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World War II Trivia and Cartoons

“CASH AND CARRY”
  On October 27, 1939, the US “Cash and Carry” law was signed allowing those nations at war with Germany to buy military equipment in the US so long as they took responsibility for having the equipment shipped from the US.  On that day, the US aircraft industry received $220 million in new orders from abroad.  Some of the new airplanes were flown by US pilots to the American side of the Canadian border and then dragged across the border by Canadian mules.
Source: “Pictorial History of the Second World War: Volume 1” by William H. Wise & Co..

THE SOUP'S UNDER THE HOOD
  In 1943, the Campbell Soup Co. ran an ad in the Saturday Evening Post Magazine explaining how US troops in the field would heat up canned food, including Campbell Soup, by tucking the cans in the engine compartment of a Jeep.
Source: America in WW II Magazine, June 2008.

“THE BUCK STOPS HERE”
  President Truman had a sign on his desk in the White House that said “The Buck Stops Here.”  It was made for him by the inmates at the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma and it became famous.  He received the sign on October 2, 1945 and was photographed with it on several occasions and referred to it from time-to-time in speeches and interviews.   Replicas of the sign are available for purchase from the Museum Gift Shop at the Truman Museum & Library in Independence, MO.
Source: National Archives Records Administration

VERY SPECIAL POWS
  In June 1944, the US Navy captured the German submarine U-505 and its crew off the coast of West Africa.  They also captured the submarine's secret code books.  The Americans came to believe that the Germans though that the submarine had sunk and with it, the secret code books.  This caused a problem when it came to the imprisonment of the submarine's crew.  They had to be isolated from other POWs  lest the word get back to Germany that the submarine and the code books were captured.   Accordingly, the submarine's crew was kept in isolation at the POW camp at Camp Ruston, LA for the duration of the war.
Source: “World War II Sites in the United States ” by Richard E. Osborne

ROOSEVELT THE FASCIST
  1936 was an election year in the US and President Franklin Roosevelt was running for his second term.  Former President Herbert Hoover, electioneering from the Republicans, made a rather startling pronouncement on June 10, 1936.  He called Roosevelt's “New Deal” a form of Fascism.
Source: ”Chronicle of the 20th Century” conceived and published by Jacques Legrand.

REFRIGERATORS AND CARS
  Reichs Marshal Hermann Goering, in a speech in early 1942 – soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor - mocked America's ability to produce aircraft, tanks and other weapons of war in great quantities.  He said that the Americans “could only produce refrigerators and cars.”
Source:  World War II Magazine, May 1987

NO GASOLINE RATIONING
  In September 1944, an American journalist visiting Yenan, China, the stronghold and capitol city of the Communist Chinese, reported that there was no gasoline rationing the this city.  There were no cars and only 10 trucks in the entire town.
Source: “Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-1945” by Barbara W. Tuckman

“MISS CANARY ISLANDS”
  In 1936, then the Spanish Civil War began, General Francisco Franco, who was destined to become the leader of the revolution, was in the Spanish-owned Canary Island and was reluctant, at first, to commit himself to the revolutionary cause.  As a result, his compatriots in the revolution called him “Franquito” (Little Franco) and “Miss Canary Islands.”
Source: History Today Magazine July 1986

“P-ZEROS”
  In the early 1930s, certain leaders of the Nazi Party's paramilitary organization, the “SA” (Brown Shirts) became critical of some of the Party leaders because they were better educated and more refined than they were.  The  SA leaders called these Party leaders “P-Zeros,” a euphemism for the accepted Party acronym “P-O,” which stood for “Party Organization.”  Hitler was exempted from this criticism, but Goering, Hess and others close to Hitler were not.  Hitler eventually had to arrest and do away with the SA leaders, downgrade the organization and replace it with the “SS.”
Source: “Justice at Nuremberg” by Robert C. Conot

“FATHER JOSEF”
  In the 1900s Josef Stalin was studying for the priesthood in his native Georgia.  He did very poorly and was expelled from the seminary.  This angry young man soon joined the radical “Social Democratic Workers' Party” which later evolved into the “Communist Party.”  Ironically, some years later, Adolf Hitler, another angry young man, would join a radical group called the “German Workers' Party” which evolved into the "Nazi Party."
Source: “Visions of Victory” The Hopes of 8 WW II Leaders” by Gerhard L. Weinberg.

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Sheet Music for World War II Songs
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