Aviation pulp fiction novels - Air War (Summer 1942) (ebook)

Five aviation pulp fiction novels
Air War (Summer 1942)

Mask of Glory By William O’Sullivan
Skid Carr, Crop-Dusting Pilot from the U.S.A., Finds Himself in the Middle of a Nazi Spy Plot That It Takes a Slue of Bombers and Fighters to Break Up! 
The man who hated By Norman A. Daniels
In spite of appearances, Lieutenant Brandon backs a comrade’s play all the way to the jaws of death ! 
Captain Danger over Macassar Strait By Lt. Scott Morgan
The Great Yank fighter, back in the uniform of his own country, meets the Japs in person - and makes them say «So velly sorry ! ». 
Last Command By Robert Sidney Bowen
It was curtains for somebody no matter how things turned out - So Commander Stickney played the final act alone ! 
Remember the Reuben James, too ! By Stuart Campbell
Lieutenant Becker had an impossible choice to make - Until a wild Irishman took the decision out of his hands !

136 pages - in English - PDF to download

The wartime « pulp fiction », a very particular genre

The United States’ entry into World War II gave a new direction to the pulp comic industry, as the American government sought to use comics as propaganda to drum up support for the war effort and promote racial stereotypes about the nation’s adversaries. After the war, the government largely ceased to regulate this medium.
This literary genre benefited from the unabashed patriotism and racist imagery it contained. It was considered harmless, albeit unsophisticated, pro-American entertainment for soldiers and civilians engaged in a brutal, total, race-based war against fascism.
In 1943, their simplicity even attracted the attention of war propaganda agencies such as the Writers’ War Board (WWB), which saw the genre as a means of disseminating propaganda to a wide and diverse audience. The WWB received funding and support from the federal government through the Office of War Information (OWI). Protected by this appearance of independence, the WWB integrated propaganda into popular culture in order to fuel hatred of fascism, encourage racial tolerance in American society, and promote post-war international cooperation. Beginning in April 1943, the WWB used this literature to shape popular perceptions of race and ethnicity, as well as to bolster support for the American war effort
The WWB provided publishers with a clear template for German characters. Above all, the committee urged authors to equate Germans with Nazis.
 Americans were to believe that Germans, like the Japanese, were incurably hostile; they could only be re-educated after a necessarily brutal conflict and total Allied victory. The committee encouraged authors to place less emphasis on individual villains in favour of fascism and ‘Germanness.’
The German nation, and all its inhabitants, were the enemies of democracy, freedom, and equality. It was therefore unnecessary to create unique and grotesque Nazi villains in the comics. The very real atrocities committed by ordinary German soldiers provided sufficient raw material to condemn fascism in the comics.
The Japanese were seen as both subhuman - defined in terms of primitivism, immaturity, and collective mental and emotional deficiency - and as members of a powerful pan-Asian threat to American society, the yellow peril.
Comic books and pulp novels were sold on military bases, while civilian buyers sent used copies to servicemen stationed wherever the war was being fought. Beginning in 1943, the Army and Navy also collaborated directly with publishers to create comic books designed to encourage enlistment. In the end, 44% of men in the armed forces described themselves as readers of this literature.
By cooperating with agencies such as the WWB and enthusiastically embracing the concept of total war, the publishers of these novels reinforced their patriotic credibility while gaining millions of new readers. They reaped huge profits, but the authors and artists were paid very little for their work.
In France, a similar genre emerged with the Collection Patrie, published by Éditions Rouff, a collection of short stories that recounted, in a fictionalised and propagandistic manner, various episodes from the First and Second World Wars.
 The original print runs are mostly characterised by poor printing on low-quality paper, imposed by the restrictions of the time. Inspired by war propaganda, the collection appears to be very anti-German. The dominant themes are campaigns and battles, military units and the technical aspects of war.