Reporting World War II

This set of essays offers new insights into the journalistic process and the pressures American front-line reporters experienced covering World War II. Transmitting stories through cable or couriers remained expensive and often required the cooperation of foreign governments and the American armed forces. Initially, reporters from a neutral America documented the early victories by Nazi Germany and the Soviet invasion of Finland. Not all journalists strove for objectivity. During her time reporting from Ireland, Helen Kirkpatrick remained a fierce critic of that country’s neutrality. Once the United States joined the fight after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American journalists supported the struggle against the Axis powers, but this volume will show that reporters, even when members of the army sponsored newspaper, Stars and Stripes were not mere ciphers of the official line.

African American reporters Roi Ottley and Ollie Stewart worked to bolster the morale of Black GIs and undermined the institutional racism endemic to the American war effort. Women front-line reporters are given their due in this volume examining the struggles to overcome gender bias by describing triumphs of Thérèse Mabel Bonney, Iris Carpenter, Lee Carson, and Anne Stringer.

The line between public relations and journalism could be a fine one as reflected by the U.S. Marine Corps’ creating its own network of Marine correspondents who reported on the Pacific island campaigns and had their work published by American media outlets. Despite the pressures of censorship, the best American reporters strove for accuracy in reporting the facts even when dependent on official communiqués issued by the military. Many wartime reporters, even when covering major turning points, sought to embrace a reporting style that recorded the experiences of average soldiers. Often associated with Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin, the embrace of the human-interest story served as one of the enduring legacies of the conflict.

Despite the importance of American war reporting in shaping perceptions of the war on the home front as well as shaping the historical narrative of the conflict, this work underscores how there is more to learn. Readers will gain from this work a new appreciation of the contribution of American journalists in writing the first version of history of the global struggle against Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, and fascist Italy.

G. Kurt Piehler is the author of A Religious History of the American GI in World War II (2021) and several reference works related to war and society. He is a member of the editorial board of the Service Newspapers of World War II digital publication (Adam Mathews) and on the advisory board of the NEH-funded American Soldier Project at Virginia Tech University (americansoldierww2.org).Trauschweizer Ingo :

Ingo Trauschweizer is a professor of history at Ohio University. He is the author of The Cold War U.S. Army: Building Deterrence for Limited War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008) and Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2019), and he is the editor or co-editor of three volumes in the Baker Series in Peace and Conflict Studies (Athens: Ohio University Press).Casey Steven :

Steven Casey is a professor of international history at the London School of Economics and is the author of War Beat, Europe: The American Media at War against Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017) and When Soldiers Fall: How Americans Have Confronted Combat Losses, from World War I to Afghanistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).Cosley Kendall :

Kendall Cosley is a doctoral candidate at Texas A&M University. She studies the relationship between war correspondents and American soldiers in World War II.Daniel Douglass K. :

Douglass K. Daniel has practiced journalism and studied and written about media and history. He was a reporter and editor for the Associated Press for nearly three decades. Daniel also taught journalism as an assistant professor at Kansas State University and Ohio University. He is the author of several books, including biographies of 60 Minutes correspondent Harry Reasoner, Oscar-winning writer and director Richard Brooks, and celebrated actress Anne Bancroft.Delozier Alan :

Alan Delozier is Special Collections Educations Coordinator and University Archivist at Seton Hall University. He holds a D.Litt. in Arts & Letters from Drew University and an MA in history from Villanova University.Edy Carolyn :

Carolyn M. Edy is a media historian and associate professor at Appalachian State University. After working in journalism for ten years, as a magazine writer and editor, Edy completed her doctorate at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Her first book, The Woman Correspondent, the U.S. Military, and the Press, 1846–1947 (Lexington Books), was a finalist for the American Journalism Historians Association’s Book of the Year Award of 2018.Garner Karen :

Karen Garner is a professor of historical studies at SUNY Empire State College. She is a Fulbright Scholar (Veszprém, Hungary, 2014; Vilnius, Lithuania, 2003), whose most recent monographs include Friends and Enemies: The Allies and Neutral Ireland during the Second World War (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2021) and Women and Gender in International History, Theory and Practice (London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2018).Greene Larry :

Larry A. Greene is a professor of history at Seton Hall University. A Fulbright scholar (Germany), he has written extensively on African American history and teaches courses on World War II. He is a co-organizer of several major conferences, including “Crossovers: African Americans and Germany” (University of Muenster, Germany, March, 2006). He co-edited with Anke Orlepp, Germans and African Americans: Two Centuries of Exchange (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011).Lovelace Alexander :

Alexander G. Lovelace is a scholar in residence at the Contemporary History Institute at Ohio University. His first book, The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy during World War II (University Press of Kansas, 2022), explores how the media influenced military decision-making during the Second World War.Moir Nathaniel L. :

Nathaniel L. Moir is a research associate in the Applied History Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Previously, he was an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow in history and policy at the Kennedy School. He is the author of Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2022).Oinas-Kukkonen Henry :

Henry Oinas-Kukkonen is a university lecturer in history and is a docent in the History of International Relations and Information Networks at the University of Oulu, Finland. He has worked on the history of the U.S. Occupation of Japan, U.S.-Finnish relations, and American plans to resettle Finnish World War II refugees in Alaska. His current research interests also include the history of information and communication technology, innovation, and the social web.Piehler G. Kurt :

G. Kurt Piehler is the author of A Religious History of the American GI in World War II (2021) and several reference works related to war and society. He is a member of the editorial board of the Service Newspapers of World War II digital publication (Adam Mathews) and on the advisory board of the NEH-funded American Soldier Project at Virginia Tech University (americansoldierww2.org).Sandy James Austin :

James Austin Sandy is an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas, Arlington. His dissertation is titled “A War All Our Own: The American Ranger and the Emergence of the American Martial Culture.”Sotvedt Victoria :

Victoria Sotvedt is a PhD candidate at the University of Calgary. She works primarily on Canadian military experiences in the Second World War and the early social history of the Canadian prairies.Trauschweizer Ingo :

Ingo Trauschweizer is a professor of history at Ohio University. He is the author of The Cold War U.S. Army: Building Deterrence for Limited War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008) and Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2019), and he is the editor or co-editor of three volumes in the Baker Series in Peace and Conflict Studies (Athens: Ohio University Press).G. Kurt Piehler (Edited By)
G. Kurt Piehler is the author of A Religious History of the American GI in World War II (2021) and several reference works related to war and society. He is a member of the editorial board of the Service Newspapers of World War II digital publication (Adam Mathews) and on the advisory board of the NEH-funded American Soldier Project at Virginia Tech University (americansoldierww2.org).

Ingo Trauschweizer (Edited By)
Ingo Trauschweizer is a professor of history at Ohio University. He is the author of The Cold War U.S. Army: Building Deterrence for Limited War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008) and Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2019), and he is the editor or co-editor of three volumes in the Baker Series in Peace and Conflict Studies (Athens: Ohio University Press).

This is a first-rate collection of essays about the impact of journalism on World War II. It covers important topics, ranging from the involvement of African Americans and women to the events of the Nuremberg trials, to the checkered history of the publication Stars and Stripes. It adds significantly to our understanding of the still-important effects of the Second World War.---Allan M. Winkler, Distinguished Professor of History, Miami University of Ohio

This book sheds light on those parts of the war American readers have largely forgotten: Irish neutrality, the Winter War in Finland, the role of the Black press, journalist-spies, and the ever-present pressures of censorship, to name a few. Journalism shaped our understanding of the war and, as Reporting World War II suggests, perhaps its outcome also.---Todd DePastino, author of Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front