News reports 01
Explore a collection of Old Time Radio programs featuring news broadcasts and blurbs, primarily focused on World War II. These reports provide a fascinating glimpse into the events and sentiments of the time.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.
Chapitres
Critiques
Amazed someone found these!
potuc
Glimpses into a past where the only future in sight was a dark one... one of the most terrifying eras in all of humanity. Fear abounded, and hope was hard to believe in, let alone to see, in the catastrophic worldwide struggle. And, Shadows_Girl, while it is propaganda, of course, it's propaganda of the right kind. While people back then did hold some unfortunate stereotypes based on race and religion, and had slurs to describe those persecuted people, the basic concept is good. Nazis are bad, don't be Nazis." After WWI, Germany was forced to take on most of the reconstruction, which was admittedly rather fair, as they were the allies of the nation that begun the war... but chaos reigned, inflation soared to utterly absurd levels, and a man named Hitler took over. The Nazis committed terrible crimes, and while I won't pretend the Allies were exempt from these crimes, the crimes of the Allies just didn't reach to the terrible extent that the Axis brutality and abuse did. The racial slurs are glimpses into an insecure nation, bombarded by a terrible war, and only twenty years later, one ever more catastrophic. Uncertainty, not man, was ruler of the world, and the United States was no exception to this reign of horror. They were paranoid, and the paranoia resulted in unfair discrimination against certain groups of people, and unsolicited hatred against these groups ran rampant throughout both the small-town alleys and the nation's capital. They were hard times, and we tried our best to soldier through them, but trekking through a seemingly endless swamp of death and decay wasn't easy, and we found people to pin our difficulties upon, people to lay our blame on. It was wrong, but there's no changing history, and though we can avoid repeating mistakes in history, we simply should not, nay, cannot, deny history... for if we do not know the past, we are doomed to repeat the awful mistakes contained therein that we should have easily avoided had we remembered what never ought to be forgotten... review created January 27, 2022.
For the history buff
OldBill
It's great that all this has been preserved. In some cases, interviews and eye witness reports, provide primary sources to historical events.
Excellent set!
magnoliasouth
This set is excellent and full of history. It's too bad that people who didn't even live through it, want to politicize. There's a word for them, but I'm too polite to say it.
37-45
Laikadog
All here . The voices from our past. Thought provoking. They do things differently here. A salutary lesson in war. A must for any student of history. Thank you.
There was a REAL War Going On
paeanhera
It looks like I see someone too young to remember or have any notion of how the USA was really like then. If you can, find the John Dos Passos trilogy "USA" where he uses words like "bohunk," "wop," and the like routinely. That was the way life was 70-80 years ago. World War II was the scariest time imaginable, especially in 1942, when it still looked like the Axis Powers had a chance to take over the world. The war propaganda was very heavy. Very little of this material has been in the public eye since. The USA was a very insular place; people had a strong sense of home. We were far away from the dangers of Europe (five days by boat, though undersea telegraph cables made photos available to the newspapers nearly instantly, airplane travel was still a novelty and quite hazardous--no weather satellites in those days), and the few places where international boundaries were close to population centers made for easy control of immigration. The federal government has little reason to watch the rest of it. News always carried the opinion of the reporter back then. People didn't go to college to take "journalism" like it has been since the 1960s. If one wrote in a way to attract readers, one could get a job in the city room those days. That is the way it was.
Reporting and Propaganda
Shadows_Girl
When the time comes that a nation is involved in a war the first thing a government has to do (in order to make sure that enough of ITS people will be willing to go and kill the people of another country) is to make the people of the "enemy" nation appear as less than human. And they will use lies, racial slurs and whatever else they feel they need to get that job done. People have qualms about killing other people. They have no problem killing sub-human animals. Until...that is...after they come home and begin to think about it. ALL NATIONS HAVE DONE AND CONTINUE TO DO THIS. If they didn't---it would get very difficult to have wars. And no one wants to give THOSE up. Oh, people TALK about "putting an end to war" and about "peace on earth" and all of that. But that's just talk. When one looks at the history of Mankind one realizes one mustn't take any of that talk seriously. Anymore than they should take seriously the concept of "freedom." People think because they live in a more or less Democratic country that they are free. They aren't. The bars on their prison cells are just camouflaged.
Neutral reporting
soundfile
The job of news reporters is to report the facts, sir, not to take sides. It is the job of the citizens to form their own opinions, not to rely on Big Brother to provide opinions for them. That's what the bad guys did, indoctrinate their people into thinking their gov't could do no wrong. Failure to abide by journalistic principles has resulted in the US falling into the same trap as Nazi Germany. Because the media has failed to report objectively, we started a war based on lies. These are great recordings to learn from. But they shouldn't be used to justify every war or every government.
Shadows Girl?
formergman
If you doubt the validity of World War 2, then Shadows Girl, you should try reading The Rape Of Nanking by Iris Chang, or any book about what the Nazis were all about. And here, in the United States, we enjoy more freedom than in any other country in the world, now or in any other time. Sure, not all wars are just, and war is in no way glorious or even wanted, but some wars are necessary. If you know the history of the world you will realize this and come out of the shadows.