Articles from Pathfinder Magazine
Part of the personal tragedy inherent in President Roosevelt’s suggestion to rid the Supreme Court of men over 70, part of the uncertainty with which liberals greet his plan, must arise from consideration of Louis Demblitz Brandeis. At 80, Brandeis is the oldest of the nine justices… Liberals cherish him, conservatives respect him and the [FDR] administration is grateful to him.
As the April of 1949 was winding down, 11 members of the Communist Party U.S.A. were standing trial in a Federal courtroom spilling every secret they had in an all-out effort to lighten their load further down the road. Among these classified plots was a 1930s plan to invade the United States and create two separate Soviet republics – one White, the other Black. The region they had in mind for the African-Americans would cover nine of the old Confederate states.
A Quick Read About Soviet-Enforced Atheism Behind the Iron Curtain…
The kids who are discussed in this article would be called LD today – you don’t want to know how they were referred to in the early Twenties. Back then there were no Federally-funded commissions thronging with sympathetic PhD candidates to ramble on about convergence issues, processing concerns, the-classroom-learning-environment and the Learning Disabled. There were only frustrated kids, frustrated teachers and broken-hearted parents. This 1937 news article reports on the pioneering teachers at Seward Park High School in New York City and the earliest attempts to address the needs of students who suffered from language processing disorders, dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia and America’s favorite – good ol’ ADHD.
An eyewitness account of the Windsors on their visit through Germany in 1937. The journalist reported that the two seemed nervous – reluctant to sign guest ledgers or photographed with Nazi leaders (except with Hitler, they seem very pleased in that photo).
We were interested to learn that two of the most semi-popular queries on Google are, 1930s wedding theme decorations and 1930 wedding dress styles – yet to read the attached article is to learn that the most accurate step that any contemporary wedding planner assigned this theme can recommend is that the happy couple forego the nuptial ceremony entirely and simply move in together. During the Great Depression very few couples could afford to get married, much less divorced.
There was some dispute over what killed vaudeville. Some said talking movies. Others said radio. A few cruel critics said it committed suicide. But all agreed that with the fall of its last fortress, the Palace Theater, it was dead… Last week, the corpse that wouldn’t die got up and went home. Sol A. Schwartz, vice president of the Radio-Keith-Orpheum chain (RKO) announced restoration of vaudeville at the Palace, beginning May 18 [1949].
You can read about Chicago Vaudeville here
Even as early as 1937, the dark clouds of war could be seen on the horizon. The U.S. Congress still smarted from the last world war and did not want to be lured in to newest installment. Six months after this article was first read the Neutrality Act of 1937 would be passed – this column explains much of the thought that went into it.
Columnist Wheeler McMillen penned the attached 1946 editorial concerning a subject African-Americans have long recognized as problematic: American democracy and the tyranny of the majority. This has become a timely subject since President Obama introduced the term distribution of wealth to the American vocabulary during the 2008 election – this was swiftly followed-up by the Occupy movement and their Tweets regarding the ambitions of the 99 percent (meaning, majority – the Russian translation for this term is Bolshevik):
Shortly after Hitler assumed power, he struck a deal with the Catholic Church in Germany allowing their schools to remain open. On May Day, 1937, he ified the agreement, saying:
We made a start with the nation’s youth. They shall not escape us. We will take them when they are 10 years-old and bring them up in the spirit of the community…
Prohibition had been in place for a little over eleven and a half years by the time this uncredited editorial was published. The column is informative for all the trivial events that Prohibition had set in motion and are seldom remembered in our own time – such as the proliferation of private golfing institutions; clubs that intended to appear innocent enough, but were actually created for Wet dues-paying golfers. A recently posted article (1917) that appeared in THE LITERARY DIGEST near the end of 1929 examined the astronomical wealth that had been earned by the gangsters in America’s biggest cities.
How many times have we heard an actress or actor say, What the Heck, it’s work – plenty (if I had a nickle for every time… etc.). No doubt, this was the thought that tarried through the airy head of Mildred Gillars (né Mildred Elizabeth Sisk) when she agreed to broadcast Nazi propaganda from the heart of Germany on a radio program titled, the Home Sweet Home Hour (1942 – 1945). However, due to the fact that two witnesses must testify in order to prove the charge of treason, she was convicted in Federal Court for having performed in a 1944 Berlin Radio broadcast called Vision of Invasion. The Federal jury found her not guilty of committing seven other treasonous acts. Gillars served 12 years in Federal prison and was released during the Summer of 1961.
New York has a strange exile. She is now in her sixties, this woman has been isolated on North Brother Island, way up the East River, for 17 years and must spend the rest of her life there.
A column that explains Hitler’s alliance with General Erich von Ludendorff (1865 – 1937) during the famous Beer Hall Putsch (1923) and how it all went south from there.
When this profile first appeared in 1950, the column’s subject, Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976), was generally seen as a tin-horn dictator and Stalinist dupe. It wouldn’t be long before he would be widely recognized as one of the greatest mass-murderers in world history.
A profile of Hitler that appeared some seven months before he grabbed the big brass ring. It is written soullessly and without judgment and is based mostly on Nazi press releases.
Attached is a small excerpt from the Pathfinder review of Eugene Lyons’ book, Our Unknown Ex-President (1948). The author outlined the various measures taken by the Hoover administration during the earliest years of the Great Depression in hopes that the flood waters would subside:
He fought for banking reform laws, appropriations for public works, home-loan banks to protect farms and residences. He asked for millions for relief to be administered by state and local organizations… A Democratic Congress refused to heed his suggestions.
Yet, regardless of the various missteps made by Hoover and FDR, the United States remailed an enormously wealthy nation…
Attached you will find the Nazi justification for organized slaughter which was encapsulated for the succeeding generations by Dr. Robert Ley, one of Hitler’s willing henchmen (1890 – 1945).
Ley was the mad founder of the Adolf Hitler Schools; to learn more, click here.
Intelligence officers of the U.S. Army, just returned from Germany, brought appalling stories of the conditions under the policy of divided control established at Potsdam last August. Berlin, they reported confidentially, had a pre-war population of four million and an average daily death of toll of 175. Berlin today, although harboring over a million refugees from what was Eastern Germany, has a population of just over three million; deaths, 4,000 a day.
