Quick Magazine – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

A Hidden Nazi Army?
(Quick Magazine, 1954)

In the chaos and confusion of 1945 Berlin the whereabouts of Gestapo General Heinrich Müller was lost; many believe he had been killed or committed suicide. Another report had it that Müller had been captured with the Africa Korps by the British and subsequently made good his escape into Syria. In an issue of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia that appeared on newsstands at the end of July, 1950, it was reported that while residing in the Middle East he had converted to Islam, changed his name to Hanak Hassim Bey and was amassing an army of German veterans in order to march on Israel. The attached notice seems to be based on the Izvestia article.

Distrusting Germans was a common pastime for many people in the Twentieth Century; some thirty years earlier a similar article was published about this distrust.
Here is another article about escaped Nazis.

When a Nazi converted to Islam it was undoubtedly the work of Haj Amin Al-Husseini. Click here to read about him.

Willie Mays
(Quick Magazine, 1954)

Illustrated with nine pictures, this article briefly tells the story of baseball legend Willie Mays (b. 1931) and the Summer of 1954 when sportswriters credited him alone for having raised the athletic standards of his team, The New York Giants (the team won the World Series that year):

A 23-year-old Alabaman with a laugh as explosive as his bat, Willie has electrified N.Y. Giants fans as no man has done since Mel Ott (1909 – 1958)… Statistics don’t begin to give a real picture of Willie’s value. He adds drama to baseball in a way that defies fiction.

Anticipating Soviet Imperialism
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

A brief Quick Magazine report on the Christians who made their 1951 pilgrimage to Fatima, Portugal. In 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, it said that the Virgin Mary appeared before three children and interacted with them. Among other remarks, the Virgin is said to have made this warning:

Russia will spread her errors throughout the world and many nations will be annihilated.

‘Thank You, Mr. President”
(Quick, 1952)

Although African-American leaders anticipated a rough time when a Missouri politician named Harry Truman assumed the mightiest office in the land – in the end, he proved to be their champion.

[The NAACP] still regard President Truman as their real hero for pressing anti-poll tax, anti-lynching, FEPC and anti-segregation programs in the face of heavy Southern Democratic Opposition.

Those councilors who advised FDR on all matters African-American were popularly known as the Black Brain Trust…

Foreign-Aid on Behalf of the American Civil Rights Struggle
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

Recognizing that the United States has seldom ever been without civil libertarians, of one form or another, who could always be relied upon to file papers in the courts on behalf of one injured tribe or another – I often wondered why, if this was the case, was so much progress made in the American civil rights struggle of the 50s and 60s as opposed to other periods? This article answered that question.

Radio Moscow noted the warnings of a Klansman in South Carolina, that there will be bloodshed if Negro students attend white schools. But ignored the admittance of 1,000 Negroes to colleges in 15 Southern and Border states, schools formerly for whites only.

The Bomb in Soviet Hands
(Quick Magazine, 1949)

During the opening week of October, 1949 President Harry Truman announced that the Soviet Union had exploded its own nuclear weapon. Americans were deeply shocked and wondered aloud as to what this would mean – Would the peacetime draft call be doubled?

…Russia had caught the U.S. flatfooted. For the first time in history every American looked straight down the gun barrel of [a] foreign attack.

The pace of the Cold War picked up soon after this event took place.

McCarthy and the 1952 Presidential Election
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

A small notice from the closing weeks of the 1952 presidential contest between retired General Eisenhower (R) vs former Governor Adlai Stevenson (D) in which Senator Joseph McCarthy stepped forth to muddy the waters with one of his characteristic insults:

McCarthy charged Stevenson was ‘part and parcel of the Acheson-Hiss-Lattimore group’ and that Stevenson in 1943 (as a State Department official) had a plan to ‘foist Communism’ on Italy when Mussolini fell.

Whether the comment convinced anyone was not recorded, but Eisenhower won the 1952 election by a wide margin, as did all Republican candidates.

The State of American Roads
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

Shortly before President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, the nation was treated to articles like the one that is attached herein – articles that detailed all the very many flaws that existed in the American road system:

The most highly motorized nation on earth faced the danger of finding itself all gassed up with no place to go. As the budget-harried [Truman] Administration pressed for a 20% cut in highway aid to states, legislators and private groups warned that U.S. roads were fast crumbling.

The U.S. has 350,000 miles of surfaced primary roads, but about 20,000 miles become unusable or too dangerous every year. One warning sign: U.S. auto deaths, now over 1 million, equals the American dead in all wars since the Revolution.

As of 2013, the United States has the largest and most advanced road network in the world – covering a distance of 6,506,204 km. (China’s road system covers 4,193,000 km).

American Resolve and the Draft
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

Illustrated with a chart that shows how much the U.S. Navy had shrunk after W.W. II and then expanded anew when faced with the war in Korea, this short article pertains to the various steps Congress was taking to meet the Soviet challenges abroad:

A $2.3 billion ship-building and repair program, just approved by President Truman, will add a 57,800-ton carrier and 172 other new vessels to the fleet. And 291 more are to be demothballed-including 6 carriers, 12 cruisers, 194 destroyers.
[Stalin was incapable of responding to such growth, so he simply ordered the production of additional A-Bombs]

The Soviet Union was the first atheist government…

The War on Capitol Hill
(Quick Magazine, 1953)

When General James Van Fleet let it be known that much of the previous two years in Korea had been plagued by a shortage in ammunition, tempers flared in the Senate as both parties talked of convening an investigative committee.

Hitler’s Secret Love
(Quick Magazine, 1960)

Attached is a sensational article that appeared in a super market tabloid some fifteen years after Adolf and Eva saw fit to call it a day:

Was Adolf Hitler the great lover who had to cover up his escapades because of affairs of state? Or was the great Adolf a full-blown homosexual who made his appointments to the upper hierarchy of Nazidom based on the pervert talents of the Master Race. Read about the latest revelation that throws the rumor factories and historians into a cocked hat and may prove Adolph’s manliness.

The article was written anonymously.

What’s in that Brooklyn Water?
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

2013 marked the 100th year since the first film was made in Hollywood, and in that time one American neighborhood more than any other has consistently supplied the film and television industry with a seemingly inexhaustible pool of talent: Brooklyn, New York. From Clara Bow in the era of silent film to Gabby Sidibe in the digital – the talented sons and daughters of Brooklyn have made their way West and we have all been the beneficiaries.

A Hollywood Movie in Japan
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

We were sympathetic when we learned that the Japanese did not much care for the movies Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Back to Bataan (1945) or David Lean’s masterpiece Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) – but when we heard that they hated Sands of Iwo Jima (1952) – we finally realized that there are some people you simply cannot please. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who felt this way: the editors of QUICK MAGAZINE were so outraged on this matter they dispatched a reporter to document the venom that spewed-forth from those Japanese lips as they left the theater.

The Stalin ”Peace Plan”
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

This column will give you a quick understanding as to how 1950 ended:

Russian diplomats made valiant efforts. In Moscow, [Stalin’s adviser] Andrei Gromyko called Western envoys, urging Big Four talks to ‘unify’ Germany. In the U.N., Andrei Vishinsky protested Russia’s ‘devotion’ to peace and to the belief that capitalism and Communism could live in the same world… But while the Reds talked, Chinese Communists had swept into the Korea War. The Soviet military budget had soared . Russia’s submarine fleet had multiplied, it’s air force had expanded to 14,000 combat planes, its army was millions strong, and still growing.

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

The Continuing Crisis
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

[In Washington] the U.S. defense effort snowballed. Looking beyond the Korea showdown, the U.S. had to plan against new Russian surprises… There would be no appeasement, even at the risk of W.W. III. U.S. intelligence indicated a ten year Russian military plan designed to bleed America white. The aim would be to keep the U.S. in a semi-mobilized state for years.

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

Congress Examines the Morals Portryed on T.V.
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

This article is illustrated with a single television image of the Hollywood actress Ilona Massey exposing her highly charming decolletage for all the world to see. The image alone can be credited for having launched a dozen Congressional hearings concerning the matter as to what is a television programmers singular understanding of public decency? Yet this short column only discusses one hearing, the one that took place in the Summer of 1952 in which Elizabeth Smart of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union spoke frankly about the alleged amusement that the networks were providing. Another temperance group in attendance complained that the actors on beer commercials should not appear as if they were enjoying themselves…

Another Purge?
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

A short list of the assorted difficulties that faced the Russians in the early Fifties, with two additional news paragraphs that told of additional setbacks on both sides of the iron curtain.

The Wandering Waistline
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

Looking back, the fashion silhouette of the 1950s is remembered as having a very narrow waistline, but in the early days of the decade, as this 1951 fashion review indicates, the feminine waist was a highly contested battle ground:

Where’s the waist? Paris popped the question, but has yet to give the answer. On the one hand, many leading designers showed a tendency to raise the waistline. But they were challenged by a strong minority that seemed determined to drop it [pictures of both high and low are provided herein]…Apparently, Paris has decreed it the year of the wandering waist. Where it will stop may well be up to American women.

If you’d like to read about the feminine silhouette of the early Forties, click here.