Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938–1944

47 writers chronicle the war from the Munich crisis and Kristallnacht to the Battle of San Pietro in Italy. More

Edited by Anne Matthews, Nancy Sorel, Roger Spiller, and Samuel Hynes

“[The] reporters are fearless, unpretentious, professional, vivid, and smart.” — The New Yorker

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Story of the Week John Fisher, “I First Saw the Ruins of Dunkerque”

News New animated film honors Edward Field, WWII veteran and a hero on several fronts

Story of the Week Susan B. Anthony II, “Working at the Navy Yard”

Order both Reporting World War II volumes in a boxed set and save $20!

This Library of America volume is the first of a unique two-volume anthology. Drawn from original newspaper and magazine reports, radio transcripts, and wartime books, Reporting World War II captures the intensity of the war’s unfolding drama as recorded by the best of a remarkable generation of journalists, whose talents, sense of purpose, and physical courage remain unsurpassed in the annals of war reporting. Here in one collection, over eighty writers, famous and forgotten alike, confront the crucial events of those years in writing of exceptional skill and emotional force.

The first volume traces the buildup to war and the first years of fighting: the Munich crisis, Kristallnacht, the fall of Poland and France, Pearl Harbor and Bataan, Guadalcanal and Salerno. William L. Shirer, Sigrid Schulz, and Howard K. Smith observe Nazi Germany from the inside; Edward R. Murrow and Ernie Pyle report from London during the Blitz; A.J. Liebling chronicles the Tunisian campaign; Margaret Bourke-White casts her eye on the Russian and Italian fronts. In a time when public perceptions were shaped mainly by the written word, correspondents like these were often as influential as politicians and as celebrated as movie stars.

Writers who covered the home front are included as well: E.B. White at a bond rally in Maine, Brendan Gill on gas rationing, James Agee’s caustic reviews of Hollywood war movies. And so are the famous literary figures who covered the war: Gertrude Stein in occupied France, John Steinbeck on a troopship bound for Italy. Here too are writers on aspects of the war still often neglected: George S. Schuyler and other African-American journalists attacking racism and segregation in the armed forces; Mary Heaton Vorse on the women working in the defense industries; a firsthand account of the internment of Japanese-Americans.

This volume contains a detailed chronology of the war, historical maps, biographical profiles of the journalists, explanatory notes, a glossary of military terms, and an index. Also included are thirty-two pages of photographs of the correspondents, many from private collections and never seen before. A companion volume covers 1944–1946.

The advisory board for Reporting World War II includes Samuel Hynes, Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature emeritus at Princeton University; Anne Matthews, the first woman to direct the Princeton Writing Program; writer Nancy Caldwell Sorel (1934-2015), and Roger J. Spiller, George C. Marshall Distinguished Professor of Military History (retired) at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938–1944 is kept in print by a gift from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

Story of the Week John Fisher, “I First Saw the Ruins of Dunkerque”

News New animated film honors Edward Field, WWII veteran and a hero on several fronts

Story of the Week Susan B. Anthony II, “Working at the Navy Yard”

Story of the Week George Strock and Life magazine, “Three Americans”

News Documentary GI Jews lends new texture to the American World War II saga

Story of the Week Rupert Trimmingham, “Democracy?”

Story of the Week Robert Hagy, “The Worst News That I Have Encountered in the Last 20 Years”

Interviews Lawrence Rosenwald: War No More demonstrates “remarkable vitality and diversity” of American antiwar writing
Table of Contents

William L. Shirer
“It’s All Over” (The Munich Conference: September 1938)
Dorothy Thompson
“Peace”—And the Crisis Begins (Germany Occupies the Sudetenland: October 1, 1938)
Vincent Sheean
Aufenthalt in Rosenheim (Anti-Semitism and the Germans: 1938)
Sigrid Schultz
Hitler Seizes 20,000 Jews (Kristallnacht: November 9, 1938)
William L. Shirer
“At Dawn This Morning Hitler Moved Against Poland” (The War Begins: September 1-3, 1939)
Otto D. Tolischus
Last Warsaw Fort Yields to Germans (The Fall of Poland: September 28, 1939)
Sonia Tomara
Nazi-Red Animosity Described Along Tense Frontier Border in Poland (Poland Caught Between Hitler and Stalin: November 1939)
A. J. Liebling
Paris Postscript (Paris Before the Fall: May-June 1940)
Virginia Cowles
The Beginning of the End (Flight from Paris: June 1940)
John Fisher
I First Saw the Ruins of Dunkerque (With the Victorious German Army: June 1940)
Sonia Tomara
French Conceal Despair; Move as Automatons (French Capitulation: June 17, 1940)
William L. Shirer
“Revengeful, Triumphant Hate” (French Humiliation at Compiegne: June 21, 1940)
Edward R. Murrow
Can They Take It? (The London Blitz: September 1940)
William L. Shirer
“The Hour Will Come When One of Us Will Break” (Berlin After a Year of War: September 1940)
Ernest R. Pope
Blitzkrieg Reporting (American Correspondents in Berlin: 1940)
Ernie Pyle
“This Dreadful Masterpiece” (London on Fire: The Raid of December 29, 1940)
“Life Without Redemption” (Londoners in the Underground: January 1941)
C. L. Sulzberger
Retreat of Serbs Related by Writer (German Invasion of Yugoslavia: April 1941)
Robert St. John
Under Fire (German Invasion of Greece: April 1941)
A. J. Liebling
“Remoteness from the War Affected Everybody” (A Witness to War Returns to America: 1940-41)
Otto D. Tolischus
The Way of Subjects (Formulating Japanese Imperial Ideology: August 1941)
Wes Gallagher
“See You in Lisbon” (Refugees in Flight from Central Europe: August 1941)
Otto D. Tolischus
Tokyo Army Aide Bids Japan Fight If Parleys Fail (Signs of Impending War with Japan: September 1941)
Margaret Bourke-White
Death and Life on the Battlefields (On the Russian Front: September 1941)
Howard K. Smith
Valhalla in Transition (Berlin After the Invasion of Russia: Autumn 1941)
Robert Hagy
“The Worst News That I Have Encountered in the Last 20 Years” (America First Rally in Pittsburgh: December 7, 1941)
New York Herald Tribune
President’s War Message (America Declares War: December 8, 1941)
Max Hill
“This Is For Keeps” (Roundup of American Reporters in Tokyo: December 1941)
Melville Jacoby
War Hits Manila (Japan Attacks the Philippines: December 8-28, 1941)
Cecil Brown
“Prepare to Abandon Ship” (The Sinking of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales: December 10, 1941)
Larry Lesueur
“Tanks and Cannons Standing Starkly in the Snow” (Devastation on the Moscow Front: December 1941)
Cecil Brown
Malay Jungle War (British Complacency in Malaya: December 1941)
Walter Bernstein
Juke Joint (Off Duty in Phenix City, Alabama: December 1941)
Raymond Clapper
“The Unexpected Couldn’t Happen” (Pearl Harbor Postmortem: January 1942)
E. B. White
“The Newspaper Reader Finds It Very Difficult to Get at the Truth” (Sugar-Coating the War News: February 1942)
Clark Lee
“Everybody Knew When the Planes Were Coming” (Corregidor: January-April 1942)
Annalee Jacoby
Bataan Nurses (Nurses Under Fire in the Philippines: April 1942)
Jack Belden
The Fever of Defeat (Collapse of Allied Resistance in Burma: May 1942)
Flight Through the Jungle (Stilwell’s Retreat Through Burma: May 1942)
Helen Lawrenson
“Damn the Torpedoes!” (The Merchant Marine and the Battle of the Atlantic: 1942)
Foster Hailey
The Battle of Midway (Carrier War in the Pacific: June 4, 1942)
Brendan Gill
X, B, and Chiefly A (The Home Front: Rationing, 1942)
Ted Nakashima
Concentration Camp: U.S. Style (The Internment of Japanese-Americans: 1942)
The New York Times
“A Vast Slaughterhouse” (Reports of Genocide in Eastern Europe: June 1942)
E. B. White
Bond Rally (Dorothy Lamour in Bangor, Maine: September 1942)
Richard Tregaskis
Battle of the Ridge (Guadalcanal: September 7-24, 1942)
John Hersey
The Battle of the River (Guadalcanal: October 7-9, 1942)
Walter Graebner
The Battle for Scoops (Foreign Correspondents in Moscow: October 1942)
J. Saunders Redding
A Negro Looks at This War (African-Americans and the War: An Argument for Support, 1942)
Roi Ottley
Negroes Are Saying. . . (African-Americans and the War: Discrimination and Protest, 1942)
Edward R. Murrow
“A Horror Beyond What Imagination Can Grasp” (Report on Mass Murder: December 1942)
Margaret Bourke-White
Women in Lifeboats (Torpedoed and Rescued at Sea: December 22, 1942)
Ernie Pyle
The U.S. and Vichy in North Africa (Algeria: December 1942)
   “Our Policy Is Still Appeasement”
   “I Gather New Respect for Americans”
Mary Heaton Vorse
The Girls of Elkton, Maryland (Munitions Workers: 1943)
A. J. Liebling
The Foamy Fields (Air War in Tunisia: January 1943)
Ernie Pyle
The War in Tunisia (February-May 1943)
   “Now It Is Killing That Animates Them”
   “Moving at Night in Total Blackness”
   “Only Slightly Above the Caveman Stage”
   “Too Little to Work With, As Usual”
   “Overrun Before They Knew What Was Happening”
   “Nothing To Do”
   “What a Tank Battle Looks Like”
   “The Fantastic Surge of Caterpillar Metal”
   “Into the Thick of Battle”
   “Brave Men. Brave Men!”
   “Little Boys Again, Lost in the Dark”
   “The Greatest Damage Is Psychological”
   “The God-Damned Infantry”
   “When a Unit Stops to Rest”
   “This Is Our War”
A. J. Liebling
Quest for Mollie (Uncovering a Soldier’s Story: Tunisia and the U.S., Spring-Summer 1943)
George S. Schuyler
“When American Citizens Murder U.S. Soldiers” (African-Americans and the War: Crimes Against Black G.I.‘s, 1943)
Robert Sherrod
The Japanese Mind (Aftermath of the Battle on Attu: June 1943)
Ernie Pyle
The Sicilian Campaign (July-August 1943)
   “The Dying Man Was Left Utterly Alone”
   “Damn Sick of War—and Deadly Tired”
   “A Hell of a Job”
   “Miracle Bridge”
John Hersey
This Is Democracy (American Military Administration in Sicily: August 1943)
Beirne Lay, Jr.
I Saw Regensburg Destroyed (B-17 Raid on Germany: August 17, 1943)
John Steinbeck
Fear of Death as Green Troops Sail to Invasion (Troop Ship to Salerno: September 1943)
Life Magazine/George Strock
Three Americans (Photograph of American War Dead: 1943)
William L. Shirer
The American Radio Traitors (Broadcasters for the Axis: 1943)
James Agee
So Proudly We Fail (American War Movies: 1943)
Deton J. Brooks, Jr.
Morale Sags at Camp Forrest as Jim Crow Rules (African-Americans and the War: A Southern Army Base, November 1943)
Edward Kennedy
Patton Struck Soldier in Hospital, Was Castigated by Eisenhower (The Patton Slapping Case: August-November 1943)
Richard Tregaskis
“Then I Got It” (American Correspondent Wounded in Italy: November 1943)
Robert Sherrod
from Tarawa: The Story of a Battle (The Marines at Tarawa: November 1943)
   “I Didn’t Know Whether We Had the Heart to Fight a War”
   View of the Carnage
   “The Hard Facts of War”
Edward R. Murrow
“The Target Was To Be the Big City” (Bombing Raid Over Berlin: December 2, 1943)
Martha Gellhorn
The Price of Fire (Royal Air Force Burn Center: December 1943)
Ernie Pyle
The Italian Campaign: “Slow Progress” (December 1943-January 1944)
   “The Land and the Weather Are Both Against Us”
   “One Demolished Town After Another”
   “Mule Packing Outfit”
   “This One Is Captain Waskow”
Homer Bigart
San Pietro a Village of the Dead; Victory Costs Americans Dearly (Battle of San Pietro: Italy, December 1943)
Margaret Bourke-White
Over the Lines (Spotting Artillery from a Piper Cub: Italy, 1943)
Vincent Tubbs
Christmas on New Guinea (African-American G.I.’s in the Southwest Pacific: December 1943)
Gertrude Stein
“Tired of Winter Tired of War” (Occupied France: January-February 1944)
Walter Bernstein
I Love Mountain Warfare (Italy: January 1944)
Contributors

James Agee
Jack Belden
Walter Bernsten
Homer Bigart
Margaret Bourke-White
Deton J. Brooks Jr.
Cecil Brown
Raymond Clapper
Virginia Cowles
Wes Gallagher
Martha Gellhorn
Brendan Gill
Walter Graebner
Foster Hailey
John Hersey
Max Hill
Annalee Jacoby
Melville Jacoby
Edward Kennedy
Helen Lawrenson
Beirne Lay Jr.
Clark Lee
Larry Lesueur
A. J. Leibling
Edward R. Murrow
Ted Nakashima
Roi Ottley
Ernest R. Pope
Ernie Pyle
J. Saunders Redding
Robert St. John
Sigrid Schultz
George S. Schuyler
Vincent Sheean
Robert Sherrod
William L. Shirer
Howard K. Smith
Gertrude Stein
John Steinbeck
C. L. Sulzberger
Dorothy Thompson
Otto D. Tolischus
Sonia Tomara
Richard Tregaskis
Vincent Tubbs
Mary Heaton Vorse
E. B. White

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