Ken Magazine

Articles from Ken Magazine

The W.P.A. Arts Projects Closed Due to Communist Tampering
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

This 1939 magazine article addressed the matter of the communist organization Workers Alliance perverting the arts organizations that operated within the Federal Works Projects Administration (WPA), thus forcing the government agency to close:

When the arts projects of the WPA were instituted, many capable and culturally progressive individuals throughout the country hailed them as a banner raised against the gloomy depression sky to form a rallying point for youthful and ambitious artists whose task it was to carry the torch of aesthetic advancement on to that future time when we envisaged the return of ‘prosperity’…yet the obvious control of the arts projects by the communist party through its stooge, the Workers Alliance has forced the hand of Congress to abolish the agency.


CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.

A Military Genius?
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

This is a small segment from a longer article on this site that can be read here.
Just months prior to the start of the Second World War, this anonymous correspondent asked, Is Hitler a strategic genius? For much of the following year many of Europe’s anointed would find themselves asking much the same question; but this reporter was not impressed with the man one jot and wished his readers to keep in mind that throughout the slaughterous environment provided by the Entente Powers of the 1914 – 1918 war, Hitler was entirely unable to rise above the rank of corporal – in spite of the fact that his regiment was losing a sergeant each day.


From Amazon: Hitler’s First Warstyle=border:none.

The Growth of the German Airforce
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

Published four months before Germany’s attack on Poland (September 1, 1939), this article outlines Hermann Goering’s efforts to build the Luftwaffe from scratch, the creation of various flight schools, the Luftwaffe collaboration with the Hitler Youth organization, and his aspirations to out-class the air forces of the United States and Britain. The article also addresses the business dealings of American manufacturers Boeing and Douglas Aircraft had with the German Luftwaffe.


Click here to read about the corrupt American corporations that aided the Nazi war machine during the 1930s.

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Military Buildup in Germany
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

The German Army is the greatest enterprise in the world. It has a million employees on it’s payrolls, the active officers and soldiers, and, at a conservative estimate, feeds another million workers in the munitions industry. Actually the army employs all of Germany. Military needs alone determine the way of life in the besieged fortress into which 80 million Germans have more or less willingly formed themselves.


The German economist who made the rearmament possible was named Hjalmar Schacht, click here to read about him…

The Japanese Homefront
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

This 1938 article concerned the gas rationing and and other assorted inconveniences that the Japanese population had to suffer during the Sino-Japanese conflict. The reporter was surprised to discover that the general citizenry was kept in a reasonable state of ignorance as to their military’s intentions in China:



Some attention is paid to the sacrifices made by the Japanese industrial classes, such as the Yasuda, Iwasaki, and Mitsui families.

The Boeing Collaboration
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

A 1939 article that concerned the rapid growth of the German Air Force, but also referred to the scandalous business dealings of American manufacturers Boeing and Douglas Aircraft had in this expansion.

It has taken Field Marshall Hermann Wilhelm Goering a little over six years to build the German Air Armada, one of the world’s most formidable offensive forces, out of a magnificent bluff.


A similar article can be read here…

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Mussolini and the Italian Expatriots
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

In September, 1936, when the League of Nations refused to expel the African empire from its membership, Il Duce kept Italian representatives away from League halls. They have never set foot in them since. Last spring British envoys led a successful boycott against diplomatic attendance at a first anniversary celebration of Italy’s conquest. Ill Duce countered with a peeve so wrathful that Italian newspapers made no mention of Great Britain for two whole days.

Nanking Ravaged
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

The occupation of Nanking by the Japanese army in December, 1937, resulted in the greatest authenticated massacre in modern history.

Fifty thousand blood-crazed beasts in Japanese uniforms roamed China’s fallen capital for four weeks in a mad Saturnalia of butchery, rape and pillage without parallel in modern history. That story, suppressed by the Japanese military who chased news correspondents and foreign officials out of Nanking, is told for the first time by one of the few Americans who remained, a ‘go-between’ for the U.S. Government with 20 years of service in China. He saw roped bundles of humanity saturated with gasoline and ignited for a Nipponese holiday.

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Nazi Terror at Plotzensee Prison
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

A first-hand account as to the daily goings-on at Plötzensee Prison in Nazi Germany.

Written by Jan Valtin (alias of Richard Julius Hermann Krebs: 1905 – 1951), one of the few inmates to make his way out of that highly inclusive address and tell the tale. Valtin was a communist in the German resistance movement who later escaped to New York and published his memoir about his experiences in Nazi Germany Out of the Night (1941).

…the purpose of punishment is the infliction of suffering. In the tiny, dark cells of this Nazi prison that is the Law. It breaks some men, but it tempers others to a harder steel as the underground fight against Hitler goes on…

The Merger of Austria With Germany
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

Here is an article about Austria’s Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg (1897 – 1977) and how the merger of Austria and Nazi Germany came about in 1838:

Behind the scenes that hard day at Berchtesgaden, revealing what Hitler said to Kurt Schuschnigg and what the Austrian public never knew about the German plot to stage in Vienna a counterpart of the Reichstag fire, as a pretext for invasion. Schuschnigg spoiled that pretext, only to furnish another one himself. Uncovering the plot in the hope of averting invasion he merely brought it on.

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Censors of the Japanese War Machine
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

The Japanese censorship boards have drafted regulations for the press in territory under their control, and unsuccessful attempts were made to control news dispatches in Shanghai’s foreign-owned newspapers. In Peiping, Tientsin, Tsingtao and other cities where the Japanese are in complete control, foreign editors are having their troubles, as evidenced by the ‘secret’ instructions to the press issued by the Special Military Missions to China, with Headquarters in Peiping… Under the heading ‘Important Standards for Press Censorship’ come the following regulations…


-what follows is an enormous laundry list of DONT’S issued to the officers of the foreign press stationed in Japanese-occupied China.

‘Steel Ring Around Mussolini”
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

One thousand men are charged with the personal responsibility of seeing that Il Duce doesn’t meet with an untimely death. Their frenzied precautions make him the best protected of all contemporary dictators – a protection which is sorely needed. Sixteen years after the victorious March on Rome a special tribunal dealing with the ‘enemies of fascism’ is still working along at exceptionally high pressure.


Click here to read about Mussolini’s departure from the League of Nations.

Bad Press Day for Eleanor Roosevelt
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

During a 1936 visit to a research facility devoted to finding a cure for children’s lung ailments, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was remembered by a reporter for having blurted out a highly insensitive question:

What is the use of saving babies, if they can’t earn a decent living when they grow up?

With two years to think about her impulsive inquiry, the reporter responded with outrage in formulating an answer.

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Movie Exhibitors vs Movie Producers
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

A 1938 magazine article pertains to a brawl that once existed between movie exhibitors and movie producers involving the Hollywood practice known as block-booking, which required theater owners to commit to movies they have never seen. The article refers to how Hollywood employed their biggest stars to fight legislation in Washington designed to overturn this scheme.


The bill was defeated.


Click here to read about Marilyn Monroe and watch a terrific documentary about her life.


More about the American film business in the 1940s can be read here…

Eyes on Chiang Kai-Shek
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

Before the war was hours old, Chiang’s most secret plans were known to the Japs. Again and again Jap actions showed foreknowledge of Chiang’s movements and stratagems, as discussed and decided with his most trusted leaders. This explains many mysterious incidents, and makes China’s apparent ‘spy complex’ fully understandable.

Life in Sunny, Fascist Italy
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

In Italy, every other man is wearing a uniform or just stepped out of one. Every other wife is about to become a mother again. Every boy is lugging a wooden gun and playing at soldier. So it sees to the eye, and amazingly, so it actually is. War, babies, self-sufficiency, poverty, persecution complexes, chest beating, magnetic pride and the most parrotty people in the world. This is the land determined to out-Caesar the greatest Roman of them all. The Italian’s thoughts, eyes, ears, destiny, morals, spaghetti, pocketbook and trigger finger are controlled completely by the whim of one man. And the Italians love him.


Click here to read about life in Hitler’s Germany during the same period…

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