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World War II: Journalism

Topic guide covering the events surrounding World War II.

Internet Resources

Martha Gellhorn: Extraordinary Women

Grace Kelly, Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn, Indira Gandhi, and Madame Chiang Kai-shek were worshipped, loved and sometimes even feared by millions the world over. These pioneers showed that a woman could be the equal of a man but behind the public success, there was often private heartache and personal tragedy. This series featuring archive interviews and dramatic re-enactments, reveals the price these women paid for their achievements and adversities they overcame to emerge as triumphant, inspirational icons of the 20th century. In this documentary, we follow the career of war journalist Martha Gellhorn, who criticized power abuse and social injustice and championed civilians in 20th century conflicts. Fearlessly accessing fronts in the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War, she refused to sacrifice her passion for domesticity. A BBC Production.

Source: Films on Demand

Perspectives

The Women Who Wrote the War

Like Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation, " Sorel's moving account of the women war correspondents of this century at last brings to light the exploits of more than 100 of this country's unsung heroes. of photos.

Buried by the Times

An in-depth look at how The New York Times failed in its coverage of the fate of European Jews from 1939-45. It examines how the decisions that were made at The Times ultimately resulted in the minimizing and misunderstanding of modern history's worst genocide. Laurel Leff, a veteran journalist and professor of journalism, recounts how personal relationships at the newspaper, the assimilationist tendencies of The Times' Jewish owner, and the ethos of mid-century America, all led The Times to consistently downplay news of the Holocaust. It recalls how news of Hitler's 'final solution' was hidden from readers and - because of the newspaper's influence on other media - from America at large. Buried by The Times is required reading for anyone interested in America's response to the Holocaust and for anyone curious about how journalists determine what is newsworthy.

Combat Reporter

"No one bore witness better than Don Whitehead . . . this volume, deftly combining his diary and a previously unpublished memoir, brings Whitehead and his reporting back to life, and 21st-century readers are the richer for it."--from the Foreword, by Rick Atkinson Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Don Whitehead is one of the legendary reporters of World War II. For the Associated Press he covered almost every important Allied invasion and campaign in Europe--from North Africa to landings in Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, and Normandy, and to the drive into Germany. His dispatches, published in the recent Beachhead Don, are treasures of wartime journalism. From the fall of September 1942, as a freshly minted A.P. journalist in New York, to the spring of 1943 as Allied tanks closed in on the Germans in Tunisia, Whitehead kept a diary of his experiences as a rookie combat reporter. The diary stops in 1943, and it has remained unpublished until now. Back home later, Whitehead started, but never finished, a memoir of his extraordinary life in combat. John Romeiser has woven both the North African diary and Whitehead's memoir of the subsequent landings in Sicily into a vivid, unvarnished, and completely riveting story of eight months during some of the most brutal combat of the war. Here, Whitehead captures the fierce fighting in the African desert and Sicilian mountains, as well as rare insights into the daily grind of reporting from a war zone, where tedium alternated with terror. In the tradition of cartoonist Bill Mauldin's memoir Up Front, Don Whitehead's powerful self-portrait is destined to become an American classic.

Soldier of the Press

Threatened by each side in the Spanish Civil War with death as a suspected spy, decorated for saving an airman's life in a bullet-ridden B-24 Liberator over Greece, war correspondent Henry "Hank" Gorrell often found himself in the thick of the fighting he had been sent to cover. And in reporting on some of the world's most dangerous stories, he held newspaper readers spellbound with his eyewitness accounts from battlefields across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. An "exclusive" United Press correspondent, Gorrell saw more than his share of war, even more than most reporters, as his beat took him from the siege of Madrid to the sands of North Africa. His memoir, left in an attic trunk for sixty years, is presented here in its entirety for the first time. As he risks life and limb on the front lines, Gorrell gives us new perspectives on the overall conflict--including some of World War II's lesser-known battles--as well as insights into behind-the-lines intrigue. Gorrell's account first captures early Axis intervention in Spain and their tests of new weaponry and blitzkrieg tactics at the cost of millions of Spanish lives. While covering the Spanish Civil War, he was captured by forces from each side and saw many brave men die disillusioned, and his writings offer a contrast to other views of that conflict from writers like Hemingway. But Spain was just Hank's training ground: before America even entered World War II, he was embedded with Allied forces from seven nations. When war broke out, Gorrell was sent to Hungary, where in Budapest he witnessed pro-Axis enthusiasts toast the victory of Fascist armies. Later in Romania he watched Stalin kick over the Axis apple cart with his invasion of Bessarabia--forcing the Germans to deal with the Russian menace before they had planned. Then he saw twenty Italian divisions mauled in the mountains of Albania, marking the beginning of the end for Mussolini. Combining the historian's accuracy with the journalist's on-the-spot reportage, Gorrell provides eyewitness impressions of what war looked, sounded, and felt like to soldiers on the ground. Soldier of the Press weaves personal adventures into the larger fabric of world events, plunging modern readers into the heat of battle while revealing the dangers faced by war correspondents in that bygone era.

Between the Bylines

Thoburn H. "Toby" Wiant was a fighter from an early age, and words were his weapons of choice. During World War II, he fought to scoop stories from rival reporters on the front lines as an Associated Press war correspondent. In chronicling the war from the China-Burma-India and European theaters of operation, he skillfully reported the battles of an all-too-real war while often in personal peril. In letters to his parents he revealed his personal reactions to the war. In this remarkable book, his daughter brings together Wiant's printed articles and his private letters. With her aid, we view the war through his eyes as we watch a scrappy boy grow into manhood and an eager cub reporter develop into a seasoned war correspondent.

Ernie Pyle: Life in the Trenches

He is known as “America’s storyteller.” Famed WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle remains one of the most accomplished and beloved journalists in American history. Ernie Pyle: Life in the Trenches is a 90-minute WTIU documentary that tells the story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who reached millions each week with stories about ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things.

Source: PBS