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VE-Day in Paris (Yank Magazine, 1945)

Eyewitness accounts of all the excitement that was V.E. Day in Paris:

On the Champs Elysees they were singing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,’ and it was a long way even the few blocks from Fouquet’s restaurant to the Arc de Triomphe if you tried to walk up the Champs on VE-Day in Paris. From one side of the broad and beautiful avenue to the other, all the way to the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe in the Place de l’Etoile, there was hardly any place to breathe and no place at all to move. That was the way it was in the Place l’Opera and the Place de la Republique and all the other famous spots and in a lot of obscure little side streets that nobody but Parisians know.

Click here to read about the liberation of Paris.
Click here to read the observations of U.S. Army lieutenant Louis L’Amour concerning 1946 Paris.

VE-Day in Europe (Yank Magazine, 1945)

Assorted reports from various European capitols concerning the capitulation of Hitler’s Germany:

Finally, when Paris believed the news, it was just a big-city celebration –crowds and singing and cheers and lots of cognac and girls. People stopped work and airplanes of all the Allied forces buzzed the Champs Elysees. Pvt. Ernest Kuhn of Chicago listened to the news come over the radio at the 108th General Hospital. He had just been liberated after five months in a Nazi PW camp and he still had some shrapnel in his throat. I listened to Churchill talk, he said, and I kept saying to myself, ‘I’m still alive. The war is over and I’m still alive’ I thought of all the guys in the 28th Division Band with me who were dead now. We used to be a pretty good band.

VE-Day in Four Western American Cities (Yank Magazine, 1945)

A report from Portland, Oregon, Houston, Texas, Los Angeles and San Francisco, California as to how those cities celebrated the surrender of Germany in May of 1945.

President Truman’s VE-Day Proclamation (Think Magazine, 1946)

Attached is a page from the Diary of Participation in W.W. II which was compiled by the editors of THINK MAGAZINE; this page contains the printable text of a portion of President Harry Truman’s VE-Day Proclamation of May 8, 1945:

The Allied armies, through sacrifice and devotion and with God’s help, have won from Germany a final and unconditional surrender. The Western world has been freed of the evil forces which for five years and longer have imprisoned the bodies and broken the lives of millions upon millions of free-born men… Much remains to be done. The victory won in the West must now be won in the East…

VE-Day in New York City (Yank Magazine, 1945)

New Yorkers milled around the Wall Street district and Times Square, and over a loudspeaker Mayor Fiorlello H. LaGuardia told them to behave themselves…

Click here to read about the VJ-Day celebrations around the world.

VE-Day in the U.S. of A. (Yank Magazine, 1945)

A report from Boston, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Minneapolis, St Louis and Springfield (Mass.) as to how VE-Day was celebrated (or not) in these cities:

To get an over-all view of VE-day in America, YANK asked civilian newspapermen and staff writers in various parts of the country to send an eye-witness reports. From these OPs the reports were much the same. Dallas was quiet, Des Moines was sober, Seattle was calm, Boston was staid.

The Earliest Airline Stewardesses (The Literary Digest, 1933)

By the time this article hit the newsstands, the airline stewardess job was no longer a novelty and there were twenty-five women working in relays on the trans-continental run between Chicago and Oakland. The woman who held the record as the first airline stewardess, Ellen Church (1904 – 1965), was hired two and a half years earlier.

In addition to other restrictions, the earliest flight attendants of the Thirties were all required to be no older than 26, weigh no more than 118 pounds, stand no taller than 54 and hold nursing degrees in order that they be prepared to soothe the frayed nerves of the flight-fearing passengers.

With the birth of passenger airlines came the need for those who had particular set of culinary skills: read about them here.

The San Fernando Valley (Coronet Magazine, 1951)

During the Second World War, millions of American military personnel passed through Los Angeles. Many were attracted to the simple domestic architecture, the smell of orange blossoms, Hollywood, the glorious weather – all of these or none of these, but many of them promised themselves that if they survived the war, this is where they would want to start their lives.

Many of these men fulfilled that promise, and they brought with them the government guaranteed housing loans provided by the G.I Bill – and a dusty, arid flat land just over the hill from Los Angeles called the San Fernando Valley began to grow as a result. By 1951, just six years after the war, two thousand building permits were issued for this area each month.

Design for Modern Living (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

In an attempt to define modernism for a broad audience, architect/designer Alexander Girard curated the Exhibition for Modern Living that was housed at the Detroit Institute of Arts during the winter of 1949. It was a ground breaking exhibit that brought modernism down from the mountain and allowed people to see that modern design was intended to make life more pleasant:

Modern design implies shape for use, simplicity, new forms to utilize new materials, easier housekeeping, and honest expression of mass production… Up the richly carpeted ramp, viewers walk up to a dining room done by Alvar Aalto; past two studies Bruno Mathsson and Jean Risom and a bedroom and living-room representing a variety of designers; then up another level to a space furnished by Charles Eames; and finally to a small balcony overlooking George Nelson’s living area. The quiet simplicity of the rooms and the gentle tones of symphonic music have people talking in whispers. Sighed one woman: ‘I’d like to live here.’