Nazi Obituary for FDR

FDR died on 12 April 1945.  His death gave temporary hope to the Nazis.  Pehaps his death would mean the collapse of the Allied coalition.  Here is what the Neue Warte am Inn (Braunau am Inn — Hitler’s birthplace) wrote on 18 April 1945 in one of its last issues.

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Roosevelt, the Person Mainly Responsible for the War, Dies

The North American President Roosevelt died suddenly Thursday at his country home in Warm Springs at the age of 63.  The cause was a cerebral hemorrhage. Vice President Harry Truman assumed the office of USA president according to the constitution and has already been sworn in.  He said that he would try to carry out his offices as Roosevelt would have done. The war will be carried out on both fronts with full energy to its successful conclusion. Roosevelt was buried Sunday morning in Hyde Park. The news of Roosevelt’s death caused alarm in America and England.  The United Press said the death of the president was like a lost battle.

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One of the greatest war criminals and political swindlers in world history has passed away. At the end of March Roosevelt ordered his cabinet and USA diplomatic representatives to prepare for the coming victory in Europe. Cabinet members were not to leave Washington. Now Roosevelt himself, who thought himself near the triumph of his life, has had to leave his post. He was the true cause of this terrible war. He began rearming the USA in 1933 and opposed the successes of the Munich Agreement in 1938. He promised American mothers that young American soldiers would not bleed in foreign wars. He quickly broke that promise. He lied to the American people by saying Germany wanted to conquer America. Roosevelt supported England in starting this war over the Polish question and he encouraged the Putschists in Belgrade to unleash the Balkans war. Although he always claimed the USA was neutral, he ordered that German submarines be attacked. Roosevelt also belonged to the vultures who profitted from German stocks as a a result of the dictate of Versailles.  The profiteers he lead persuaded American savers to speculate with German bonds. Roosevelt earned millions after Germany’s collapse from the money of small American savers.

We are filled with satisfaction at the death of the war criminal and Jewish lackey Roosevelt. We see it as God’s punishment, which lets us believe that the war that Roosevelt incited will find a just conclusion. Roosevelt died just as he was imagining victory. It reminds us of the divine providence of 20 July last year, when death stood all around the Führer and reaped its harvest. Roosevelt’s great counterpart was saved by a miracle. He is the only person who can guarantee that this war waged by the Jews, plutocrats, and Bolshevists will end as it must if history is to have any meaning. If we compare 20 July 1944 with 12 April 1945, we gain the strength that will give us the faith to move mountains.

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Japanese Bombers Attack San Francisco in 1941?

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor caught the United States by surprise — and also resulted in all sorts of wild rumors.  On December 8, 1941, for example, the Associated Press reported a large Japanese force of bombers attempted to bomb San Francisco.

There was no foundation to the story — but in the shock that followed Pearl Harbor it seemed plausible to Americans.

Nazi Editorial Cartoon on Churchill (November 1941)

I'm working through German newspapers at the moment for my current project.  This one comes from the  Wiener Neueste Nachrichten of 28 November 1941, courtesy of ANNO, the Austrian project to digitize long runs of newspapers.  When this appeared, the Nazi were beginning to realize that the attack on the Soviet Union was going to be more difficult than expected, but England still seemed defeated.  

“One does what one can.”

The cartoon is titled “The ‘political counteroffensive.’”  Churchill’s only weapon is words, supplied by the Jewish journalists in the background.

A Nazi Reaction to D-Day

A few weeks after D-Day, the leading German weekly Das Reich ran this cartoon.  A battered American soldier wants to recover in Hell, since conditions there are better than for the Allied army attacking German’s “Atlantic Wall.”  The Nazis had put great effort into building fortifications — but in the event they were not sufficient to hold back the invasion.

“I'm coming from the Atlantic Wall and would like to rest up here....”

Two Editorials for 4 July 1942

The 4th of July had always been an occasion for newspaper editorials.  Today I'm adding two rather different editorials from 1942.  The United States had been in the war for seven months, and things were not going well.  The Milwaukee Sentinel carried a rather typical editorial titled “Our Nation’s Natal Day” with general claims of how the nation needed to draw on its traditions to face the new crisis.

The Eugene Register-Guard took a more interesting approach. In an editorial titled “The Crisis Calls for Realism,” it frankly admitted that the war situation was grim.  The Germans were advancing on Egypt, the Japanese toward India.  And the Russians, while demanding resources, were unwilling to help us in the East.  It ends by complaining about “hazy thinking” in Washington.

Pearl Harbor Editorial (1941)

This editorial from the Spokane Daily Chronicle of 8 December 1941 is the newspapers’s response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the day before.

A German Cartoon on Churchill’s Radio Speeches

This cartoon comes from the 13 September 1940 issue of the Wiener neueste Nachrichten. The title at the top: “The strong man at the microphone.” Churchill is giving a speech over Radio London while being pumped full of hot air, presumably.  One chap says to the other: “Don’t pump in too much, Tommy, or he will pop.”

This appeared near the height of the London Blitz when Germany was confident of victory.

News on the Holocaust from July 1944

In the same issue the Pittsburgh Press that carries the article on the 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler I posted yesterday was an editorial showing that the Holocaust was increasingly becoming known.  The extent, however, was still uncertain. Many more than 1,715,000 Jews mentioned in the article had been killed by the time the article appeared.

Assassination Attempt on Hitler (20 July 1944)

Six weeks after D-Day, a group of German officers attempted to kill Adolf Hitler.  The attempt almost succeeded. In the United States as in Germany (and the rest of the world), people were at first not sure what it meant.  Was Germany collapsing? Would the war end with an internal German revolt?  The paper’s prediction that German faced “civil war” was , unfortunately, optimistic.

The Pittsburgh Press carried the story on its front page on 21 July 1944..  I include the first part of the story here.  To read the full story, follow the link on Google News.

Jim Crow in the Military during World War II

The U.S. has a long history of newspapers intended for a Black audience.  They make interesting reading. This article is from the Baltimore African-American, 2 February 1943.  A high-ranking Black officer had just resigned his post in the Pentagon because he saw that promises made to Blacks were not being met.  I also attach an editorial cartoon on the theme. The full newspaper is available on Google News.

German Cartoon on the German-Soviet Pact of 1939

When Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact on 23 August 1939, World War II essentially began.  Hitler now felt free of the threat of a two-front war.  A little over a week later he turned his armies loose on Poland.

The agreement was a tremendous relief to Germans — it seemed another of Hitler’s diplomatic master strokes. This cartoon from the 25 August 1939 issue of the Freiburger Zeitung expressed the sense of relief. In the first frame, England and France are discussing how  to “encircle” Germany while Stalin listens quietly. In the second frame, France announces it will attack from the West. In the third frame, England announces it will attack by sea. In the final frame, against the backdrop “Non-Aggression Pact with Germany,” Stalin leaves saying “...and we won’t come at all!”

German Editorial Cartoon (December 1940)

This cartoon from a Vienna newspaper is captioned: “The British Admiralty has been totally silent about the convoy sunk on 2 December. It would be a blessing for England if silence really were golden.” The Germans had in fact sunk eleven of the forty-nine ships in Convoy HX-90.

Source: Wiener neueste Nachrichten, 2 December 1940.