When Books Went to War

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Frontispiece

Introduction

A Phoenix Will Rise

$85 Worth of Clothes, but No Pajamas

A Landslide of Books

New Weapons in the War of Ideas

Grab a Book, Joe, and Keep Goin'

Guts, Valor, and Extreme Bravery

Like Rain in the Desert

Censorship and FDR's F - - - th T - - m

Photos

Germany's Surrender and the Godforsaken Islands

Peace at Last

Damned Average Raisers

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Appendix A

Appendix B

Notes

Index

Illustration Credits

About the Author

Copyright © 2014 by Molly Guptill Manning

 

All rights reserved

 

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

 

www.hmhco.com

 

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

 

Manning, Molly Guptill, date.

When books went to war: the stories that helped us win World War II / Molly Guptill Manning.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN
978-0-544-53502-2 (hardback) —

ISBN
978-0-544-57040-5 (trade paper) —

ISBN
978-0-544-53517-6 (ebook)

1. World War, 1939–1945—United States—Literature and the war. 2. Books and reading—United States—History—20th century. 3. Publishers and publishing—United States—History—20th century. 4. American literature—20th century—History and criticism. 5. War in literature. I. Title.

Z1003.2.M36 2014

028'.90973—dc23

2014033571

 

e
ISBN
978-0-544-53517-6
v1.1214

 

Illustration credits appear on
[>]
.

 

 

 

 

For my husband, Christopher Manning

“Were you ever so upset emotionally that you had to tell someone about it, to sit down and write it out?” a Marine asked in a letter to the author Betty Smith. “That is how I feel now,” he confided.

“You see I am . . . 20 year[s] old . . . but I feel twice that age. I went through hell in two years of combat overseas . . . I just wanted you to understand that despite my youth I have seen a little bit of suffering.”

At the time this Marine wrote his letter, malaria ravaged his body and he was hospitalized and confined to bed rest. Yet he credited the illness with saving his life. During his time in sickbay, he was given an Armed Services Edition of Smith's
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
. “I have read it twice and am halfway through it again,” and “every time I read it, I feel more deeply than I did before,” he said.

“Ever since the first time I struggled through knee deep mud . . . carrying a stretcher from which my buddie's life dripped away in precious blood and I was powerless to help him, I have felt hard and cynical against this world and have felt sure that I was no longer capable of loving anything or anybody,” he wrote. He went through the war with a “dead heart . . . and dulled mind,” believing he had lost the ability to feel.

It was only as he read
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
that something inside him began to stir. “I can't explain the emotional reaction that took place, I only know that it happened and that this heart of mine turned over and became alive again. A surge of confidence has swept through me and I feel that maybe a fellow has a fighting chance in this world after all. I'll never be able to explain to you the gratitude and love that fill my heart in appreciation of what your book means to me.” It brought laughter and joy, and also tears. Although it “was unusual for a supposedly battle-hardened marine to do such an effeminate thing as weep over a piece of fiction, . . . I'm not ashamed,” he said. His tears proved he was human.

“I don't think I would have been able to sleep this night,” he wrote in closing, “unless I bared my heart to the person who caused it to live again.”

 

The American forces serving in World War II were composed primarily of citizen soldiers—people who had no notion of going to war until Pearl Harbor was attacked. Many volunteered and others were drafted, and together these unprepared and unknowing souls faced a daunting combination of hurried training at bare-bones facilities, and days and weeks of transport, boredom, and fear. They experienced horrors and unimaginable scenes of violence and destruction for which no training could fully prepare them, and, for many, recuperation in hospitals spread around the world. They were constantly reminded of their proximity to death. As one soldier remarked, it was not uncommon to “have breakfast with a man and at supper time he has been buried.”

The war took a tremendous physical and psychological toll on the men who fought it. The infantrymen plodded through endless mud, advanced as snipers fired at them, and slumbered in the comfort of rain-filled foxholes—sometimes to the lullaby of squealing mortars in the distance and buzzing insects swarming about them. They always seemed to be wet, dirty, muddy, uncomfortable, and exhausted. They marched and fought through searing heat and bitter cold, faced disease—malaria, typhus, and infections of all kinds—and bore the brunt of the enemy's bullets and bombs. It is understandable why they referred to themselves as the “God-damned infantry.”

The pilots and crews of the B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-24 Liberators, B-25 Mitchells, B-26 Marauders, and B-29 Superfortresses faced a different series of perils: flying a steady course as flak pierced holes in their planes, engaging in sudden aerial battles, and witnessing crew members suffer or die from injuries incurred midflight. Their limbs became painfully numb as they endured subzero temperatures during long journeys in unheated aircraft, and the relief they experienced upon safe return was often accompanied by the devastation of learning that others did not complete the trip back. Many planes crash-landed, ran out of fuel, or just plain crashed. The B-24s and B-26s did not earn the monikers Flying Coffin and Widow-Maker for nothing.

Those in the Navy had their own set of problems. The initial thrill of sailing the seas and seeing the world from a gleaming ship was chilled by the isolation of days and weeks spent outside the sight of land. “Loneliness” and “boredom” took on new meanings. Meanwhile, the constant threat of lurking submarines and the mere sight or muffled din of an approaching enemy plane rattled the nerves of even the bravest sailor. There was no disguising cruisers or destroyers on the open sea. When the “music” started, they were like ducks in a shooting gallery.

The days were grinding, the stress was suffocating, and the dreams of making it home were often fleeting. Any distraction from the horrors of war was cherished. The men treasured mementos of home. Letters from loved ones were rare prizes. Card games, puzzles, music, and the occasional sports game helped pass the hours waiting for action or sleep to come. Yet mail could be frustratingly irregular—sometimes taking as long as four or five months to arrive—and games and the energy to play them could not always be mustered after a long day of training or fighting. To keep morale from sinking, there needed to be readily available entertainment to provide some relief from war.

The story of the Armed Services Editions—portable, accessible, and pervasive paperbacks like the edition of
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
that so moved a young Marine to write Betty Smith—is a remarkable one. They were everywhere: servicemen read them while waiting in line for chow or a haircut, when pinned down in a foxhole, and when stuck on a plane for a milk run. They were so ubiquitous, one sailor remarked that a man was “out of uniform if one isn't sticking out [of] the hip pocket!” They were the most dependable distraction available on all fronts. Whenever a soldier needed an escape, the antidote to anxiety, relief from boredom, a bit of laughter, inspiration, or hope, he cracked open a book and drank in the words that would transport him elsewhere. Every soldier and sailor abided by a strict policy of swapping and exchanging books, no matter how worn. The print could be smudged, the pages ripped or falling out, and still a book would continue to make the rounds. As one sailor said, “To heave one in the garbage can is tantamount to striking your grandmother.”

They weren't just for entertainment and diversion. Books also served as the premier weapon in fighting Adolf Hitler's “war of ideas.” Nazi Germany sought control over people's beliefs, not just their bodies and territory. From the 1933 state-sanctioned book burnings in Germany to the purging of libraries across Europe as nations were conquered by the Nazis, “un-German” reading material was threatened with extinction. The scale of destruction was impressive. By V-E Day, it is estimated that Germany had destroyed over 100 million books in Europe.

And yet the story of the Armed Services Editions is largely untold. It was an astonishing effort. The government supplied more than 120 million free books to ensure that America's fighting men were equipped with spirit and resolve to carry them through their battles.

With books in their pockets, American GIs stormed the beaches of Normandy, trekked to the Rhine, and liberated Europe; they hopped from one deadly Pacific island to the next, from the shores of Australia to the backyard of Japan. Some read to remember the home they had left behind, others to forget the hell that surrounded them. Books uplifted their weary souls and energized their minds. As the letter to Betty Smith reveals, books had the power to soothe an aching heart, renew hope for the future, and provide a respite when there was no other escape. For many of America's servicemen, books were their most important equipment.

After the war, the accessibility of mass-market paperbacks—together with the GI Bill—helped build a new literate middle class, spreading reading to a wide and democratic public. The wartime book programs had made
The Great Gatsby
into a classic, engaged dozens of authors in pen pal relationships with thousands of soldiers, and touched the minds and hearts of millions of men and women.

This is the story of pens that were as mighty as swords.

ONE

What is to give light must endure burning.

 

—
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

 

E
VEN THE MISTY
drizzle that blanketed Berlin did not dampen the merriment surrounding the grand parade held on May 10, 1933. Thousands of students, proudly wearing their university colors, walked through the foggy streets by glittering torchlight as they made their way toward the Bebelplatz, the main plaza between the Friedrich Wilhelm University and the Opera House. Forty thousand spectators gathered in the plaza to behold the spectacle that was about to unfold; another forty thousand assembled along the parade route. In the center of the Bebelplatz, a massive pyre of crossed logs, twelve feet long and five feet high, awaited. As the first revelers arrived, they threw their torches onto this peculiar structure. Blue flames shot skyward. It was a breathtaking sight. Soon the skeleton of logs erupted into a glowing mass of fire.

Meanwhile, a procession of automobiles snaked along the periphery of the Bebelplatz. Some of the students formed an orderly line between the cars and the crackling flames. The crowd watched as one student reached into the first vehicle, taking a book from a pile stacked inside. The book was then passed down the line, from one hand to the next, until it reached the student standing closest to the fire, who hurled it into the flames. The crowd burst into applause. In this manner, one book after another quickly made its way to the blaze. Some students grabbed armfuls of them, pacing between the automobiles and the inferno, fueling the fire each time they passed.