Fifty years ago, everybody understood that the 1930s and 1940s were warm.
“Droughts, floods, blizzards, tornadoes, typhoons and hurricanes have plagued much of the nation and the world in recent years. Most people considered these weather conditions to be abnormal and temporary, but instead, climatologists now believe that the first half of the Twentieth Century was blessed with unusually mild weather and that the global climate has begun returning to a harsher — but more normal — state.”
July 21, 1974

21 Jul 1974, 13 – The Des Moines Register at Newspapers.com