Newsweek

Articles from Newsweek

A Failed Peace Movement (Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

We were terribly surprised to learn of a peace movement that existed on the 1944 American home front. Baring an awkward name that was right out of Seventiespeak, Peace Now printed pamphlets that played the class game so prevalent in the other leftist organizations that would come forth twenty years later.

Japan’s War Against The Home Front (Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

When World War II was inching toward it’s bloody conclusion, Japan launched its Fu-go Campaign – a project designed to deploy thousands of high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with incendiary devices. These balloons were to follow the westerly winds of the upper atmosphere, drifting to the west coast of North America where they were expected descend into the forests and explode.


The Japanese home front suffered from tuberculosis – click here to read about it…

D-Day On The Home Front (Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

By the dawn’s early light America awoke to the knowledge that its D-Day had come. Electricity meters clocked a sudden spurt in kilowatt loads as house lights and radios went on; telephone switchboards jammed as excited householders passed the word along. By morning on June 6, scarcely a family failed to know that the nation’s sons and brothers, husbands and sweethearts were even then storming the beaches of Normandy to begin the Allied liberation of Europe.


Click here to read about D-Day…

Living Under the Bombs (Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

Here is one of the reviews of Pattern of Conqueststyle=border:none, a book by Joseph C. Harsch (1905 – 1998) – a CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR correspondent who had been posted to Germany during the earliest years of the war:

Harsch says that German morale is ‘fundamentally unsound’ however, and that it took a bad beating when the RAF first bombed Berlin, which Marshal Goering had said would happen only ‘over his dead body’. (‘Have you heard the news?’ Berliners asked each other, after the first raids. ‘Goering’s dead.’)


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

‘Eighth Over Berlin” (Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Comparing the American [daylight] raids with the RAF [nighttime] incursions, it was certainly a great shock to Berliners to find their city now open to round-the-clock bombing.

We don’t mind the Yanks who come when the sun shines and it’s warm. It’s the Tommies sneaking in at night that we don’t like so much.

The Zoot Suit (Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

This article tells of the origin and fast times of the zoot suit. Although the garment was popularized by Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, it had it’s origins in Harlem, New York, where it was known as the root suit.

A Patriotic Argument for Shorter Skirts (Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

Months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Washington was gearing-up for the fight by restricting the availability of certain fabrics to the fashion industry and diverting these materials to the defense industry. This started an open discussion in fashion circles as to whether it would simply be best to raise the hemlines until the national emergency was over.

The Fashion Originators Guild termed shorter skirts silly and added that dresses ‘are just as short today as decency and grace will permit.

Novelty ”Victory Fashion” Makes An Appearance (Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

It’s hard to believe – but Victory Fashion hit the American home front before it was even called the home front. However by mid-1941 Americans were pretty outraged by fascist aggression: the U-boats, London bombed, Nanking ravaged, France invaded – the list goes on. When this article went to press, we were not in the war but we were firmly on the Allied side. The word victory made its way into fashion circles and the nation’s couturiers began turning out novelty accessories and garments. Even the hairdressers contributed.

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