Recent Articles – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

Nazis on Trial
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

War correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998) filed this article concerning her observations and insights gleaned at the Nuremberg Trials:

“The second charge against these twenty-one men was crimes against peace. War is the crime against peace. War is the silver bombers, with the young men in them, who never wanted to kill anyone, flying in the morning sun over Germany and not coming back. War is the sinking ship and the sailors drowning in a flaming sea on the way to Murmansk. War is the casualty lists and bombed ruins and refugees, frightened and homeless and tired to death, on all the roads.”

A Mighty Voice Talent
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

“Eleven years ago, when Fred Allen, then a vaudeville star, was just starting in radio, somebody urged him to hire – as a screwball character – a certain young girl who weighed about a hundred pounds, stood scarcely five feet tall, and had about as much glamor as a sack of cement.”

– so begins the Liberty article about Minerva Pious (1903 – 1979), the zany comic, well-known back in the day for bringing to life some of the kookiest characters on radio.

A Nastier Enemy
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

The Germans we fought in World War Two were very different from the ones we fought twenty-one years earlier.

How the AEF Intelligence Service Did It
(American Legion Monthly, 1939)

A fascinating read. Written twenty-one years after the war, journalist Thomas M. Johnson, who had covered the A.E.F. for The New York Sun, revealed all the tricks employed by the U.S Army Intelligence Service to get the most information out of every German prisoner they could get their hands on – and none of them involved breaking bones or shedding blood.

More about W.W. I prisoners of war can be read here

Reasons for Rationing
(American Magazine, 1942)

Attached herein is a fun little chart laying out the reasons why commercial goods on the home front were scarce.

Witness on Azusa Street
(LA Times, 1906)

Between 1906 and 1909, the Holy Spirit had come to dwell among the people in Los Angeles. One April day, in a run-down livery stable that was converted to a church, Pastor William Seymore (1870 – 1922) broke out into tongues and so did everyone within earshot. In fact, people blocks away began to speak in tongues and witnessing to all passersby. Within no time, the walls of that “tumble-down shack on Azusa Street” were decorated with the crutches, canes and hearing horns of the recently healed.

David Sarnoff and the Origins of Radio
(Look Magazine, 1938)

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Prejudice on the Home Front
(Look Magazine, 1945)

As the Allied Armies were nearing Berlin and Tokyo, U.S. magazines began running articles concerning the nation’s problems that had all been put on the back burner during the war years. Subjects of concern involved inflation, alcoholism, and juvenile delinquency. The article attached here concern America’s curse: racial and religious prejudice, and how to get rid of it.

Streamlined Glass Furniture
(Look Magazine, 1938)

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His Popularity
(NY Times Book Review, 1923)

In the attached article, famed journalist Anne O’Hare McCormick (1880 – 1954) went to great lengths to explain why the Italian people were so coocoo crazy for the rule of Benito Mussolini. At this point he had only been in power for eight months:

“Mussolini has the people hypnotized, but he has been given so much rope that he is sure to hang himself in the end.”

Jacqueline Cochran Gets a Fifth Air Speed Award
(Look Magazine, 1938)

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Ewing Krainin
(Pageant Magazine, 1952)

Ewing Krainin (1912 – 2004) was a popular photographer in his day, and the darling of many a magazine editor. His most revered image was the Life picture of the scantily clad fashion model Chili Williams (1921 – 2003) – an image that is recalled and explained in the opening paragraphs of this article.

Rationing on the Germn Home Front
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

A weird article. This journalist seemed to admire much of what he saw in Nazi Germany.

Linda Darnell Downsizes
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Everyone on the home front was used to making sacrifices, and Hollywood star Linda Darnell (1923 – 1965) was no exception:

“Allowances must be made for Linda Darnell who has been sorely tried. Instead of six servants, she now has two – and she hears strange sounds from the kitchen that convince her she will soon be alone. Her chauffer has been drafted; her butler is working at Lockheed. Her flower gardens are a wreck because the Japs who once tended them are in internment camps… ‘Why, this gas rationing… it’s worse than being bombed!'”

The Pampered Axis Prisoners
(United States News, 1945)

“There are reports that these prisoners are often pampered, that they are getting cigarettes when Americans civilians cannot get them, that they are being served by American soldiers, that they are often not working at a time when war workers are scarce. The general complaint is that the 46,000 American prisoners in Germany are not faring as well as the 300,000 Germans in this country.”

Teaching in the Forties
(Pageant Magazine, 1944)

“Teachers, during the war period, have been undergoing unprecedented, exhausting struggle in the classroom. And in their ranks have been casualties that add up to a dangerous teacher shortage. According to the National Education Association, ‘the economic status of teachers has been pushed back 20 years since Pearl Harbor’… The combination of overwork, underpay and the thanklessness of teaching has created an army of deserters from the profession.”

More on the hard lot of teachers during the war can be read here.

The Growth of the U.S. Navy
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

The attached article pertains to the amazing speed at which the U.S. Navy was able to add new fighting ships to the fleet between December, 1941 and December, 1942.

The Home front Knuckles Under
(Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

Having heard from assorted armchair generals, radio oracles and ink-stained bums that the heart of the American home front was not in the fight, journalist Quentin Reynolds bought some train tickets to scour the country and see if it was true.

It wasn’t.

Click here to read about the rationing of makeup.