Reporting War: How Foreign Correspondents Risked Capture, Torture and Death to Cover World War II

by Ray Moseley

Overview

Luminary journalists Ed Murrow, Martha Gellhorn, Walter Cronkite, and Clare Hollingworth were among the young reporters who chronicled World War II’s daily horrors and triumphs for Western readers. In this fascinating book, Ray Moseley, himself a former foreign correspondent who encountered a number of these journalists in the course of his long career, mines the correspondents’ writings to relate, in an exhilarating parallel narrative, the events across every theater—Europe, Pearl Harbor, North Africa, and Japan—as well as the lives of the courageous journalists who doggedly followed the action and the story, often while embedded in the Allied armies.

Moseley’s broad and intimate history draws on newly unearthed material to offer a comprehensive account both of the war and the abundance of individual stories and overlooked experiences, including those of women and African-American journalists, which capture the drama as it was lived by reporters on the front lines of history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300234152
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	03/27/2018
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 17.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Ray Moseley enjoyed a long career as a foreign, diplomatic, and chief European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, stationed in London, Washington, Berlin, Rome, Cairo, Belgrade, Moscow, and Nairobi. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xii

Introduction 1

1 Hitler Unleashes the War 10

2 War in Finland, Norway and Denmark 26

3 The Fall of France and the Low Countries 38

4 The Battle of Britain and the Air War on Germany 52

5 The German Conquest of Greece and Yugoslavia 71

6 Germany Invades the Soviet Union 90

7 Pearl Harbor 105

8 Japan Invades: The Philippines, Singapore, Burma 120

9 Pacific Island Campaigns 149

10 The Desert War 170

11 Stalingrad and Leningrad 195

12 The Battle for Italy 208

13 D-Day Landings in Normandy 230

14 The Battle for France 246

15 The Liberation of Paris 259

16 The Western Allies Drive Toward Germany 269

17 Germany Invaded 285

18 The Camps Inside Germany 300

19 The End of the War in Europe 313

20 Final Battles in the Pacific 324

21 Victory over Japan 338

22 After the War 355

Notes 370

Bibliography 391

Index 396

Illustration Credits 422

Editorial Reviews

A racy, star-studded compilation of anecdotes about the war’s writers and broadcasters.”
—Max Hastings, Sunday Times

“A racy, star-studded compilation of anecdotes about the war’s writers and broadcasters.”
—Max Hastings, Sunday Times

“A fascinating multinational saga, written with clarity and global perspective. . . . Do not miss this excellent, wonderfully researched and incisive book by one of America’s most experienced and best foreign correspondents.”—Chris Ogden, former Time magazine bureau chief in London

“Just when you thought there was no room for another book on World War II, Ray Moseley has assembled a masterful and highly readable compendium on war reporting in the heyday of print and radio. His encyclopedic research of every conceivable theater of operations is enlivened by insightful judgment gleaned from his own more recent experience as a veteran war correspondent.”—Jonathan Randal, former Washington Post and New York Times foreign correspondent

"Reporting War is a fascinating book that should be read by aspiring war reporters and anyone who is interested in journalism. Twenty-first-century journalists have agonised about how fairly and well they can report when they're on an embed. Imagine how much harder it must have been as part of the Allied war machine on D-Day, or in the Western desert, or during the fall of Berlin, as millions fought and died for national survival and the future shape of the world. Perhaps those correspondents can be forgiven for being, at times, less than impartial.
    But modern journalists can learn a lot from the powers of description of these predecessors, generally radio correspondents who recorded on devices that did not allow for retakes. And the book is a reminder to all reporters that however good your story, you need to be able to file it on time if you want it to have any impact.
   Reporting War is also a brilliant collection of war stories, close encounters with death and destruction, tales of enterprise, rivalry, fear and bravery. You can imagine them being told for the first time over a whisky in some broken town."—Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East Editor

From the Publisher

[Reporting War] tells the stories of dozens of correspondents from the United States and Allied nations. Moseley’s richly detailed narrative celebrates these men — and women — who put their lives on the line (and, all too often, lost them) to inform the folks back home about the day-to-day existence of infantrymen, slaughter on the beaches, bombers over Berlin, and concentration camp survivors. A deeply human and humane book, Reporting War is about fear and courage, competition for a scoop, pettiness and patriotism.”—Glenn Altschuler, Tulsa World

Tulsa World - Glenn Altschuler

Reading this book is an engrossing experience. Not only has Moseley dug deeply and assiduously in the archives to retrieve some treasures which might have remained hidden but he has also managed to keep humanity in focus.”—Trevor Royle, Glasgow Herald

Glasgow Herald - Trevor Royle

Ray Moseley calls the Second World War the greatest news story of all time, and it is impossible to disagree… There is also heroism, and some brilliant writing, such as the description of Tokyo by George Weller of The Chicago Daily News as “an ashtray filled with the cigarette butts of buildings”. —Lewis Jones, Sunday Telegraph

Sunday Telegraph - Lewis Jones

03/15/2017
Veteran European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune Moseley writes about the journalists who covered World War II. With chapters on geographic location and chronology, the book begins with Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 and the first years in the European Theater, including astonishing accounts of the journalists who flew in dangerous missions over Germany. The narratives move on to Pearl Harbor and the Pacific Theater while also touching upon battles in North Africa and Russia. One of the most heart-wrenching chapters concerns the discovery of concentration camps as Germany is overrun by Allied and Russian troops. Throughout the war, journalists had to withstand harsh conditions, possible capture, torture, and even death. Moreover, the censorship they endured as they wrote their stories became increasingly frustrating as the war progressed. Moseley concludes with D-Day in 1944, the fall of Germany, and the surrender of Japan. VERDICT A thorough volume for journalism and World War II collections, and for readers interested in tales of bravery.—Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI

Library Journal