What Flappers Stood For
(Flapper Magazine, 1922)
Here is a page listing everything that the Flappers adored and found worth getting up in the morning to pursue.
Recent Articles
The Seabees
(Pageant Magazine, 1944)
In another article on this site, these words were quoted from the captured dispatches of a Japanese general writing to his superiors:
“[The Yank] is a wizard at handling machinery and he can build airfields, roads and advance bases with uncanny speed.”
– he was, of course, referring to the famous Construction Battalions (Seabees) of the U.S. Navy. This article will tell you all about them.
Un-Prepared for the First Six Months
(All Hands Magazine, 1945)
Looking back from a point four months after VJ-Day, this anonymous journalist recalled the first six months of the Second World War, and how ill-prepared the U.S. Navy was to take on the two-ocean war.
Sailors Who Served on Both Seas
(Yank Magazine, 1945)
Assorted well-campaigned swab-jockeys lounge-about and discuss their various experiences on both oceans.
Click here to read the observations of a general who fought both the Germans and Japanese.
SACO: Training Guerrillas in China
(All Hands Magazine, 1945)
“Another Now It Can Be Told story – one of the best kept secrets of the Pacific war – came out last month when it was revealed that a U.S. naval group had been operating with Chinese guerillas behind the Jap lines in China. Their combined efforts, the Navy disclosed, had been a vital factor in the smashing blows of the Pacific Fleet against Jap-held islands, the Jap Navy and, finally Japan itself.”
Black-Owned Businesses and the War Effort
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)
Eight months before the American entry to the war, FDR’s Commerce Department Office turned its attention to the thousands of Black-owned businesses throughout the country in order to help maximize their profits and bring them into the wartime economy.
The Battle for the North Atlantic
(All Hands, 1945)
Throughout the course of World War II, there were three admirals who commanded to U.S. Atlantic Fleet: King, Ingersoll and Ingram. It was Admiral Jonas Ingram (1887 – 1952) who wrote the attached article about battle for the Atlantic:
“The Atlantic Fleet’s record speaks for itself. Since the declaration of war we have escorted 16,760 ships across the Atlantic. Of these, less than a score were sunk in convoy…We know definitely that we sunk 126 U-boats…”
Click here to read a related article.
In Search of Trotskyites
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1936)
“Throughout Russia last week Dictator Joseph Stalin continued his ‘purge’ against ‘Trotskyites’.”
“In this natural aftermath of the execution a fortnight ago of 16 conspirators against the Soviet regime, no Trotskyite was spared. Nor was anyone suspected of Trotsky leanings overlooked. Journalists, officials, high-ranking Red Army officers, heads of banks, railroads, publishing houses, and many celebrities in literary and theatrical pursuits felt the heavy hand of the Kremlin government.”
Planning an Assault
(Coronet Magazine, 1945)
Here is an interesting article from World War Two that goes into some detail explaining what is involved when a lieutenant colonel in an infantry regiment presents his plan of attack on a German town that is heavily defended. We hear him as he addresses the junior officers who will do the heavy lifting, and we get a sense of their concerns. Few reporters have ever paid any attention to this aspect of an assault.
”We Must Be Strong”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1936)
Knowing his audience well, Il Duce served it up good and raw in this 1936 speech:
“We must be strong. We must be always stronger. We must be so strong that we can face any eventualities.“
New Yorkers See the Films
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“New Yorkers sat in stunned silence yesterday as they watched the incontrovertible proof of the unbelievable – the U.S. Army Signal Corps motion pictures of Nazi horror camps and charnel houses… People came out of the theaters shaking their heads, or gazing blankly off into space, or cursing them under their breaths. They produced mixed reactions – a mixture of horror, of grief, of anger, of hate.”
“We should reduce Germany to dust. The Germans can’t be trusted, and we have to watch Argentina and Spain.”
The Beginning of the End
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)
This article heralds the slippery slope in men’s fashion. Our’s is the era in which it is not odd to see billion-dollar businesses being run by men in flipflops and gym shorts – this is a far cry from how their grandfathers would have dressed were they in the same position. The well-respected fashion journalist (Henry L. Jackson, 1911 – 1948: co-founder of Esquire)
opined in this article that it was suitable for men to cease wearing the darker hues to the office and wear country tweeds; next stop – flipflops.
Kaethe Kollwitz
(Coronet Magazine, 1939)
“When Kaethe Schmidt was born in Koenigsberg in 1867, the twin fairies Pity and Indignation claimed her as their own.” As a result of marriage she became Kaethe Kollwitz, and it was under this name she produced her finest works of art:
“She has been the artist of the common people, in that she has made art out of their weal and their woe and she has been content to receive understanding and approbation from them alone.”
Red Victory South of Kharkov
(PM Tabloid, 1943)
“The Russians today apparently had stopped the German advance beyond Kharkov and had even regained the initiative on some sectors of the Donets. The turn of the tide came in Chuguyev, a town on the Donets River some 20 miles southeast of Kharkov. Yesterday the German radio said that Russin forces ‘encircled’ there had failed in attempts to break out.”
”Daughters of Valor”
(American Legion Monthly, 1939)
Here is an interesting history of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during the First World War. The author, Robert Ginsburgh, delves into how many nurses served, how many were killed, how they were recruited and trained, where they served in Europe, and the decorations they earned.
British Offensive to be Launched in Tunisia
(PM Tabloid, 1943)
Three months into 1943, the Allied Command announced that the British 8th Army would soon be on the march alongside the newly arrived Americans:
“It will be a tough battle against the best of Hitler’s fighting men and weapons, but there is no doubt among Allied militarists of the outcome. Even pessimists agree that the Axis will be driven into the sea. There is reason to believe that the Nazi command itself is resigned to the loss of its last foothold on the south shore of the Mediterranean.”
VJ-Day on New York City
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
“Seven million New Yorkers let down their hair last night in the wildest, loudest, gayest, drunkest kissingest, hell-for-leather celebration the big town has ever seen.”
Click here to read about VE-Day in New York City…