotton Club in Harlem, getting that job through her mother who was then playing in-stock at the old Lafayette Theater on Lenox Avenue… Her name up to then was Helena Horne, but Barney [Josephson] ruthlessly dropped the added letters. He also taught her a great deal about using her personality in her songs.

Testimony
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

I have visited these [death] camps and I have seen the prisoners and the conditions under which they existed or died. It would be hard, with a mere camera, to overstate the essential horrors of these camps… It is not a pretty site to see – as I did… I fancy that no other generation was ever required to witness horror in this particular shape…

Ho Chi-Minh on the March…
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

A 1947 article reporting on the French desire to maintain their colonies in Indo-China, and their conflict with a Moscow-trained revolutionary Marxist (and Paris-trained pastry chef) named Ho Chi-Minh (1890 – 1969).

Click here to read about American communists and their Soviet overlords.

Ho Chi-Minh on the March…
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

Click here to read about American communists and their Soviet overlords.

Home Front Feminism
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

1940s feminism bares no resemblance to the take-no-prisoners feminism of today. This is made clear in the attached article by Amaran Scheinfeld (1900 – 1979), a writer, whose book Women and Men (1944), as stated by the New York Times, foreshadowed many issues of the feminist movement. The primary difference between the two lay in the fact that seventy-five years ago it was believed that it was nature that had established many of the rolls played by the (two) genders.

The ICBM
(Collier’s Magazine, 1956)

The U.S. and Russia are engaged in a race whose outcome may determine the course of history. The goal: development of the most frightful weapon conceived by man – a virtually unstoppable 16,000-mph intercontinental ballistic missile that can drop a hydrogen warhead on a city 5,000 miles away. At stake is not only the security of the free world , but our position as the world’s most technological and industrial power.

The Little Things That Made Babe Ruth
(Colliers’ Magazine, 1924)

A confidant cashed-in on his chum Babe Ruth and provided numerous factoids regarding the baseball legend’s habits, manias and obsessions that are not likely to be added to the Baseball Hall of Fame archives.

Sammy Sosa in our day may use steroids, but unlike Babe Ruth, at least he wears underwear…

Dale Carnegie on Winning Friends and Influencing People
(Collier’s Magazine, 1949)

Dale Carnegie (1888 – 1955) was a phenomenon unique to American shores; he was a publishing marvel whose book How To Win Friends and Influence People has sold over fifty million copies since it’s first appearance in 1937.
Similar to his contemporary Napoleon Hill
(1883 – 1970), Carnegie was one the preeminent self-help authors of the last century who recognized that success can be found within all of us if we simply know how to harness those elements properly. He had a strong belief that the powers of self-determination can be mastered in one’s ability to communicate clearly, and his followers are legion.

This article coincided with the printing of his second book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), and explains the author’s philosophy –

… be a good listener, talk in terms of the other man’s interests, and make the other person feel important.

Germany and the Next War
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)

No sooner had the curtain descended on the tragedy that was World War II when the Allied nations found themselves having to put together a coalition of nations that would be willing to contain Soviet expansion throughout Europe. A COLLIER’S journalist wandered among the rubble of West Germany and found that a great number of draft-age men simply replied nein when asked if they would be willing to fight alongside the Americans, French and British. One of the wiser observers opined:

Remember that Germany is a convalescent country…These people have lost two world wars in a generation. The last one cost them nearly 3,000,000 dead and another 1,000,000 or so still missing, to say nothing of some 4,000,000 wounded. They just don’t want to take a chance of being on the losing side again.

The West Germans joined NATO in 1955.

‘I Flew for Israel”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1949)

A veteran of our Air Force with Jewish blood tells why he fought for Israel and why the Israelis, hopelessly outnumbered, won the war with the Arabs. His experiences taught him that the Palestinian Jews have been badly treated by the outside world and he says, ‘The people of Israel are the most democratic in the world’