Top 10 Myths About World War II

May 8, 1945: Nazi Germany surrenders, ending the European Theater of World War II. It becomes known as V-E Day: Victory in Europe. V-J Day, Victory over Japan, came on August 14.

Top 10 Myths About World War II

1. It Began On September 1, 1939. That's the date on which Nazi Germany invaded Poland, beginning what became known as "the European Theater" of the war. But "the Pacific Theater" had begun earlier. Japan had been attacking China since 1931, when they invaded and annexed the province of Manchuria.

2. It never would have happened without Hitler. Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. He wanted revenge on Britain, France, Russia, and their client states Poland and Czechoslovakia. And he wanted revenge on the Jews, whom he blamed for a "stab in the back" that caused Germany to lose World War I.

He wasn't the only one who thought so. Had he never become Chancellor, there were others willing to step into the breach of chaos Germany was in during the early 1930s. Another such figure might not have been as eager to go to war. But it would have happened. And such a figure might have been a more competent commander-in-chief, allowing Germany to hold out longer, and maybe even to negotiate a peace that would have allowed it to continue as a fascist nation.

3. The French were cowards who surrendered too early. They were overwhelmed by the Nazis, unaware that their defenses, such as the Maginot Line, would be terribly ineffective. What were they supposed to do? Surrendering allowed them to stay alive as a country.

And they had a Resistance, and it kept fighting for 4 years, until the Allies came in and turned the tide. That sounds like "surrender" was a half-truth.

French Resistance flag, with the Cross of Lorraine

4. FDR knew Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked, and let it happen. This charge has been leveled at Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the greatest President ever produced by the Democratic Party, by Republicans who don't want to give a Democrat credit for winning the war.

They want the credit for winning the war to go to Republicans like Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower (who was elected President in 1952 and 1956, solely on the basis of his wartime command, as he'd never held elective or even civilian appointive office) and Douglas MacArthur (whom the hard right really wanted in the elections of 1948 and 1952).

The argument is that FDR couldn't convince Congress to declare war on Nazi Germany, because so many of them were either big-city Democrats, with large Irish constituencies that didn't want to go to war on behalf of Great Britain, and Italian constituencies that didn't want to go to war against Italy; or Midwesterners, of both parties, in America's largest ethnic group, which, then as now, was German, and didn't want to go to war against Germany.

Therefore, the only way to get America into a war against Germany was to get it into a war with Germany's ally, Imperial Japan. So, in their theory, FDR provoked Japan by instituting an embargo on exports to them, including oil; freezing Japanese assets in U.S. banks; and supplying Japan's enemy, China, through Britain.

Every surviving document that discussed the possibility of Japanese retaliation for these measures suggests a direct countermeasure, such as economic sanctions; or an attack on a considerably closer U.S. military base, such as one in the Philippines. Which did happen: On December 7 and 8, 1941, one or the other, Japan attacked pretty much every base America had in the Pacific Ocean, and some British targets, too. As he said in his address to Congress on December 8, asking for a Declaration of War:

Yesterday, the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And, this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Malaya (Malaysia) and Hong Kong were then under British control. Congress granted the Declaration of War. America was at war with Japan. But it still was not at war with Germany. Three days later, on December 11, to aid its ally, Germany declared war on America. Only then did Congress declare war on Germany.

But the surviving documents that suggest that the Japanese would attack a U.S. military base directly mentioned the Philippines -- not the Hawaiian Islands, still a U.S. Territory. (Hawaii gained Statehood in 1959.) The idea that the Japanese were even capable of an attack on Hawaii appears not to have been considered by the U.S. Department of War. It was a complete surprise. It wasn't just that FDR didn't know: Nobody on our side knew.

5. Churchill was an incorruptible good guy. Using the term "corrupt" suggests that the subject was willing to be bribed with something -- money, power, or something else -- to achieve his goals. In that regard, calling Winston Churchill "corrupt" is ridiculous. He was always filthy rich, and could not be bought.

"You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?'

Well, do you, you old sod?"

But... "Good guy"? He hated Nazis, which was a plus, especially when few others were willing to oppose them publicly. He hated Communists, which was a plus. But he was also an Englishman of the Victorian era: He was first elected to Parliament in 1900, the last full year of Queen Victoria's life. He was a big believer in the British Empire, and no fan of the natives of its colonies.

In 1919, as Secretary of State for Air, he agreed to the Royal Air Force's request to use mustard gas in Iraq: "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gases against uncivilised tribes." The Versailles Conference was going on at the time, and Churchill said, "The democratic principles of Europe are by no means suited to the development of Asiatic and African people."

This was while the Irish War of Independence was going on. As in opposition to Margaret Thatcher and the paramilitary terrorists she supported in the early 1980s, there were hunger strikers in Ireland then, too. Of them, Churchill said, "Hunger strikers will be allowed to die in jail, the more the merrier. Some of them have died already, and a damn bad job they were not all allowed to die." And this was a man who had spent part of his childhood in Ireland: His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, served as the island's Lord Lieutenant, and his brother, Jack, was born there.

Winston also wanted to maintain control of the Indian subcontinent, saying in 1942, "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." That same year, he wrote, "Eventually, the Moslems will become master, because they are warriors, while the Hindus are windbags. Yes, windbags! Oh, of course, when it comes to fine speeches, skilfully balanced resolutions and legalistic castles in the air, the Hindus are real experts! They're in their element! When it comes to business, when something must be decided on quickly, implemented, executed -- here the Hindus say 'pass.' Here they immediately reveal their internal flabbiness."

It got worse. Of Hindus, Churchill once said, "They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." Famine struck the Bengal province, including present-day Bangladesh, in 1943, and over 3 million people starved to death, more than in the Irish potato famine of 100 years earlier. Churchill didn't lift a finger to send them food. For this reason, Indians, especially Bengalis, accuse Churchill of genocide, the very thing he was trying to stop the Nazis from committing.

In 1931, he said this of Mohandas Gandhi, who became world-famous with his Salt March the previous year: "It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir... striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace."

Not that Gandhi was a saint. His activities with, and feelings toward, women were unacceptable to present-day sensibilities. And on July 23, 1939, he wrote this letter to Hitler. I have not changed a word, or corrected a misspelling (as with "deliberately"):

Dear friend,

Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it may be worth.

It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay the price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has seliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success? Any way I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing to you.

That's right: Gandhi called Hitler "friend." At best, this was incredibly naive. Forty days later, Hitler invaded Poland.

6. The Western Democracies won it. If it wasn't for the 27 million deaths, military and civilian combined, of citizens of the Soviet Union, the Nazis wouldn't have lost nearly as many men as they did.

In the years to come, America and Britain didn't want to admit anything good about the Communist nations, so they came to believe that they won the war, without Soviet help. The British like to take it a step further: They like to claim that they stood alone for 2 years until America came in, and that America has hogged the glory ever since.

It gets taken even further than that. When England play Germany in soccer, England fans sing this, to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain":

There were ten German bombers in the air. (In the air!)

There were ten German bombers in the air. (In the air!)

There were ten German bombers

Ten German bombers

Ten German bombers in the air. (In the air!)

And the RAF of England shot one down. (Shot one down!)

And the RAF of England shot one down. (Shot one down!)

And the RAF of England

RAF of England

RAF of England shot one down. (Shot one down!)

There were nine German bombers in the air...

And so on, until there's no German bombers in the air, 'cause "the RAF of England shot them down." This overlooks the fact that, during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and '41, before America got into The War, in addition to Englishmen, the Royal Air Force had Welshmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, Africans, expatriate Americans, and exiles from all over the Nazi-controlled lands of Europe, but especially France and Poland. The French and the Polish actually exceeded those from elsewhere in the British Empire. If it had only been Englishmen in the RAF, those German bombers would have won. And the English footie fans can't even bring themselves to admit that.

7. If Hitler had only (pick your move that he could have made), he would have won the war. Unless you mean "If he hadn't invaded the Soviet Union," or "If he hadn't declared war on America." If he had never opposed the 2 strongest nations on Earth other than his own, he might have lasted long enough to get a stalemate with the 3rd of the 3 strongest other than his own, Britain, and the Third Reich might have lasted a lot longer. It wouldn't have been "The Thousand-Year Reich" that he proclaimed, but it would have lasted longer than the 12 years that it did.

But once he invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, he was doomed. Even if America hadn't gotten into the "European Theater" of the war, it would have been a matter of time before the Soviets got to Berlin. And then, Britain and France would have been faced with a Red Europe, as Stalin would have been more than happy to add the formerly Nazi-controlled countries, including France, to his Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

8. Roosevelt "sold out to Stalin" at Yalta. The last meeting between FDR, Stalin and Churchill was at Yalta, in the Crimea, on the Black Sea -- part of the territory of Ukraine that Vladimir Putin annexed to Russia -- from February 4 to 11, 1945. 

Ever since, conservatives have claimed that FDR "betrayed" Eastern Europe by leaving it to Stalin. Well, what was FDR supposed to do? Send American troops into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, et al.? In other words, provoke Stalin?

The war was not over. Germany was still fighting, even if the end, there, was in sight. Japan was still fighting, with no end in sight. The Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa were yet to come. FDR needed the Soviet Union in that fight. He also knew that the United Nations would be stronger after the war if the Soviets were in it. Roosevelt agreed to some concessions at Yalta, for the same reason he cut his social programs short, telling a reporter, "Dr. New Deal had to give way to Dr. Win the War."

My father, of Polish descent, was a Kennedy Democrat, but he never forgave Roosevelt, the President when he was born, for how he handled the Polish situation at Yalta. But David Reynolds, a professor of history at Cambridge University, has written:

The so-called "Yalta myths" have been a great part of Republican mythology ever since the 1940s. They were a way of attacking Roosevelt and the Democratic party and it’s been brought up at various times since. The assumption behind it is that Roosevelt "sold out" Poland and Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. It’s hard really to square that with the realities of 1945. The Red Army is in control of most of Poland by the time they meet at Yalta. So unless you embarked, say, on a war to evict the Red Army from Poland, there really is nothing you can do about that.

In other words, Poland and Eastern Europe were not Roosevelt's to "sell." Stalin already had them.

If FDR "sold out to Stalin at Yalta," then so did Churchill. Because of Stalin's promises, Churchill believed that he would keep his word regarding Poland and remarked, "Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I am wrong about Stalin." He was.

9. Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was not necessary to end the war. The closer the U.S. got to the Japanese home islands, the harder the Japanese army fought. With victory at Okinawa on June 22, 1945, the U.S. got as close to the home islands as could be gotten without building new, closer islands. But that battle took 12 weeks. There were 12,500 Americans killed.

Compare that total with the 4,500 killed in 8 years in Iraq. Those 12,500 were more men, in 12 weeks, than America lost in Vietnam in any single year except 1968. The Japanese lost 110,000 men, and even more civilians on the island may have been killed.

President Harry S Truman, who didn't even know about the atomic bomb project until his 2nd day in office -- that's right: FDR did not tell his own Vice President about it -- was given these figures. He asked for figures of how many soldiers would die in an invasion of the Japanese home islands, and how long it would take. He was told over 1 million Japanese, half as many Americans, and it would take at least 6 months of fighting to get Japan to surrender. Given that "X-Day," the day the invasion was set to begin, would have been November 1, 1945, that meant that the "Pacific Theater" of the war would still have been in progress by May 1, 1946.

Truman asked when the atomic bomb would be ready. He was told that the 1st test would be on July 16, and that, if successful, more would be ready to go at a moment's notice. He knew that, if the invasion happened, and the predictions for it came true (and he believed that they would), and then it came out that America had the bombs that would have ended the war before the invasion, and Truman didn't use them, the American people would blow their stacks. He knew it would destroy his reputation as a strong leader who cared about the country. He cared more about that than he did about the Democratic Party losing the 1946 Congressional elections or the 1948 Presidential election.

He gave the order to proceed. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6. On August 9, Nagasaki was bombed, and the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria. The Japanese knew it was only going to get worse, much worse, and surrendered on August 14, which became known as V-J Day.

10. Black men serving in the war made the desegregation of baseball possible. The line was, "If we can stop bullets, why not balls?" In 1945, Albert "Happy" Chandler, a former Governor of Kentucky and U.S. Senator, was appointed Commissioner of Baseball. (He said he took the job because he loved baseball, and because it paid better than serving in the Senate.) He cited black men serving in the war as a reason to allow them in the professional ranks of baseball.

But there was a reason Chandler was appointed to the post: It was vacant. It was vacant because the 1st and only man, to that point, to hold it, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, had died in 1944. And he was a racist. While he publicly denied that there was any reason why black men couldn't play in the major leagues, there was no way he was ever going to allow it. And he loved being Commissioner, so he was never going to resign, even though he was 78 years old when he died.

And he looked old when he was

considerably younger than that.

Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed Jackie Robinson to a contract on October 23, 1945. Had Landis still been alive and on the job on that date, there is no way in hell that he would have allowed that contract to stand. Not even if a black American soldier had shot Hitler, or if a black American pilot had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, or even if a black man had, by whatever means, saved Landis' own life.

Lieutenant Jack R. Robinson, U.S. Army.

Don't bother looking for a picture of Kenesaw Mountain Landis

in a military uniform: He never served, and so it doesn't exist.

If Landis were still alive in 1945, then, today, Jackie Robinson would be remembered, if at all, as a good running back for UCLA in 1940. And God only knows when a black man would have played in Major League Baseball. But it wouldn't have been while Landis was still alive.

Of course, Rickey was a lawyer. And a brilliant man. He could have sued, and argued the case very well. But Landis had been a federal Judge, meaning he was also a lawyer. He could have tied the case up for years.

If Landis had still been alive and Commissioner in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, he still would have held firm, until the Supreme Court got the case of Brooklyn National League Baseball Club, Inc. v. Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and Chief Justice Earl Warren would have done what he did in Brown v. Board, and gotten a unanimous ruling in favor of the plaintiff, granting great joy to black Americans, and giving the elderly Landis a terrible public humiliation.

But it still would have been, at the minimum, the Summer of 1954, before that ruling was issued. Which means the debuts of Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Monte Irvin, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks and Hank Aaron all would have been delayed -- and, given the ages of some of them, possibly prevented entirely.

Happy 100th Birthday, Eddie Robinson!

Believe it or not, there are 4 men named Robinson in the Baseball Hall of Fame:

* Jackie Robinson was the man who reintegrated baseball in 1947, and became an all-time great above and beyond his pioneer status. He led the Brooklyn Dodgers to 6 Pennants (just missing 2 others) and a win in the 1955 World Series. 

* Frank Robinson remains the only man to be named the Most Valuable Player in each League, and he also became the 1st black manager in each League.

* Brooks Robinson became one of the best 3rd basemen ever, and reminded fans just how important, and how spectacular, defense can be. Together, he (white) and Frank Robinson (black) turned the Baltimore Orioles into winners of 4 Pennants and 2 World Series. 

* And Wilbert Robinson was a very good catcher who became a great manager, winning National League Pennants in 1916 and 1920. He was so admired, the team was sort-of named for him while he was its manager, from 1914 to 1931: The Brooklyn Robins. Afterward, it resumed its former name: The Dodgers. 

In comparison, the Hall has 2 Johnsons, Walter and Randy; 2 Jacksons, Travis and Reggie; 2 Gibsons, Josh and Bob; but only 1 Smith, Ozzie; and no Joneses. And 2 Wrights, the brothers Harry and George; 2 Waners, the brothers Paul and Lloyd; and 2 MacPhails, Larry and his son Lee. But it has 4 Robinsons.

*

Eddie Robinson will never be in the Hall of Fame. But he is an important figure in baseball history.

William Edward Robinson was born on December 15, 1920 in Paris, Texas. A 1st baseman who batted lefthanded and threw righthanded, he made his major league debut on September 9, 1942, with the Cleveland Indians. 

He would miss the next 3 seasons serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II. In 1943, during his service, he married Elayne Elder. They had 2 children, and divorced in 1951. He later married Bette Farlow, and had 3 more children.

He returned to the major leagues in 1946, and, wearing Number 3 (which the team would later retire for an earlier star, Hall-of-Fame outfielder Earl Averill), helped the Indians win the 1948 World Series. 

After that season, he was traded to the Washington Senators, and in mid-1950 to the Chicago White Sox. He was named an All-Star in 1949, 1951, 1952 and 1953, starting at 1st base for the American League in the 1949 and 1952 All-Star Games.

He was traded to the Philadelphia Athletics in 1953, and to the Yankees in 1954, helping them win a Pennant in 1955. As a Yankee, he wore Number 36.

In 1956, they traded him back to the Athletics, who had moved to Kansas City. His last season in the majors was 1957, with the Detroit Tigers, then back with the Indians, and closing with the Baltimore Orioles. He finished with a lifetime batting average of .268 and 172 home runs.

Having played under manager Paul Richards, a fellow Texan, in Chicago and  Baltimore, he became one of Richards' Oriole coaches, and then followed him to the 1962 expansion team that would become known as the Houston Astros.

He left Richards to become the farm system director for the A's, but they were now owned by Charlie Finley, and, like so many men before him and so many of them after him, Robinson got tired of Finley's nonsense, and left.

In 1968, Richards gave Robinson another lifeline, with the Atlanta Braves. He succeeded Richards as their general manager in 1972, held the job when their Hank Aaron became the all-time home run leader in 1974, and left in 1976, growing tired of another business tycoon who had bought a baseball team and thought he knew more than "baseball lifers" like Eddie Robinson: Ted Turner.

In 1977, Eddie returned to his native North Texas, serving as GM of the Texas Rangers through 1982. His last job in baseball was as a scout for the Boston Red Sox, the only one of the 8 founding franchises of the AL for whom he hadn't played.

In 2011, at the age of 90, he published a memoir: Lucky Me: My Sixty-Five Years in Baseball.

By the time the Indians won the Pennant in 2016, Eddie Robinson was 95, and the last living former player who had played on one of their World Series winners. They had also won in 1920, and had played in the World Series but lost in 1954, 1995 and 1997.

Having become the last living player who had played at their League Park, and had also played for them at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, the Fort Worth, Texas resident was invited to Progressive Field for the 2016 World Series, and attended Game 6, with the Indians looking to end their 68-year drought that night, against the Chicago Cubs. 

But the Cubs won, and also won Game 7, to end their 108-year drought. The Indians' drought is now the longest.

He is 1 of 12 living veterans of both Major League Baseball and World War II, 1 of 4 living men who played in MLB during World War II, 1 of 15 living players who played in the 1940s, 1 of 5 living former Philadelphia Athletics, 1 of 24 living former "old Washington Senators," 1 of 17 living men who played for the Yankees under manager Casey Stengel; and, since succeeding Val Heim as each at Heim's death on November 21, 2019, both the earliest and the oldest living former MLB player. 

One distinction he does not have, however, is that of the earliest living World Series winner. That one belongs to Bobby Brown, the 96-year-old former 3rd baseman and retired cardiologist who is the last surviving member of the Yankees' World Series winners of 1947. He is also the last survivor of the Yankee title teams of 1949, 1950 and 1951.

Don Larsen, Bobby Brown and Eddie Robinson,

at Old-Timers Day at Yankee Stadium, 2015.

Happy 100th Birthday, Eddie Robinson. He is a baseball lifer who has had an amazing life.

Daily News Centennial, Part I: 1919-1949

June 26, 1919, 100 years ago: The New York Daily News is first published. It likes to call itself "New York's Hometown Paper," and it really is.

As I've said many times: The Daily News is the face that New York City likes to show itself, while the Times is the face The City prefers to show the rest of the world, and the Post is a face only a mother could love. (But not my mother. Hers didn't much like it, either.)

The Daily News used to call itself "New York's Picture Newspaper," and the object between "Daily" and "News" on its masthead is a camera. It's why the TV station it founded in 1948 -- as many early radio TV stations were founded by newspapers -- has the call letters WPIX.

Today, WPIX-Channel 11 is still headquartered in the 476-foot Art Deco Daily News Building, which opened in 1930 at 220 East 42nd Street, although the paper is not. The Daily News Building has a giant globe in its lobby, making it the ideal place to film the Daily Planet scenes in the Christopher Reeve-era Superman movies (1978 to 1987).

In 1995, the Daily News moved operations to 450 West 33rd Street, which is now the world headquarters of the Associated Press (AP). In 2011, the Daily News moved to 4 New York Plaza, at Broad & Water Streets and the southern tip of Manhattan Island. From October 2012 to November 2013, they had to vacate due to damage from Hurricane Sandy, but have moved back.

Many early New York newspapers were on Park Row, giving them easy access to City Hall across the street. This has long since ceased to be the case. The New York Post, its tabloid rival, was long headquartered on South Street, near the South Street Seaport and the Brooklyn Bridge. It is now at 1211 6th Avenue, at 48th Street, sharing headquarters with its NewsCorp brethren, Fox News. The New York Times, whose original building gave its name to Times Square, is now in a 1,046-foot tower at 620 8th Avenue at 41st Street, across from Port Authority Bus Terminal.

As a longtime (but no longer) part of the Chicago Tribune system, the News was long a populist conservative paper, while the Post was the preferred paper of liberal intellectuals, especially Jewish ones. But when Rupert Murdoch bought the Post in 1976, he made it populist conservative, and the News switched to a more -- but not entirely -- liberal attitude.

After long being one of the highest-circulating newspapers in America, the Daily News has significantly declined: At an average of 300,000 per day, far below their former peak of 2 million, which they held for much of the 20th Century, they now trail the Post at 425,000, and the Times at 2.1 million. (And Donald Trump says the Times is "failing.")

I begin a display of prominent front pages from its history.

June 26, 1919, the 1st front page, discussing the Treaty of Versailles, and the upcoming visit of Britain's Prince of Wales -- later King Edward VIII and the Duke of Windsor -- to America:

October 5, 1921, discussing the World Series between the Yankees and the Giants, both then playing their home games at the Polo Grounds:

October 9, 1922, after the Giants made it back-to-back World Series wins over the Yankees:

August 3, 1923, President Warren G. Harding had died the previous evening:

October 16, 1923, after the Yankees got revenge on the Giants, winning their 1st World Series:

August 25, 1926, at the out-of-control funeral for actor Rudolph Valentino, dead of peritonitis at age 31, before the age of antibiotics which could have saved him:

August 23, 1927, after the unjust execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti:

October 9, 1927, after the Yankees won the World Series:

January 13, 1928, after Ruth Snyder became the 1st female convict executed in the State of New York:

October 30, 1929, after the Wall Street crash:

October 18, 1931, Al Capone, still the biggest gangster in American history, convicted of income tax evasion in Chicago:

May 13, 1932, after the kidnapping and murder of toddler Charles Lindbergh Jr., son of the famous aviator:

December 6, 1933, when the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, Prohibition, was repealed by the 21st Amendment:

July 23, 1934, John Dillinger, the bank robber known as "Public Enemy Number 1" is caught and killed by the FBI:

March 20, 1935:

August 17, 1935:

October 25, 1935, a legendary Mobster, Dutch Schultz, gets rubbed out in Newark:

October 7, 1936, following a Subway Series:

November 4, 1936, both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his successor as Governor of New York, Herbert Lehman, are overwhelmingly re-elected:

May 7, 1937, the Hindenburg burns at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Ocean County, New Jersey:

June 8, 1937, a legendary actress loses a battle with kidney failure:

July 3, 1937, it wasn't a good year for flying:

George Gershwin died on July 11, 1937, of a brain tumor, only 38 years old, but if the Daily News had a big headline about it, it isn't on Google Images.

October 11, 1937, Yankees win another Subway Series, and the News buries the lead: Lefty Gomez, one of the worst-hitting pitchers ever, gets the winning hit:

June 23, 1938, Joe Louis knocks out unwilling Nazi symbol Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium:

September 21, 1938, the biggest hurricane to hit the Northeastern U.S. until Sandy, with New England and especially Rhode Island being hit even harder than New York and New Jersey:

October 10, 1938, Yankees win World Series again:

October 31, 1938, after CBS broadcast Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds:

November 11, 1938, after word reached America of "Kristallnacht":

May 1, 1939, the New York World's Fair opens in Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, Queens:

July 5, 1939, coverage of Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day:

September 2, 1939:

October 9, 1939:

June 10, 1940, the Allied effort in World War II isn't going so well:

September 13, 1940, Succasunna, Morris County, New Jersey:

October 7, 1941, the 1st World Series between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers:

December 8, 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor:

October 12, 1943, Yankees win another World Series:

June 7, 1944, after the D-Day invasion:

April 13, 1945, after FDR died:

May 2, 1945, after word reached America that Adolf Hitler had committed suicide on April 30, with the Soviet Union's Red Army closing in on Berlin:

May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe, or "V-E Day":

August 8, 1945, The Bomb:

August 15, 1945, the day after the announcement of the surrender in Japan, "V-J Day":

April 12, 1947, after the Brooklyn Dodgers promoted Jackie Robinson from their farm system -- there apparently wasn't a big front page headline on April 16, the day after his 1st actual major league game:

December 27, 1947, a snowfall that would reach 26 inches:

August 17, 1948:

November 4, 1948, unlike their corporate sister paper, the Chicago Tribune, the Daily News waited a day before declaring a definitive winner in the Presidential election:

October 10, 1949, Bronx over Brooklyn again:

Part 2 follows.