Ok, so some things in the golden era were not too cool...

[LizzieMaine]

Oppression is a function of economic and cultural power, not simple population.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Lizzie somehow I can't imagine you being oppressed by someone smaller than you are.

 

[Blackjack]

My Aunt worked at the Continental bank in the loop from 1942 until the early 70's. She loved her job until the 60's rolled around when she said the bank was forced to hire people on basis of race not qualifications, who didn't care about their job only their paycheck. The oldtimers like her were expected to pick up the slack and not cause waves.

 

[Stearmen]

Here is a song, lots of us grew up with and loved, (this is my favorite iteration.) Little did we know, it was about a very bloody time!

 

[LizzieMaine]

New Research Concludes Associated Press Collaborated With Nazis In 1930s

To those familiar with the investigations in the alternative press by George Seldes and John Spivak in the mid-to-late thirties, this is not news. But it's interesting to see that their reports, dismissed at the time as "muckraking" by "gadflies," are now being confirmed.

It's well-known and well-confirmed that both the Hearst and McCormick-Patterson newspaper groups also had arrangements like this, and often published Goebbels press releases verbatim as "news," but the AP, which fed thousands of papers around the world, is something else again.

 

[scotrace]

That is serious indeed, and interesting reading.

 

[sheeplady]

In June 1941, Nazi troops invaded the town of Lviv in western Ukraine. Upon discovering evidence of mass killings carried out by Soviet troops, German occupying forces had organised “revenge” pogroms against the city’s Jewish population.

Am I correct in believing that in 1941 the average newspaper reading American would not likely have had much knowledge of the extent or brutality of the Holocaust?

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

For the American public, the revelations came only with the liberation of the camps in 1945. Higher-ups had known about them earlier but deemed winning the war to be the first priority.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The existence of German concentration camps was well-known in the US during the thirties, to the point where Life magazine published, with its own commentary added, a Goebbels-approved photo essay on a "typical camp" in its August 21, 1939 issue. The persecution of Jews was also very, very well known -- it had been fiercely attacked in the American leftist press from the moment the Nuremberg laws were passed. After Kristallnacht in 1938 the American Fascist right became highly defensive about the persecution, with Father Coughlin spending much of Novemeber and December of 1938 declaring that the Jews in Germany were being paid back for their "agitation against Christianity." It was political agitation from American anti-semites that prevented mass emigration of German Jews to the United States.

But there were no out-and-out extermination camps in the thirties, so there was no discussion of these. The "Final Solution" didn't begin until 1942, and as been noted, didn't become known to the Allies until the camps were liberated.

 

[sheeplady]

Ok, thank you, I am always quote foggy on dates.

I find this behavior by the AP to be beyond vile. It may not have violated any laws, but they:
A) basically hid evidence of the slaughter of genocide
B) went ahead and provided source material to enable said genocide

All of this was done willingly with no ethical excuse.

Journalists the world over risk their lives everyday to bring us information. They risk imprisionment, torture, and death; sometimes from their own governments.

 

[ChiTownScion]

It amazes me that at one time exposing small kids to lead was seen as a positive thing.

 

[Stearmen]

View attachment 47932

It amazes me that at one time exposing small kids to lead was seen as a positive thing.

There was a time when I and millions of kids loved the smell of Ethyl Gasoline! Mmm, I can almost smell it now, with what's left of my brain cells!

 

[Zombie_61]

There was a time when I and millions of kids loved the smell of Ethyl Gasoline! Mmm, I can almost smell it now, with what's left of my brain cells!

This new-fangled unleaded stuff just doesn't have the same bouquet, does it? *sniff**sniff*

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not everybody in the Era drank the tetraethyl Kool-Aid...

American Oil advertised heavily *against* lead, but what they didn't tell you is that their fuel used benzine as an anti-knock agent, which when it seeped into the soil from leaky underground tanks wrought havoc on groundwater. But at least it didn't make you dumb.

 

[Fastuni]

The Allied leadership was informed on extermination by late 1942...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Karski#Reporting_Nazi_atrocities_to_the_Western_Allies
http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/mass_extermination.htm

The Allied declaration made in December 1942 on that matter wasn't exactly secret either and reported on the NYT frontpage and by the BBC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Declaration_by_Members_of_the_United_Nations

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/17/newsid_3547000/3547151.stm

 

[HudsonHawk]

This new-fangled unleaded stuff just doesn't have the same bouquet, does it? *sniff**sniff*

Tetraethyl lead had a pleasant fruity aroma, but the para xylene still smells just as sweet too. When I worked at the refinery, I used to like to stand next the big tanks of it. You just kind of floated off into la-la land.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Alongside the benzene, Amoco also used toulene, which was the active ingredient that made glue-sniffing so appealing to a generation of slack-jawed wall-eyed postwar teenagers. Quite a wallop for a "safer alternative" product.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Alongside the benzene, Amoco also used toulene, which was the active ingredient that made glue-sniffing so appealing to a generation of slack-jawed wall-eyed postwar teenagers. Quite a wallop for a "safer alternative" product.

My experience was that it was even more harmful to users than airplane glue when huffed: I used to represent several late and post- teens on misdemeanor charges involving the stuff, early 90's. One couldn't barely converse with them, they were so brain damaged. It was known as a hillbilly entry level drug of choice- before moving on to meth, if they lived long enough, I suppose.

 

[Stearmen]

Alongside the benzene, Amoco also used toulene, which was the active ingredient that made glue-sniffing so appealing to a generation of slack-jawed wall-eyed postwar teenagers. Quite a wallop for a "safer alternative" product.

Which generation? I don't remember all the teenagers of my generation sniffing glue! I heard on the news that there were kids doing it, but not the entire generation! That's like saying all teenagers in the 80s were high on cocaine.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I said "a generation of slack-jawed, wall-eyed postwar teenagers." Not "all postwar teenagers."

Be that it as it may, the glue-sniffing craze was sparked by the arrest of a group of teens on the West Coast in 1959 who had been huffing fumes and committing crimes, and the attendant publicity turned the habit into a national fad that continued all thru the sixties, until glue manufacturers were pressured into adding irritants to their products that would discourage sniffing.

We saw the same thing happen around here in the '70s with spray cans -- paint, hair spray, whipped cream, etc -- creating yet another generation of slack-jawed, wall-eyed stumbling idiots.