Collier’s Magazine – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

The Further Education of Harry Truman
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

President Harry Truman (1884 – 1972) Came to the presidency following the death of FDR on April 12, 1945. He said of the post, “I wasn’t briefed for the job, I had to learn it from the ground up”; by 1947, he was no longer “Roosevelt’s stand-in, reading from a New Deal script” – he was his own man and this was becoming clearer and clearer to his critics in Washington. This article, by Frank Gervasi (1908 – 1990), covers Truman’s earliest years in the White House, and his handling of some of the hotest potatoes that landed in his lap.

What was the Truman Doctrine?

London Under the Bombs
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

“A German plane dropped a flare. Then the inevitable stick bombs followed and the Savoy [Hotel] trembled. I looked and winced. Two large fires were reaching up into the night. This dwarfed any Blitz I have ever seen. Still both incendiaries and high-explosives screamed down. The night was filled with noise – all of it frightening noise. And above the planes still roared. It was so light that the balloons could be seen clearly. Now and then there would come the rattle of machine gun fire, hardly heard over the crackling of fires and the noise of the bombs. But it told us that the night fighters were up there.”

London Under the Bombs
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

A Pen-Picture of the Devastated Soviet Union
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

After touring thousands of miles with a German press-pass throughout Nazi-occupied Russia, American journalist Hugo Speck (1905 – 1970) gave a thorough picture of the violence visited upon that land by both Armies:

“German-occupied Russia is in rags and ruins; huge sweeps of European Soviet territory have been systematically destroyed, partly by the Russians themselves and partly by the devastation of Stukas, panzers, guns and fire…”

Destroying Germany from Above
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“The Reich is being methodically pulverized. The Eighth U.S. Air Force by day and the R.A.F. by night have only begun their deadly round-the-clock job. The coming months will see them unleash a fury that surpasses all the world’s earthquakes.”

Life on a B-17 Base in England
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

This is an amazing article that recalls the open-all-night cities that were the B-17 bases in Britain during World War Two. Such were the lives of the ground crews, who worked all night and then found sleep impossible – preferring to stay-up and stare at the skies in anticipation for their returning bombers.

“A crew chief stumbles past you on his way to the hangar. He’s been going seventy-two hours without taking his shoes off; his face is unshaven, and his eyes look like holes burned in a blanket.”

Life on a B-17 Base in England
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Soldiers Speak-Out About the Home Front
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“There is no other country at war with such an enormous gulf in sacrifice between fighting men and civilians. There is no other country where the men at the front have given up everything, while the people at home have given up practically nothing. And the soldiers know it…‘A few bombs would do this country a lot of good.’ I heard that in San Francisco from a curly-headed sailor who had been sunk in the Pacific, and I heard it again in Washington from a corporal who had left his leg on Hill 609. Both added, rather anxiously, that, of course, they wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Debauchery Near the Army Camps
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

Even before the Home Front kicked into high-gear, the men who had been picked up in the 1940 draft were causing real problems in every area where a military training camp could be found. Knowing that the enlistments were soon to grow and these problems would be getting worse, the brass hats joined arms with the town elders to curb the drinking and whoremongering. The cure for these difficulties came in the form of the USO, which would be eatablished before the year was out.

A similar article can be read here.

”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.

”Terror in Japan”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

Click here to read about August 28, 1945 – the day the American occupation began.

Miracle at 20,000 Feet
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Flying home after bombing Tunis, the B-17 All-American with a full crew of ten onboard was sliced open at the rear by a nazi fighter plane that nearly severed her tail. How the craft stayed up in the air was anybody’s guess.

The Success of the Ploesti Raid
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Here is an article from 1943, the year everything changed for the Axis. The article explains all that was involved with the stout-hearted raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania. 177 American bombers were sent to do the job.

“From Ploesti, the Nazis extracted oil and oil products which maintained the entire German and Italian fleets, and third of the whole German air force in Russia. Around the Ploesti installations, the Germans had raised a forest of antiaircraft guns of large and small calibers. They had built blast walls around plants’ vital parts and spotted airdromes from which fighters could rise to intercept our bombers.”

The Success of the Ploesti Raid
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Child Labor During W.W. II
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“Throughout the land, child labor is making a comeback as already inadequate laws buckle under pressure of fraudulent appeals to patriotism. Here is what greed and indifference are doing to America’s greatest asset: its children:”

“[The Devious] prefer children – the child worker is cheaper, more agile and willing, has less bargaining power. So the cry goes out for more and more children, ‘to help win the war!'”

“Just how it helps win the war for an Alabama girl of 11 to work in the fields till she collapses and is taken to a hospital with heart trouble has not been made clear.”

Child Labor During W.W. II
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“[The Devious] prefer children – the child worker is cheaper, more agile and willing, has less bargaining power. So the cry goes out for more and more children, ‘to help win the war!'”

“Just how it helps win the war for an Alabama girl of 11 to work in the fields till she collapses and is taken to a hospital with heart trouble has not been made clear.”

Child Labor During W.W. II
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“[The Devious] prefer children – the child worker is cheaper, more agile and willing, has less bargaining power. So the cry goes out for more and more children, ‘to help win the war!'”

“Just how it helps win the war for an Alabama girl of 11 to work in the fields till she collapses and is taken to a hospital with heart trouble has not been made clear.”