Articles from Newsweek
On February 29, at the Academy’s twelfth annual dinner at the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood, Gone with the Wind surpassed [1934’s ‘It Happened One Night’] by winning eight out of sixteen possible prizes and garnering two special awards for good measure.
The bombing of the Medieval abbey at Montecassino was one of the saddest tactical errors of the Second World War. The decision to bomb the structure was a result an error in translating an intercepted German communique that lead the Allies to believe that there was Nazi battalion contained within the abbey. This was not the case. When the Allies sifted through the rubble they were surprised to find the remains of numerous Italian civilians and very few Germans. The attached article recalls the fantastic view that was enjoyed by the assembled U.S. and British troops as the bombs fell.
On Sunday morning, August 5 (Washington time), an American airplane flew over Hiroshima, a Japanese army base [!] on the Inland Sea. It dropped a single bomb. When that missile struck the earth, it blew up in the greatest man-made explosion in the history of the world. The United States had loosed an atomic bomb on Japan.
Click here to read about the invention of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
Nobody tried to deny it. The Germans had achieved perhaps the most valuable of military advantages – surprise. How did they do it? [In these two articles] Allied officers gave some obvious reasons, but critics guessed at some that were less obvious.
Here is the NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE account of the defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944 – January 25, 1945). The article opens with a thorough explanation of General McAuliffe’s famous response to the German officers who came in search of an American surrender.
As the Battle of the Bulge reached its conclusion and the Germans resumed their retreat, British General Bernard Law Montgomery (1887 – 1976) held a press conference in which he praised the fighting abilities and the leadership skills of all those Americans who resisted the German onslaught in the Ardennes:
But when all is said and done, I shall always feel that Rundstedt was really beaten by the good fighting qualities of the American soldier…
For the 417,034 Axis prisoners of war in this country, the War Department last week had word that repatriation was in sight. The 362,170 Germans and 49,784 Italians definitely would be home by early Spring; the 5,080 Japanese, as soon as General of the Army MacArthur was ready to receive them.
The Battle of the Ardennes was practically over. The salient which once poked 52 miles into Belgium from the German frontier had been ground down to a nub by last week…. The German retreated slowly and in good order. In the sleet and fog of the Ardennes they pulled back their armor and other vehicles while their artillery and infantrymen put up stiff rearguard actions.
When this article was published the war was over and Paris had experienced her second German-free autumn – but life was still difficult in the city. Coal was still rationed, the lines in the shops were long and the average French child was drastically underweight. NEWSWEEK dispatched two gumshoe reporters to get the full picture for the folks at home (where, happily, rationing had ended the the previous August).
After years of material shortage, the accent is definitely on the feminine, with all of its flounces… A look at all the collections shows that black is the outstanding color for afternoon and dinner. Drapings, wrappings and swathings that girdle the hips are the outstanding line. The favored fabrics are velvet , velveteen, corduroy (used horizontally, as are other striped materials) monotone tweeds, Kashas (a twill-weave fabric of wool mixed with Cashmere), and some Scotch plaids.
It was no secret around Washington that President Franklin Roosevelt was partial to the U.S. Navy. The admirals and other senior officers of the navy certainly knew – and loved it. The attached essay was an appreciative salute to FDR composed shortly after his death by Admiral William Pratt (1869 – 1957):
Other men, military in training and veterans of successful land campaigns, have sat in the White House, but never before in the history of our country has any man ever sat there whose instincts at heart were essentially those of a sailor.
Reporter Robert Shaplen (1917 – 1988) filed this account of how the GIs have reacted to the strangest country they have ever encountered:
Looking at the Japanese, the average GI wonders how they ever managed to prosecute a war in the first place. Everything in Japan, even broken and blasted cities and factories, has a miniature toy-like appearance. Automobiles, the ones that are left, don’t work; trains bear little resemblance to the Twentieth Century Limited or a fast freight back home. The short, slight people are dressed poorly and drably.
Into the records of the Pearl Harbor investigating committee last week went a little-noticed document that added new mystery to the disaster of December 7, 1941:
Four months before the enemy struck, the Army and Navy air command at Pearl Harbor drew up a joint defense plan which correctly forecast the hour, the direction, the size of the force and the strategy by which the Japs actually attacked.
This article follows the efforts of the Tank Destroyers (TD) in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge:
This TD work is among the most dangerous of the war. One of the chief reasons is that TDs are constantly up against superior enemy weapons. For example, none of our TDs (except possibly the M-36) can penetrate the 8-inch frontal armor of the King Tiger, whereas the German 88-millimeter anti-tank gun has been able to penetrate any American tank. And to kill the tiger, TDs must shoot for the tracks, then assault the disabled monster with high explosive, setting it afire.
Click here to read about the equipment and training of American tank destroyers during the Second World War.
Here are two short notices from the Forties about Rudolf Hess (1894 – 1987) and the motivation behind his mad dash to Scotland. The paragraphs ascribe two very different purposes to the flight.
The Senate special committee on atomic energy had heard both pros and cons on atomic energy control. Last week it heard another kind of testimony – a terrifying eyewitness account by Dr. Philip Morrison, nuclear physicist of the Los Alamos atomic bomb laboratory, [who] spoke of the effects on Hiroshima.
Men slept on their rifles to keep them from freezing. On bitter mornings they urinated down the barrels of automatic weapons to thaw them out… Some Yanks cut holes in their sleeping bags, wearing them underneath their overcoats and knee-length snow capes while sleeping and fighting.
