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Posted: 12/9/2023 10:44:06 AM EDT
I’m a massive history buff and I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the World War II homefront the last couple of years - what happened during the war at home. Last
year I found a YT channel that posts old radio programs by the week from the era, and then the Patreon channel, where he posts newspapers for a small subscription fee. It’s the newspapers I love to see. https://youtube.com/@theworldwariioldtimeradioc8676?si=2XFEtgomPs_s_Cd- These are from the Friday, December 11, 942 Chicago Tribune. Besides the first page full of war news, the articles on rationing, the Christmas gift ads are the most interesting to me. Home heating oil was rationed. You were supposed to keep your home heated at 65F. Most people only got 3 gallons of gasoline a week, in an era of non-fuel efficient cars. The Christmas gifts were much more modest. Now, the Tribube catered to more middle and upper class readers, but still. I read somewhere that $1 at the time was equivalent to about $19 currently. Enjoy! There is much more where this came from if you’re interested. A great book about the WWII homefront is “Don’t You Know There’s a War On?: The American Home Front 1941-1945” by Richard Lingeman. Also, “The Darkest Year: The American Home Front 1941-1942” by William R. Klingaman    
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Posted: 12/9/2023 10:45:03 AM EDT
[#1]
In 1942, Walgreens was still a Chicago area drugstore chain, founded here in 1901.
 
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Posted: 12/9/2023 10:47:32 AM EDT
[#2]
Tag. Never really gave much thought to the US at the time.
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Posted: 12/9/2023 10:47:45 AM EDT
[#3]
A cohesive America we'll never see again, no matter what the cause.
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Posted: 12/9/2023 10:51:49 AM EDT
[#4]
When you Make America Great Again... This is what you go through...
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Posted: 12/9/2023 10:55:51 AM EDT
[#5]
When I was researching for my sniping/sniper book, I went through a lot of old newspapers online and could not help but marvel and the purchasing power of the dollar back then. Beef, chicken, lamb, a loaf of bread or even a can of beans.
I'm an oddball when it comes to color talkies (movies) as I look at the background things, note the gas prices or store prices. 
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Posted: 12/9/2023 11:01:18 AM EDT
[#6]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I'm an oddball when it comes to color talkies (movies) as I look at the background things, note the gas prices or store prices. i do the same thing lol adjusted for inflation though -- some things back then actually were more expensive. 'global trade' for all its faults -- HAS brought / kept some prices low Op -- thanks for posting -- always interesting and we remember 'print' was the way 87% of news was transmitted back then |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 11:03:04 AM EDT
[#7]
When I was in college earning my B.S. in History w an emphasis in WW2 (yeap, you read correctly, a "Bachelor of Science" degree in History. I also took plenty of science classes for the teaching endorsement and that gave me the credits for a B.S. instead of a Bachelor of Arts), one of my projects was to research the news articles and how they differed from the 1930's to today (late 90's).
Findings were obvious (just read the pages above!). |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 11:04:59 AM EDT
[#8]
Quote HistoryQuoted: i do the same thing lol adjusted for inflation though -- some things back then actually were more expensive. 'global trade' for all its faults -- HAS brought / kept some prices low Op -- thanks for posting -- always interesting and we remember 'print' was the way 87% of news was transmitted back then This is a treasure trove of vintage catalogs, going back to 1940. https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 11:09:31 AM EDT
[#9]
I had a project assigned a few years ago where I was looking through pre-WWII school newspapers for a photo of someone. Everything I was looking through spanned the late 1930s through the very early 1940s. At first, there were no mentions of the war, then ads for bonds to help the fight in Europe, and towards the end of the run, some anti-German sentiment was growing. Some of the guys in the photos or who worked on those papers undoubtedly died in one theatre or another a few years later.
Even though it was during the Great Depression, the students still dressed nicely for school. They had classes in useful skills that would not even be electives at this point. Also, kids in junior high put together better papers back then than modern pros. |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 11:15:21 AM EDT
[#10]
[misfire]
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Posted: 12/9/2023 11:15:50 AM EDT
[#11]
Quote HistoryQuoted: adjusted for inflation though -- some things back then actually were more expensive. 'global trade' for all its faults -- HAS brought / kept some prices low The shit we don't need often, if at all, is generally cheaper. Food, energy, transportation, clothing,... always getting more expensive. |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 11:17:22 AM EDT
[#12]
When America really was First.....
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Posted: 12/9/2023 11:19:43 AM EDT
[#13]
Very cool OP!
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Posted: 12/9/2023 11:33:04 AM EDT
[#14]
You might like these ......... Newspapers.com The Fedora Lounge At one time there was link to a site that played WWII BBC broadcasts 24/7 but it appears to be gone now or maybe hosted somewhere else. |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 12:18:40 PM EDT
[#15]
Quote HistoryQuoted: You might like these ......... Newspapers.com The Fedora Lounge At one time there was link to a site that played WWII BBC broadcasts 24/7 but it appears to be gone now or maybe hosted somewhere else. Thank you for the links. |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 12:26:51 PM EDT
[#16]
Another book I forgot to mention:
The Year of Peril: America in 1942 by Tracy Campbell |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 12:37:28 PM EDT
[#17]
New York Times 6/12/42
 Attached FileB-17’s naturally got back to Hawaii before anybody else, so their story got published first. In fact they had almost no impact on the battle, which was usually the case for high altitude bombing of maneuvering ships, but excited crews always unintentionally claimed numerous hits. Took awhile to sort things out. |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 12:53:42 PM EDT
[#18]
I own some interesting publications.
  
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Posted: 12/9/2023 12:56:21 PM EDT
[#19]
Reminds me of the Wendy's restaurant tabletops before they decided the ads were racist.
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Posted: 12/9/2023 12:58:15 PM EDT
[#20]
The 19th Century newspapers I read (while doing some research) were printed on cotton linen paper and not wood pulp paper. Wood pulp paper as most know has a high acid content and can be very fragile as it ages. The cotton linen newspaper held up well and while rigid, was readable and did not crumble when handled.
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Posted: 12/9/2023 1:02:08 PM EDT
[#21]
Quote HistoryQuoted: The 19th Century newspapers I read (while doing some research) were printed on cotton linen paper and not wood pulp paper. Wood pulp paper as most know has a high acid content and can be very fragile as it ages. The cotton linen newspaper held up well and while rigid, was readable and did not crumble when handled. Thats a big advantage to so many older newspapers being digitized now. You don’t have handle the physical papers and you don’t have to go to the library to look at microfilm/fiche (I remember both from my college days). |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 1:06:24 PM EDT
[#22]
Quote HistoryQuoted: A cohesive America we'll never see again, no matter what the cause. Homogeneous, high-trust, societies, with common cultures, values, morals, traditions, and religions, have a quality all their own. And no, we'll never see that again in this country. |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 1:34:13 PM EDT
[#23]
The average American is absolutely stupid when it comes to history. I ran into someone on a Great Lakes shipping FB group that thought Pearl Harbor Day was when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. Idiots.
Anyone, during the plague shutdown and shortages, I ran into people who thought the US had food rationing during the war because there wasn’t enough food. They were shocked to find out there was rationing of canned food items ti save those for the military and overseas nations we helped. Gasoline rationing was primarily to save rubber as our rubber came from SE Asia, which the Japanese occupied. Coffee was rationed as it took up cargo ship space and the u-boats were hitting shipping. The east coast was more in a bad was for gas as theirs mostly came via tanker. The Midwest, for example, was supplied by pipeline. |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 1:55:56 PM EDT
[#24]
I have a number of US papers with headlines noting major invasions and highlights of WW2. Need to get pics of them.
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Posted: 12/9/2023 1:58:11 PM EDT
[#25]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I have a number of US papers with headlines noting major invasions and highlights of WW2. Need to get pics of them. Not just photos. Use your phone to scan them as a PDF. They’re often easier to read that way. |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 2:02:09 PM EDT
[#26]
 I have this hanging in my office |
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Posted: 12/9/2023 2:04:32 PM EDT
[#27]
This is a little extreme but it’s nice to see a young person interested in something other than video games.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgpjpr35nko |
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Posted: 12/22/2023 4:47:30 PM EDT
[#28]
More newspapers
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Posted: 12/22/2023 5:17:10 PM EDT
[#29]
You should read "The Good War" by Studs Terkel. It is a collection of WW2 era oral histories from a wide variety of people. Wives, Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen from both the US and enemy, children, both enemy and US POWs, War factory workers, profiteers, prostitutes, civilians both home and overseas, etc.
It gives a really good perspective of how society operated during the war, and is an excellent bathroom read as each interview is only a few pages. |
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Posted: 12/22/2023 5:41:28 PM EDT
[#30]
Quote HistoryQuoted: You should read "The Good War" by Studs Terkel. It is a collection of WW2 era oral histories from a wide variety of people. Wives, Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen from both the US and enemy, children, both enemy and US POWs, War factory workers, profiteers, prostitutes, civilians both home and overseas, etc. It gives a really good perspective of how society operated during the war, and is an excellent bathroom read as each interview is only a few pages. Thanks for the recommendation. |
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Posted: 12/22/2023 7:43:17 PM EDT
[#31]
The advertisements in magazines and newspapers during the war always interested me.
Great thread OP!  |
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Posted: 12/22/2023 7:44:15 PM EDT
[#32]
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Posted: 12/22/2023 7:44:50 PM EDT
[#33]
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Posted: 12/22/2023 7:45:57 PM EDT
[#34]
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Posted: 12/22/2023 8:08:00 PM EDT
[#35]
The amount of liquor ads is interesting
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Posted: 12/22/2023 10:00:10 PM EDT
[#36]
Best liquor ad ever.
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Posted: 12/22/2023 10:03:53 PM EDT
[#37]
Awesome. I also love the old Life magazines I have from the War. I’d have every one of them if I had the money.
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Posted: 12/22/2023 10:09:21 PM EDT
[#38]
Quote HistoryQuoted: A cohesive America we'll never see again, no matter what the cause. This. Now ask yourself, what kind of American are you? |
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Posted: 12/22/2023 10:33:05 PM EDT
[#39]
These are all from the December 23, 1942 Chicago Tribune.
   
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Posted: 12/22/2023 10:44:09 PM EDT
[#40]
And Christmas Day, 1942, Chicago Tribune
   
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Posted: 12/22/2023 10:44:42 PM EDT
[#41]
   
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Posted: 12/23/2023 1:11:52 AM EDT
[#42]
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Posted: 12/23/2023 1:25:02 AM EDT
[#43]
Quote HistoryQuoted: A cohesive America we'll never see again, no matter what the cause. Sadly, this is probably true. I was at an air museum recently listening to a lecture on wartime America in the 1940s, seeing old photos & newsreels projected on a big screen. And for the first time ever it really struck me that the connection we used to have to that era really doesn't exist anymore. We are now 80+ years removed from WWII (the same span of time separating WWII from the Civil War), the veterans who fought in it are nearly all gone, and the country today bears little resemblance (however you wish to quantify it) to the country of 1943. Made me sad. |
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Posted: 12/23/2023 1:45:18 AM EDT
[#44]
Both of my folks were children during the war years, and tales of those days always fascinated me. They lived in small Kansas towns, and like most of their neighbors, didn't have much, but were more than willing to sacrifice.
As school children, they never wadded up and discarded a sheet of paper, rather, there was a box in the school room where the paper was collected for later reuse. A dime was a lot of money then, but Dad proudly recalled how he would contribute one dime every week towards a war bond to be purchased by the school. My grandmother's prize possessions were a few heavy aluminum pans, but when the snow fence was errected in the town square, she joined all the other ladies in tossing her pans in for use in aircraft construction. In addition to all of her other labors, during the war she repaired all of the shoes in the household, as there were none to be bought. Tires were also unavailable, and my grandfather set off on a rare auto trip to see relatives about 40 miles away with five or six old used tires in the back of his sedan. Mom said they made the trip, but that be had used up every one of those tires before they got home. Can you imagine having to break down and change tires five or six times in the course of such a short trip? Then pumping them up to pressure by hand? Boy, do we have it easy today... |
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Posted: 12/23/2023 7:44:59 AM EDT
[#45]
I always found old newspapers interesting as well as old magazines and films but it is also sad and depressing because it just shows how much we have lost, how far we have strayed
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Posted: 12/23/2023 7:56:22 AM EDT
[#46]
I've got an issue from January 2, 194x. Found in my attic, front page is color. Ads are fascinating.
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Posted: 12/23/2023 8:01:48 AM EDT
[#47]
Quote HistoryQuoted: i do the same thing lol adjusted for inflation though -- some things back then actually were more expensive. 'global trade' for all its faults -- HAS brought / kept some prices low Op -- thanks for posting -- always interesting and we remember 'print' was the way 87% of news was transmitted back then Watching a TV show from the 70s and the news was on the radio in the background. It was in the US but was talking about British troops moving to avoid fighting the IRA. They gave the stock market said the S&P was up a quarter of a point but didn't say what it was. Some of them will have the sports on and one last week had a baseball game. Joe Torre was at bat. Look how much news is on a page. Nowdays a news website story is 1/10th the size and before papers went the way of the dodo bird they only had a fraction of that amount of actual news on a page. |
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Posted: 12/23/2023 8:07:56 AM EDT
[#48]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Both of my folks were children during the war years, and tales of those days always fascinated me. They lived in small Kansas towns, and like most of their neighbors, didn't have much, but were more than willing to sacrifice. As school children, they never wadded up and discarded a sheet of paper, rather, there was a box in the school room where the paper was collected for later reuse. A dime was a lot of money then, but Dad proudly recalled how he would contribute one dime every week towards a war bond to be purchased by the school. My grandmother's prize possessions were a few heavy aluminum pans, but when the snow fence was errected in the town square, she joined all the other ladies in tossing her pans in for use in aircraft construction. In addition to all of her other labors, during the war she repaired all of the shoes in the household, as there were none to be bought. Tires were also unavailable, and my grandfather set off on a rare auto trip to see relatives about 40 miles away with five or six old used tires in the back of his sedan. Mom said they made the trip, but that be had used up every one of those tires before they got home. Can you imagine having to break down and change tires five or six times in the course of such a short trip? Then pumping them up to pressure by hand? Boy, do we have it easy today... My grandfather worked in the shipyard building destroyers in Southeast, TX around Orange, TX during the war. His land/house was 200 miles away in East, TX. He would travel back every so often and my grandmother would say they had a half dozen flats once and he would patch them until it went flat again. |
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Posted: 12/23/2023 8:58:09 AM EDT
[#49]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Nope. Homogeneous, high-trust, societies, with common cultures, values, morals, traditions, and religions, have a quality all their own. And no, we'll never see that again in this country. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: A cohesive America we'll never see again, no matter what the cause. Homogeneous, high-trust, societies, with common cultures, values, morals, traditions, and religions, have a quality all their own. And no, we'll never see that again in this country. The "high-trust" part can't be understated. Those papers were FULL pf propeganda, which Americans ate up by the bucket full. We ("our side" for lack of a better term) hate all propeganda now, and immediately distrust anything when we se it. But the use of propeganda absolutely played a pivotal role in making America what it once was. I would go so far as to say it will be impossible to ever regain that type of position and momentum in the world because that level of propeganda acceptance is no longer possible. |
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Posted: 12/23/2023 9:02:57 AM EDT
[#50]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Nope. Homogeneous, high-trust, societies, with common cultures, values, morals, traditions, and religions, have a quality all their own. And no, we'll never see that again in this country. Those days are over Those sweet sweet days, are over |
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