Pathfinder Magazine – Page 12 – Old Magazine Articles

A Look Back at the Berlin Air-Lift
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

Last week, after the Russians announced they would lift the blockade on May 12 [1949], the airlift took a bow and added a modest nod at the 324-day record:

• 189,247 flights;

• 1,528,250 tons delivered;

• best day’s work: April 16 with 12,947 tons hauled in 1,393 flights.

– [and if the West had not chosen to answer the Soviet challenge in Berlin] there might never have been an Atlantic Pact or a Western German state. The Communists might have gone amok in France and Italy. Russia might have won the Cold War in the first heat.

Planing the Occupation
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)

Some seven months before Japan quit the war, the anointed heads of the Institute of Pacific Relations convened in Hot Springs, Virginia to discuss what the Allied Occupation of Japan would look like.

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

The Trial of Hideko Tojo
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)

Standing before the judges who made up the 11-nation war crimes tribunal in occupied Tokyo, General Hideko Tojo, among 19 other Japanese wartime leaders, put on the show of his life:

Without hesitation, Tojo accepted full blame for plunging Japan into war. But it was, he insisted, a ‘defensive’ war, and ‘in no manner a violation of international law..’

Mrs. Il Duce
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)

As you will see by reading the attached article, Mussolini’s flack released no information concerning Rachele Mussolini (1890 – 1979), Il Duce’s second wife. All that they seem to know about the lass was that she had a waistline that rivaled his.

The Reds Take it on the Chin
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

United Nations patrols in Korea probed north last week seeking out an enemy that wouldn’t stand and fight. But early this week, after U.N. advance units had pushed to within eight miles of Seoul, the Communists suddenly stopped playing hide and seek and began to offer stiffer resistance…. The Communist reluctance to fight last week caused much speculation at Eighth Army headquarters. Some officers thought the Reds were regrouping for a major push down the center. Others felt the Chinese had pulled back to give weight to the cease-fire negotiations at Lake Success. But they all agreed on one point: the Communists have paid an appalling price for their Korean adventure.

In hindsight we can say that the musings of the first officers were correct: the Communists were indeed rearming for a major offensive that would begin the following May.

Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.

Personal Efforts On The Home Front
(Assorted Magazines)

Here is a smattering of paragraphs that appeared seven months into the war that give a glimpse into how various souls on the American home front had pitched-in for the war effort. My personal favorite is the one about the school children who pooled their money to buy cartons of cigarettes for soldiers.

Unemployment Data for 1930
(Pathfinder Magazine,1930)

In a statement for the month of December, President Green of the Federation of Labor placed the number of unemployed at about 5,000,000; estimated that incomes of wage earners had declined over $6,000,000,000 in the past year and said about 50 percent of trade union members had had to lower their standard of living because of lowered incomes.

Mobilization
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

Attached is a report on President Truman’s efforts to intensify America’s wartime posture. When this article was first read the Korean War had been raging for seven months – with the fifth month bringing the promise of an expanded and very bloody war as a result of Chinese intervention. Compiled in these columns is a list explaining how the Truman administration, the Pentagon and the officials on the American home front had met the Korean challenge thus far.

The Salad Days of Gynecology
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

Do you think your job is tough? Pity the pioneering gynecologists of the 16th Century…

The Consequences of the Munich Agreement
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

When England and France yielded to Germany in the Munich Agreement of last September, a significant change took place. The balance of power in Europe shifted from the democracies to the dictatorships… [and] the United States had to stop thinking of England and France as America’s ‘first line of defense’ in the time of a European war.

Towards a Nuclear Strategy
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

Here is the Pathfinder Magazine article about Air University; established in 1946 by the U.S. Department of War in order to train senior American Air Force officers to serve as strategic thinkers in the realm of national security. In 1949 that meant conceiving of ways to implement a successful strategy in which the Soviet Union would be defeated with nuclear weapons:

At AU’s apex is the Air War College. To its senior officer-students the question of destroying an enemy’s will to resist is grimly real. Killing ten million citizens of an enemy nation is no haphazard problem to the Air War College. In the statistics of modern war, a loss of approximately 4% of a nation’s population saps its will to resist…

Six months after this article was first read, the Soviets tested their first Atomic bomb; click here to read about that event.

Children in Need
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

In respect to their economic status, it has been estimated that one-half to two-thirds of the city children of America are in homes where annual income is too low to permit the family to buy items called for in an ordinary ‘maintenance’ budget – a budget of about $1,261 to meet the normal needs of living in a family of four.

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

Hitler’s Earlies Years In Power
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

When Adolf Hitler was made chancellor of the Third Reich on January 30, 1933, he pledged his government would (1) unify the German people; (2) eliminate class distinction; and (3) secure equal rights abroad for Germany. At that time the Nazi leader addressed the nation: Now, German people, give us four years and then judge us!

That was four years ago.

‘Duce: Peeve No. 3
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

A sore humiliation to dictator Mussolini of Italy lies in the fact that what should have been a proud conquest has turned into a diplomatic white elephant. Only one democratic nation in the world – Switzerland – has recognized Italy’s claim to Ethiopia.

You can read about his violent death here…

The Battle Against Alcohol Dependence
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)

Here are five letters to the editor written in response to an article that appeared in one of the Spring, 1944, issues of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE that pertained to two Native American tribal edicts that forbade the use of alcohol.

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The Moscow Show Trials Continue
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Of the 17 defendants in the Russian ‘circus trial’, four were still alive in Moscow last week. Thirteen others, convicted of having acted on the instigation of exile Leon Trotsky to sabotage Soviet railways, mines and factories, were taken to a cellar of Moscow’s Lubianka Prison, where they were yanked into cells to have have their brains blown out by pointblank pistol shots.

Another article about the show trials can be read here…

The N.K.V.D. and the Purges Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

Congratulations were in order in Soviet Russia last week. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the famed N.K.V.D., secret police, and celebration of that organization’s success in ‘rooting out the enemies of the people’