LIFE Magazine – April 1 1946

LIFE Magazine – April 1, 1946 features St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Charles “Red” Barrett on the cover at the start of the 1946 baseball season. Barrett had just completed the best season of his career, leading the National League with 23 wins in 1945 and finishing third in MVP voting. The issue also includes a feature on the St. Louis Cardinals, then loaded with talent and viewed as a major pennant contender.

Beyond baseball, this issue captures the unsettled world of early postwar 1946. LIFE reports on Hermann Göring defending his Nazi record, changes in Soviet-occupied eastern Germany, the end of Wisconsin’s Progressive Party, and Operation Frostbite, which tested U.S. Navy carrier operations in Arctic conditions. A major photographic essay by Dmitri Kessel explores the Holy Land, while other features cover Paris fashion, inventor and advertising pioneer Douglas Leigh, and the emerging use of the Geiger counter in the atomic age.

Entertainment and popular culture are also well represented, including Groucho Marx preparing for A Night in Casablanca, Paris nightclub performer Moune, and a period advertisement for Saratoga Trunk starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. Together, the issue offers an unusually broad snapshot of sports, world affairs, science, movies and American life just months after World War II.

Inside This Issue

• Red Barrett & the St. Louis Cardinals — the Cardinals pitcher appears on the cover following his 23-win 1945 season, with an interior feature on the talent-rich St. Louis club.
• Operation Frostbite — LIFE reports on U.S. Navy carrier operations designed to test warfare capabilities in Arctic conditions.
• Hermann Göring — coverage of Göring defending his Nazi record during the postwar reckoning with Germany’s leadership.
• Eastern Germany After the War — a look at how war and occupation were transforming Germany’s Soviet-controlled eastern zone.
• The Holy Land — a substantial photographic essay by LIFE photographer Dmitri Kessel connecting contemporary landscapes with biblical history.
• Groucho Marx — behind-the-scenes movie coverage as Marx prepares for A Night in Casablanca.
• Douglas Leigh — a close-up of the innovative advertising designer whose spectacular signs and displays helped transform Broadway.
• Pearl Harbor Investigation — “The Man Who Pushed Pearl Harbor,” examining Senator Homer Ferguson and arguments for a stronger U.S. intelligence system.
• Paris Fashion Returns — LIFE documents Paris reasserting itself as a fashion center following World War II.
• Geiger Counter — a science feature on the radiation-detecting instrument as atomic technology entered public consciousness.

Original LIFE Magazines are authentic issues published between 1936 and 2000.