World War Two – Page 24 – Old Magazine Articles

Should Movie Stars Be Expected to Fight, As Well? (Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

We were very surprised to read in the attached editorial that the whole idea of draft deferments for actors and other assorted Hollywood flunkies was not a scheme cooked-up by their respective agents and yes-men, but a plan that sprung forth from the fertile mind of the executive officer in charge of the Selective Service System: Brigadier General Lewis Blaine Hershey (1893 – 1977) in Washington.

Always one to ask the difficult questions, Ernest V. Heyn (1905 – 1995) executive editor of Photoplay posed the query Should Stars Fight? and in this column he began to weigh the pros-and-cons of the need for propaganda and an uninterrupted flow of movies for the home front, and the appearance of creating a new entitled class of pretty boys.

Twenty years earlier a Hollywood actor would get in some hot water for also suggesting that talented men be excused from the W.W. I draft…

Regretting the A-Bomb (Commonweal Magazine, 1945)

An anonymous columnist at The Commonweal (New York) was quick to condemn the use of the Atomic Bombs:

… we are confronted with an obligation to condemn what we ourselves did, an obligation to admit that our victory has been sadly sullied not only because we used this weapon but because we have tacitly acceded to use it.

Breaking Up The ‘Big Eight’ (Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

As the American effort to restructure a defeated Japan commenced, it seemed obvious to all that one of the first things to go was the Zaibatsu Family. Zaibatsu was the name given to the eight families which had held a monopoly on the manufacturing wealth and banking power in Japan since the mid-to-late Nineteenth Century. Made up of many names that you will recognize, this article goes into some detail explaining how the power structure worked and its relation with the Emperor.

The Capture of General Hideko Tojo (Yank Magazine, 1945)

War correspondent George Burns reported on the momentous day when the American Army came to arrest the former Prime Minister of Imperial Japan, General Hideko Tojo (1884 – 1948). Tojo served as Japan’s Prime Minister between 1941 and 1944 and is remembered for having ordered the attack on the American naval installation at Pearl Harbor, as well as the invasions of many other Western outposts in the Pacific. Judged as incompetent by the Emperor, he was removed from office in the summer of 1944.

This article describes the efforts of Lt. Jack Wilpers who is credited for prolonging the life of Tojo after his amateur suicide attempt and seeing to it that the man kept his date with the hangman. Nominated for the Bronze Star, he was decorated in 2010: read THE WASHINGTON POST article.

Reporter Under Fire (PM Tabloid, 1941)

CBS war correspondent Betty Wason (1912 – 2001) reported in a very chatty way about how the war was proceeding along the shores of the Southern Mediterranean Sea. Of particular interest was her observation regarding how thoroughly lame the Italian Army appeared to their opposite numbers in the Albanian Army. Rather than eliciting feelings of dread and hatred, the Italian soldiers were pitied for their poor skills – their bodies were plentiful on every battlefield.

How Much Can the Germans Take? (Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

The attached 1941 Collier’s Magazine article reported on how the people of Berlin were faring after one solid year of R.A.F. bombing. By war’s end it was estimated that as many as 580,000 Germans had been killed as a result of the Allied bombing campaign (many of them were children and far more women than men). This article examines what Berlin life was like when the bombs fell.

Click here to read about the bombing of Japan.

Mildred Gillars of Maine (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

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.

The Question of Japanese Youth (PM Tabloid, 1945)

Far-flung correspondent Max Lerner (1902 – 1992) penned the attached editorial concerning the necessity of reëducation Japanese school children:

The Japanese youth are the key to Japan’s future. There were 12,000,000 of them in the elementary schools before the war, dressed in school uniforms, bowing before the Emperor’s portrait every day on entering and leaving… The values taught to him were feudal and fascist values, but the weapons given him were modern weapons. This is the combination that produced the suicide-squadrons of the Kamikaze.

A similar article about German youth can be read here.

News from Nuremberg (Maptalk, 1946)

A collection of assorted thoughts that were pulled from various letters written by the German people to the offices of the War Crimes Tribunal. A few letters are from weirdos but most are from sincere anti-Nazis wishing that the court would deliver some measure of justice to this German or that German who they feared might be overlooked.

The Trials at Nuremberg (Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

As for the defendant’s guilt: the British Attorney general named seven individually as ‘murderers, robbers, black-mailers and gangsters’ who led Germany into war…

Click here if you would like to read what the German people thought about the trials…