The War of Words
How Americaís GI Journalists Battled Censorship and Propaganda to Help Win World War II
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
From New York Times bestselling author Molly Guptill Manning comes The War of Words, the captivating story of how American troops in World War II wielded pens to tell their own stories as they made history.
At a time when civilian periodicals faced strict censorship, US Army Chief of Staff George Marshall won the support of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to create an expansive troop-newspaper program. Both Marshall and FDR recognized that there was a second struggle taking place outside the battlefields of World War II—the war of words. While Hitler inundated the globe with propaganda, morale across the US Army dwindled. As the Axis blurred the lines between truth and fiction, the best defense was for American troops to bring the truth into focus by writing it down and disseminating it themselves.
By war’s end, over 4,600 unique GI publications had been printed around the world. In newsprint, troops made sense of their hardships, losses, and reasons for fighting. These newspapers—by and for the troops—became the heart and soul of a unit.
From Normandy to the shores of Japan, American soldiers exercised a level of free speech the military had never known nor would again. It was an extraordinary chapter in American democracy and military history. In the war for “four freedoms,” it was remarkably fitting that troops fought not only with guns but with their pens.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this eye-opening account, historian Manning (When Books Went to War) delves into the pivotal role amateur U.S. troop newspapers played in WWII. In 1942, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall revitalized the Army's tradition of unit-based newspapers with the distribution of field kits "brimming with printing gear," including mimeograph machines, on which the mostly novice journalists cranked out their newssheets. At a time when the press around the world was censored (even American newspapers were corralled by the U.S. government into a voluntary program of "self-regulation"), troop journalists on the Western front counterpunched against Nazi propaganda and kept soldiers well-informed. (In the Pacific theater, on the other hand, unit newspapers under the domineering Gen. Douglas MacArthur bristled with "the rancor, depression, and resentment" of censorship.) Army soldier-journalists in the field, "dazed by the horror of combat and the prospect of death," documented critical moments in history: for example, the May 11, 1945, issue of the 42nd Rainbow Division's Rainbow Reveille was absent its "usual swagger and humor" because it focused its coverage on the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Based on letters and newspaper extracts, Manning's vital study draws liberally and poignantly on soldiers' own words. It's an essential contribution to the history of WWII.
