The Death of General Rose
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
Having surrendered to the Nazis during the closing weeks of the war, General Maurice Rose of the Third Armored Division, was shot dead by a German tank commander.
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The Doughboy in the Pacific Theater
(Liberty Magazine, 1945)
The U.S Marine Corps is not in the practice of sending their oldest members into harm’s way – they aren’t now, and they weren’t in 1942. But when they imparted this information to Gunnery Sergeant Lou Diamond (1890 – 1951), he would have none of it – the mere idea that the world was to be at war, and he would be excluded: not going to happen:
“Lou roared his way through the battles of Guadalcanal and Tulagi and did much to back up the Marine Corp’s contention that he is far and away the the most expert mortar sergeant in any branch of the service.”
Frank P. Witek on Guam
(All Hands Magazine, 1945)
“For risking his life twice to save his platoon when they were pinned down by Jap fire during the Battle of Finegayan on Guam, Pfc. Frank Peter Witek, USMCR, has been posthumously awarded the Congressional medal of Honor.
The First Black Marines
(Yank Magazine, 1944)
The editors at Yank (an Army possession) seldom wrote about the Marines – and they loved dissing their weekly magazine, The Leatherneck. However, they did recognize an historic moment when they saw one. As remarked in another article on this site, the Navy was the most prejudiced of all the branches of service, and the Marines had previously rejected all Black recruits, but that changed in 1942, and this article served to introduce their readers to this consequential lot. The first African American Marines trained at Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, NC from August 26, 1942 until the camp was decommissioned in 1949. The greatest number of black Marines to serve in combat during the Second World War was during the Battle of Okinawa (2,000 strong).
William Powell – Smooth Operator
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)
This is a 1940 article that recalls William Powell’s climb to the top of the Hollywood pantheon:
“When the talking pictures came in, the transition didn’t bother him at all. Many of the silent stars turned out to have voices that squeaked like the brakes of a 1914 automobile. Powell had been training his voice ever since the fateful days of high school.”
General Charles Summerall
(American Legion Magazine, 1939)
Looking back twenty-one years at the W.W. I commands of General Charles Summerall (1867 – 1955), historian Fletcher Pratt pointed out that it was the general’s unique understanding of artillery that served as the key to his success in battle.
Young Picasso
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)
“Upon his first arrival in Paris, Picasso met with success. It was ’99… At that time he had a face of ivory, and was as beautiful as a Greek boy; irony, thought and effort have brought slight lines to the waxen countenance of this little Napoleonic man… At that time, Picasso was living the life of the provincial in Paris… He had won fame there by his portraits of actresses in the public eye. Jeanne Bloch, Otero – all the stars of the Exposition. Those paintings are priceless today; the intelligent museums have bought them.”
Bergen-Belsen Survivor Speaks
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
Abigail Spannjard was an American citizen of Jewish heritage who was incarcerated in Bergen-Belsen with her husband and teen-age son. They were released early in 1945 as part of a prisoner-swap, and the account she gives of the abuses they endured is chilling.
Memories of Bergen-Belsen
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
Here are the observations of Patrick Gordon Walker (1907 – 1980), a broadcast journalist with the BBC who was present with the British Army when they liberated the Bergen-Belsen Death Camp on April 15, 1945.
“Men were hung for hours at a time, suspended by their arms, hands tied behind their back in Belsen. Beatings in workshops were continuous, and there were many deaths there. Just before I left the camp, a crematorium was discovered.”
USS RICH Sinks Off of Utah Beach
(Our Navy, 1945)
The USS RICH (DE 695) was a Destroyer Escort performing her duties off the coast of Utah Beach on the 6th, 7th and 8th of June, 1944. On the morning of the 8th she was ordered to move further inland to aid a ship that had hit a mine. while moving into position the RICH also fell victim to a mine. Watertender First Class Donald Joseph Lawrence recalled that morning:
“I was at GQ in the fireroom … I had just made an entry in the log at nine o’clock and had turned away when an explosion rocked the ship. It felt like we were picked out of the water and then violently thrown back again. The coffee pot flew across the room. Buckets crashed around our heads, and the floor plates came loose. The floor plate in the engine room was ripped up and hurled into the condenser. Then the lights went out, and as I picked myself up I could hear the hiss of overheated steam.”
Nazis in Latin America
(Spot Magazine, 1941)
“The Bad Neighbor Policy of the Axis in Latin America, most sinister menace to Western Hemisphere Democracy, is shown here in a series of remarkable photographs. Hitler, realizing the vulnerability of the U.S. to attack from the south, planned far ahead when he began planting his agents as ‘tourists’ in Central and South American nations… The Chilean Defense League reports 5,060,000 Italians, 1,385,400 German and 200,000 Japanese in South America.”
VE-Day in Philadelphia
(Philadelphia Record, 1945)
The citizens of Philadelphia took the news calmly. There were isolated pockets of tremendous joy, but many were wary because they had celebrated the event the previous month when a false rumor had circulated.
“Many soldiers and sailors were gathered in small groups in Market, Walnut and Chestnut streets. One said: ‘Even if it’s true, it doesn’t mean a thing. It’s over for us when we get out of this uniform.'”
The U.S. Navy at War’s End
(All Hands Magazine, 1945)
“During the final days of the war, the Navy’s carrier aircraft concentrated on northern Honshu, inflicting heavy damage on industrial targets of Hamaishi on the ninth of August. One of the last blows struck, however, was directed at Wake Island, where the Japs had scored one of their earliest victories of this war.”
”Nightmare Off Iwo”
(Our Navy, 1945)
“Nine months and a day after she was commissioned, the pug-nosed little carrier Bismark Sea (CVE-95) was as much in the two-day-old battle for Iwo Jima as the Marines fighting for the island’s lower air strip. This was her third major campaign in less than four months. Her career was just beginning, and the crew was proud of calling her the Busy Bee. She was a happy ship.”
Happy or not, after two Kamikazes hit home, the ship sank in just two hours, taking 318 men with her. She claimed the dubious distinction of being the last American carrier to be lost in the war.
The Capture of U-505
(Our Navy Magazine, 1945)
“One of the best kept secrets of the war was revealed by a recent Navy Department report that, on June 4, 1944, an escort carrier task group hounded a Nazi sub through the waters some 150 miles off the coast of French West Africa near Cape Blanco, forced it to the surface, boarded it, and took the Nazi over. The group then towed their prize, U-505, about 2,500 miles to Bermuda…”
Canadian Nazis
(Liberty Magazine, 1939)
“The Nazi center of activity is the Deutsche Bund headquarters in Montreal, controlled by the Montreal Consulate of the German Reich. There are branches of the Bund in every large Canadian city. It maintains its own schools in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Kitchener. Children are taught not only the German language but the German greeting, the Hitler greeting and the Nazi tenets. Their education is completed in the big camps near Winnipeg and Montreal.”
Click here to read about American fascists…
The Tigercat
(Our Navy, 1945)
Just as the Pershing M26 tank was deployed to the ETO during the closing weeks of that campaign, so too, was the Grumman 747 Tigercat deployed to the Pacific just weeks before the Japanese capitulation.
“If the Japs have a word for ‘duck,’ they’re probably using it plenty these days when they see the new TIGERCATS, that twin-engine fighter recently thrown into action in the Pacific. Termed F7F in Navy parlance, the latest Grumman battler to be given public recognition is one of those versatile designer’s dreams that can lug bombs, toss rockets, intercept cover bombers on long-range missions, fly night hawk expeditions and do everything else but have a baby for you… which is about all they haven’t been asked to do.”
Hitler’s Men in Mexico
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)
This 1940 article covers the Nazi shenanigans that were regularly pulled by elements of the German Legation stationed in Mexico City during the late Thirties, early Forties. Within a few months, the Mexican authorities would banish the Nazi presence from their land; click here to read about that.