|
|
|
Review
| We Felt the Flames: Hitler's Blitzkrieg, America's Story, by Charles Kupfer. Carlisle, PA: Sergeant Kirkland's Press, 2003. 225 pp. $18.95, paper.
|
| Charles Kupfer, has penned an interesting and informative study of American news coverage during the early stages of the Second World War. Kupfer focuses on American journalists, especially those working in radio, and how their reporting on the Nazi blitzkrieg helped shift U.S. public opinion from isolationism to interventionism. While the book is a gripping read, it is limited in terms of both scope and time frame (April-September 1940). In early chapters, Kupfer sketches the state of the radio news business in 1940. Three networks—CBS, NBC, and the Mutual Broadcasting system—dominated the airwaves. During the 1930s each had developed news bureaus in Europe, with especially strong presences in Berlin, Paris, and London. Talented, colorful, and sometimes eccentric journalists reported international news. Given the speed of Nazi warfare, radio, because it could transmit information almost instantly, was in a much better position than print media to report on the conflict, and the infrastructure for doing so was in place at the outset of the blitzkrieg. |
1
|
|
Kupfer is especially good at describing the mechanics and difficulties of news-gathering in European capitals. All three of the major belligerents—Germany, Britain, and France—imposed strict censorship controls and all three tried to spin news coverage so as to court the favor of American public opinion. While competition among the reporters from different networks was fierce, they sometimes cooperated in the interests of news coverage. Indeed, several times in the summer 1940, during the Battle of Britain, CBS and NBC teamed with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC to stage broadcasts from London. Once Paris and London were under German attack, American correspondents faced genuine physical danger. The psychological strain could be brutal, and several, most notably Eric Sevareid, suffered breakdowns. Kupfer pays special attention to William L. Shirer, Edward R. Murrow, and Sevareid. Like the other American correspondents in Europe, all three men were anti-Nazi and came to support American military intervention. It took Sevareid, a former college student activist who in the Thirties had been antiwar, the longest to become pro-intervention. Murrow, of course, emerged from the London blitz as a superstar reporter, arguably electronic journalism's first. |
2
|
|
Kupfer is a lively writer who tells a good story. But the book's limited chronological and topical coverage means that most instructors will not find it suitable, even for courses devoted to the Second World War. While strong on the uncovering and broadcasting of news, Kupfer has little to say about how it was received by American audiences. Who listened? How often? How did prominent Americans, both for and against intervention, manipulate the news as they sought to manage public opinion? There are other problems, some of them minor to be sure. The bibliography, while adequate, is not especially up to date. For example, Kupfer's chief sources for isolationist sentiment are Selig Adler's The Isolationist Impulse, published in 1957, and works from Robert A. Divine that in some cases date from the 1960s. There is a helpful timeline of key events, but no table of contents and no index. Each chapter is preceded by a photo, but the photos are not identified as to place, date, or person featured. The proofreading seems to have been careless—there are occasional typos; the first footnote in the final chapter is numbered 620. |
3
|
|
Likely, We Felt the Flames will be most useful to teachers either as a handy source for classroom lectures on radio journalism during the European war or in the form of excerpts of individual chapters or sections for assignment to students. With appropriate attention paid to copyright, the section on the radio news business or the chapter on Murrow's coverage of the London blitz would be a valuable addition to a course packet of supplemental readings. |
4
|
| | |
| California State University, Chico |
Jeffery C. Livingston |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|