Bryce Zabel's INSTANT HISTORY

NEWSWEEK #1: A Look Back to the First Week That Was

74 years ago this week when this magazine hit the newstands, it was called Vol. I , No. 1. The exact day of release was February 17, 1933. 

The issue, all 32 pages of it, could be had for a dime, but you could get it discounted for a year's subscription at $4.  You'll also notice it was called "News-Week", not Newsweek as we know it now.

Although both Time and Newsweek have become virtually indistinguishable to the average reader these days, both had a different cover philosophy when they started.  Originally, Time was always that red-border with the famous person inside (at the beginning, always a photo).  Newsweek, in contrast, was about the week in news.  On this first cover, for example, you'll see seven pictures, each one representing a different day of the week.  Monday started off with a speech by Adolf Hitler before 15,000 in Berlin's Sports Palace where he declared "the German nation must be built up from the ground anew."   On Wednesday, for example, Franklin Roosevelt's election in the electoral college was certified by Congress. Clearly, these were monumental times for this new magazine: Hoover was out of office this week, Roosevelt was in -- and across the Atlantic, the Nazis were consolidating their grip.

What you won't find inside is a single word about how this is a new magazine.  It pretty much just hits the ground running.  The so-called "Front Page" -- page one -- has this headline: "Easing Burdens of Debut and Foreclosure."  The first words Newsweek ever wrote are as follows:

The spectre of the auctioneer stalks throughout the land, haunting debtors in city, town and country.  Next to life itself, a home is man's most prized possession.  To save it, rugged individualism has grown gregarious, and harried citizens are banding against foreclosure.  Some are violent, grimly taking the law into their own hands.

The last word in this issue, by the way, was an article about Islam, in Turkey, where Arabic had just been officially banned.

Something I found particularly interesting in this issue, however, was commentary on the subject of democracy -- in Germany where it was under attack by Hitler, and in the United States where it was far less important than surviving the Great Depression.

The article, "A Blank Check for Roosevelt: Congress Proposes, Weighs, Then Delays Grant of Extraordinary Powers to the Next President", actually begins with a quote from Alfred E. Smith, delivered in New York the previous week. It's a whopper:

"In this depression we are in a state of war. The only thing to do now is to lay aside statutes, and do what a Democracy must do when it fights. During the World War we wrapped the Constitution of the United States in a piece of paper, put it on the shelf and left it there until the war was over."

That's quite a statement. The one that followed by James M. Cox a few days later hit the same point.

"We are at war with forces that threaten to destroy our civilization. We are a democracy. While we reflect on its virtues, it has many shortcomings. One is that in time of stress it cannot re-adjust to conditions as rapidly as necessary."

Meanwhile, over in Germany, the newly appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler was singing a similar tune, showing up for that Sports Arena rally in his brown Nazi uniform, "banked by blazing Nazi banners." He argued for a "break" with a "rotten brand of Democracy" and asked the German nation to "give us four years' time and then pass your judgment." Most people assumed this meant that even if the elections went badly, Hitler and his cabinet would cling to power.

Newsweek chose to print a baby picture of Hitler (it's there on the left) on its photo page which, honestly, is a very strange editorial choice. It also filed a gossipy little piece about "Hitler and Frau Wagner Coupled in Romance."

But anyhow, one of Frau Wagner's relatives says the family wouldn't be surprised to see Adolf and Winifred married "at some later date."

It's an odd read, like "Entertainment Tonight" covering the rise of fascism with bubbly enthusiasm.

Still, there's a lot of content in this magazine, crammed into its slender first volume. As a time capsule into the way we were, it's a great read.

Instant History: Oscar Edition

Let's go back to Oscar night, February 27, 1935 at the Biltmore Hotel. The American film industry celebrated the 1934 film crop by awarding the Oscar to It Happened One Night starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The Academy Award winning film was directed by none other than Frank Capra.

Over in Europe, in 1934, they were celebrating a different kind of filmmaker.

Before there was Eva Braun, there was Leni Riefenstahl.  She was the filmmaker for the Third Reich, a talented actress, director, producer and writer who was seduced by Nazism.  This issue told Americans about her before her reputation had been subsumed in tragedy.  She was known to U.S. audiences at the time of this issue for the film S.O.S. Iceberg, a Greenland film presented in America in 1933. 

Although the cover described her as "Hitler's Friend", inside -- on page 16 -- the article is titled, "Hitler's Dictator: Girl, 27,Tells Der Fuehrer How and When to Smile."

Hitler's Friend
September 15, 1934

Here's how this female film auteur was described when this issue -- which cost a whole dime during the Great Depression -- hit the stands:

"'Look this way.  Now smile.'  These orders, addressed to Adolf Hitler, came from Leni Riefenstahl, whose marble-smooth complexion, gray eyes, copper-colored hair, and trim figure make her one of the loveliest women in Germany."

It's clear that people knew Hitler was bad news back then, but he is written about in ways that suggest him in gossipy terms:

"Since the death of President von Hindenburg removed Hitler's official boss, the lovely Leni is the only person of either sex who presumes to dictate in public to the dictator.  To no other woman has the ascetic Reich Leader shown such public admiration... She owes her friendship with Herr Hitler to her skill as a producer and director as well as her personal attractiveness.  Few Germans predicted a romance.  Herr Hitler's feeling for the lady, it was said, was not yet strong enough to make him apply his anti-bachelor laws to himself."

Newsweek, by the way, was in only its second year of publishing when this article was printed.  Time had been around over a decade longer.

Hindsight is 20/20, of course.  Still -- from the glam shot on the cover to the breathless movie-star kind of coverage inside -- you have to score this one in the "just didn't get it" column.  Hitler was a freaking genocidal maniac, not a touchy celebrity who needed the right "handling."  A little over a decade after this was written, over six million Jews were dead and much of the world was in ashes.  Nothing glamorous there.

Our companion blogs are also celebrating Oscar weekend with special posts:

Movie Smackdown! reviews all the Oscar nominated films that got in Smackdowns -- and tells you who already won and lost...

News! Views! & Schmooze! has a post about some first person Oscar red carpeting and a Jon Stewart story or two...

Occupational Hazards

We've just passed the 60th anniversary of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima that ended World War II.  While that is a momentously important event, it has received massive amounts of coverage in the media.  Let's take a moment to reflect on what followed the defeat of Japan in August 1945 -- namely, a long-term occupation by the U.S. Army, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur.

Of course, there are major differences between Iraq and Japan, not the least of which is the current desire to "stand up" Iraqi security forces as soon as possible while in Japan, at the time, the thinking was to keep them from having a military as long as possible.  After all, the Japanese had initiated the Pacific conflict in World War II by their attack on Pearl Harbor four years earlier.

Hirohito's Front Yard: How Long Will They Stay?
October 1, 1945

Still, some things are givens in an occupation.  As Newsweek asked on its cover -- the same question Americans are currently asking about our Army in Iraq -- "How long will they stay?"

If you think all the discord over our Iraq policy is unseemly, well, you may be right, but it is hardly unprecedented.  Following our victory in World War II against two villainous regimes -- the German Nazis and Tojo's Japanese -- you would think we'd be on top of the world and presenting a united front.  Think again.  Less than two months after the bombs dropped, Newsweek's inside article is called "American Diplomacy Loses Face Over Occupation Force Bickering" and the sub-title to the section is "Sharp Retort by Acheson to MacArthur's 200,000 Estimate Exposes Disunity to World."  Yes, we are talking about troop levels, a subject that has bedeviled Iraq policy from the beginning.  And it was the first Truman/MacArthur dust-up that would eventually lead to Harry firing Douglas years later.

The high-level planners of supervised revolution for Japan collided openly and angrily last week with the personality of America's most individualistic general -- Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander on the spot... President Truman kept his own feelings within bounds.  He was glad, he told a press conference, if MacArthur, having estimated his needs at 500,000 four weeks ago, and then having trimmed them down to 400,000, now thought that he could do with half that number.  But the next day callers found on his desk a pasted-up cartoon by sardonic GI cartoonist Bill Mauldin.  It showed ex-GI Willie looking at the headline: "How MacArthur Beat Japan," and cracking: "Eisenhower was a piker.  He needed an army to help him."

There's also some tantalizing stuff here about "going it alone" -- another issue that has cast a long shadow over the Iraq occupation.

The American decision to turn Japan upside down, alone if need be, was unmistakable.  The leading Allies were "welcomed and expected" to share the occupation job.  Advisory bodies would be set up to try to harmonize polices but "in the event of any differences of opinion...the polices of the United States will govern."

There was, however, no insurgency to arise in Japan.  The people there knew that their government had picked the fight and they had lost.  They simply wanted to get on with their lives.  This is, practically speaking, what the majority of the Iraqis want now, too.  But -- unlike the Japanese -- they have militants within their own borders, some from Iraq and others from surrounding countries, who would rather kill Iraqis than see this current occupation succeed.  This latest occupation in the Middle East has lessons to be learned from the one in the Far East -- but it's still very different.

London Calling

Our hearts are with Londoners these days, but they've been through even tougher times.  I've chosen this issue of Time featuring Winston Churchill as the 1940 "Man of the Year" to remind us of how tough, feisty and downright courageous the British have been.  Recall that as this magazine was going to the presses, America was not yet in the war, Hitler had pummeled London with a sustained aerial attack in the "Battle of Britain" and as Churchill took office countries fell like bowling pins: Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, France.

Man of the Year
January 6, 1941

Time chose to begin its coverage of Churchill with the first speech he delivered to the British House of Commons on May 13, 1940 as Prime Minister.  You know the one -- where he declared: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."  He said more, much more.  Listen to it again, and think of it in the context of the global War on Terror.

"You ask, what is our policy?  I say it is to wage war by land, sea and air -- war with all our might and with all the strength God has given us -- and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime.  That is our policy.  You ask, what is our aim?  I can answer in one word.  It is victory.  Victory at all costs.  Victory in spite of all terrors.  Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."

Maybe Tony Blair is not Winston Churchill, but he has the same spirit.  Battered by his association with war in Iraq, and a bruising election campaign, Blair showed us again why we like him.  He has integrity, guts and, like Churchill, he has resolve about the things that really matter.  Here's how the article put it after describing the litany of disaster and defeat Britan had endured under Nazi assault in 1940:

But Churchill was not without accomplishment.  He gave his countrymen exactly what he promised them -- blood, toil, tears, sweat -- and one thing more: untold courage.  It was the last that counted, not only in Britain but in democracies across the world.

We stand with London today, as our parents and grandparents did with London in the dark days of World War II. 

Hitler's Friend

Before there was Eva Braun, there was Leni Riefenstahl.  She was the filmmaker for the Third Reich, a talented actress, director, producer and writer who was seduced by Nazism.  This issue told Americans about her before her reputation had been subsumed in tragedy.  She was known to U.S. audiences at the time of this issue for the film S.O.S. Iceberg, a Greenland film presented in America in 1933. 

Although the cover described her as "Hitler's Friend", inside -- on page 16 -- the article is titled, "Hitler's Dictator: Girl, 27,Tells Der Fuehrer How and When to Smile."

Hitler's Friend
September 15, 1934

Here's how this female film auteur was described when this issue -- which cost a whole dime during the Great Depression -- hit the stands:

"'Look this way.  Now smile.'  These orders, addressed to Adolf Hitler, came from Leni Riefenstahl, whose marble-smooth complexion, gray eyes, copper-colored hair, and trim figure make her one of the loveliest women in Germany."

It's clear that people knew Hitler was bad news back then, but he is written about in ways that suggest him in gossipy terms:

"Since the death of President von Hindenburg removed Hitler's official boss, the lovely Leni is the only person of either sex who presumes to dictate in public to the dictator.  To no other woman has the ascetic Reich Leader shown such public admiration... She owes her friendship with Herr Hitler to her skill as a producer and director as well as her personal attractiveness.  Few Germans predicted a romance.  Herr Hitler's feeling for the lady, it was said, was not yet strong enough to make him apply his anti-bachelor laws to himself."

Newsweek, by the way, was in only its second year of publishing when this article was printed.  Time had been around over a decade longer.

Hindsight is 20/20, of course.  Still -- from the glam shot on the cover to the breathless movie-star kind of coverage inside -- you have to score this one in the "just didn't get it" column.  Hitler was a freaking genocidal maniac, not a touchy celebrity who needed the right "handling."  A little over a decade after this was written, over six million Jews were dead and much of the world was in ashes.  Nothing glamorous there.