Current Issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History
Spring 2025, Volume 108, Number 3
Soldiers plant a flower instead of a flag in this 1968 cover image from the GI underground newspaper Fun Travel Adventure, produced by soldiers at Fort Knox in Kentucky. GI PRESS COLLECTION
Featured Story
Hot Off the GI Press: How Dissenting Soldiers Helped End the War in Vietnam
By Ron Carver
During the Vietnam War, underground newspapers—produced by GIs for GIs—allowed disaffected GIs to build a powerful, and increasingly visible, peace movement within the ranks. The movement, led by US soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, many of whom had spent time in Vietnam during the war, began in the late 1960s. They created underground newspapers like RAGE and Up Against the Bulkhead to tell “the truth about the war in ’Nam,” offering support and an alternative news source for soldiers questioning the war. Using newspapers, flyers, and other material from the GI Press Collection, an online archive hosted by the Wisconsin Historical Society, author Ron Carver shares stories of the burgeoning peace movement within the military during the Vietnam War era.
Icicle beards (and mustaches and eyebrows) are a common and oft-photographed sight at the Birkebeiner finish line. AMERICAN BIRKEBEINER SKI FOUNDATION .
Spotlight
Birkie Fever: A Legendary Ski Race Through the North Woods of Wisconsin
Jerome P. Poling
Each February, cross-country skiers from across the nation and around the world descend upon the sleepy northern Wisconsin town of Hayward to compete in the American Birkebeiner. In this short preview, author Jerry P. Poling explains “Birkie Fever” and the accompanying zeal that overtakes the town as racers take part in world-class race through Wisconsin’s north woods. Poling’s American Birkebeiner: The Nation’s Greatest Ski Marathon will be published in fall of 2025 by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
The Chicago Religious Task Force published the newsletter Basta! to share information on the sanctuary movement with readers across America. BASTA! FEBRUARY 1983
Radical Hospitality: Interfaith and Interracial Solidarity in the Sanctuary Movement
By Sergio González
In the early 1980s, Central American asylum seekers found safe harbor as a coalition of sanctuary churches across southern Wisconsin opened their doors. From 1980 to 1984, more than half a million Salvadorans and Guatemalans arrived in the United States as they fled political violence and human rights abuses at home, but the vast majority were not offered asylum. The crisis that ensued was highly political, and it also raised humanitarian concerns. In this article, based on his 2024 book Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging & Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin, González looks at the response of churches across faith traditions and racial divides who offered safe harbor to the refugees.
The railroad modernized services like mail delivery to small communities. WHI IMAGE ID 68110
When Tomah Owned the Railroad
By Evelyn Atkinson
When the small city of Tomah became the end point of the West Wisconsin Railroad, it turned into a bustling railroad town overnight, fulfilling its ambitions for growth and connection. But within a decade, the relationship between the people of Wisconsin and the railroads had soured. Crippled by mismanagement and high costs, railroads like the West Wisconsin charged ever-higher prices for fares and shipping, angering the towns whose citizens had opened their wallets to help build the railroad. Author Evelyn Atkinson explores lawmaker’s attempts to balance the rights of the railroads with those of local citizens through the experience of one small town, asking: Who owned the railroad, the communities that paid for it or the corporations that ran it?
Book Excerpt
Red Arrow Across the Pacific: The Thirty-Second Infantry Division During World War II
By the Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Red Arrow Across the Pacific, released in fall 2024 by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, reveals the long-overdue story of the Thirty-Second “Red Arrow” Infantry Division. Made up of national guardsmen from Wisconsin and Michigan, the division eventually logged more combat hours than any other US Army division in World War II. Drawing on letters, memoirs, and interviews, author Mark D. Van Ells lets soldiers speak for themselves, describing the many ways war in the Pacific arena profoundly shaped them. This excerpt highlights the Red Arrowmen’s first foray into combat during the battle of Buna in Papua New Guinea.
A subscription to the Wisconsin Magazine of History is a benefit of membership to the Wisconsin Historical Society. The current issue, described above, will become available in the online archives as soon the next issue is published.
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