Articles from Newsweek
The game was up. At the Prat de Llobregat airfield outside Barcelona the traitor sat heavily on a camp stool, waiting for the reprieve. It did not come. The Franco government had found Pierre Laval too hot to handle… Laval shrugged: ‘I suppose if Petain can face the music, I can’. But later he shouted: ‘It is unfair… delivering me to my country.’
More about Laval can be read here
The Capture of Laval (Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
Down ramp!‘ shouted the coxswain from the elevated stern.
Down it came with a clank and splash. Ahead – and it seemed at that moment miles off – stretched the sea wall. At Lieutenant Crisson’s insistence we had all daubed our faces with commando black. I charged out with the rest, trying to look fierce and desperate, only to step into a shell hole and submerge myself in the channel. Luckily my gear was too wet and stinking to put on so I was light enough to come up.
This Newsweek journalist was the only allied war correspondent to have witnessed the derring-do of those in the first wave.
The First Wave (Newsweek Magazine, 1944) Read More »
As 1936 came to an end in Tokyo, the aftershocks of the February 26, 1936 failed military coup could still be felt throughout the halls of Japan’s Government. The uprising of the military hardliners resulted in four assassinations and a suicide before the constitutional powers regained control. This article covers a more peaceful dust-up on the Parliament floor – and when it was concluded the Generals had the upper hand.
Still the country’s most privileged class, military leaders – modern equivalent of the Samurai, medieval knights – can exert pressure on the government by reason of a 42-year-old imperial edict: the War and Navy Ministries must be headed by army and navy officers; if either resigns, the Cabinet falls.
Japan: More power For The Military (Newsweek Magazine, 1937) Read More »
This brief column tells the story of three women war correspondents who marched at the point of the spear alongside the American infantry in order to report on the collapse of Hitler’s Germany. The correspondents in question were:
• Lee Carson in Remagen
• Iris Carpenter in Remagen
• Ann Stringer in the city of Bonn
The Redhead, The Blonde and the Brunette (Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
As the American occupation forces began to pour in and spread throughout the cities and countryside of Japan, both occupied and occupier slowly get to learn of the other. The cordial attitude of the Japanese leads General MacArthur to conclude that the military presence need not be as large as he had once believed:
Curious and awed, increasingly friendly Japanese flocked to watch what they called the ‘race of giants’ at work.
The Work Starts (Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
By the time the war ended the WACs were 100,000 strong –
they had earned 314 medals and commendations, including 23 Legion of Merit awards and fourteen Purple Hearts. Throughout the war, seventeen thousand WACs had served overseas but by Christmas of 1945 their global strength had been cut in half.
WACs at Christmas (Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
The President wanted medical, dental and hospital care for all. Doctor’s fees would be paid by a Government insurance fund, financed by a 3% payroll tax, paid 50-50 by employee and employer.
(Strange that sexual reassignment surgery wasn’t included…)
Obamacare’ in the Forties (Atlanta Journal, 1949, Newsweek Magazine, 1945, etc.) Read More »
An article from the Spring of 1942 concerning the efforts of Premiere Laval to fool the French citizenry into loving their Nazi occupiers and hating the Allies.
Laval’s handicaps in reconciling the nation to the ‘new order’ are his personal unpopularity – careful observers estimate that 90 to 95 percent of the population spurn his policies – and the determination of the Nazis to stamp out resistance with terrorism.
Laval’s France (Newsweek Magazine, 1942) Read More »
The Newsweek report on the under-supplied Red Army counter-offensive at Stalingrad.
Russia’s hope was Hitler’s despair. His schedule for the year had already been irreparably disrupted and none of his major objectives – Stalingrad, the Caspian Sea, the oil of the Caucasus – had yet been attained. And already the Nazi soldiers could feel the cold breath of winter through their summer uniforms…
The Battle of Stalingrad (Newsweek Magazine, 1942) Read More »
