From New York Times bestselling author Molly Guptill Manning comes The War of Words, the captivating story of how American troops in World War II wielded pens to tell their own stories as they made history.
At a time when civilian periodicals faced strict censorship, US Army Chief of Staff George Marshall won the support of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to create an expansive troop-newspaper program. Both Marshall and FDR recognized that there was a second struggle taking place outside the battlefields of World War II—the war of words. While Hitler inundated the globe with propaganda, morale across the US Army dwindled. As the Axis blurred the lines between truth and fiction, the best defense was for American troops to bring the truth into focus by writing it down and disseminating it themselves.
By war’s end, over 4,600 unique GI publications had been printed around the world. In newsprint, troops made sense of their hardships, losses, and reasons for fighting. These newspapers—by and for the troops—became the heart and soul of a unit.
From Normandy to the shores of Japan, American soldiers exercised a level of free speech the military had never known nor would again. It was an extraordinary chapter in American democracy and military history. In the war for “four freedoms,” it was remarkably fitting that troops fought not only with guns but with their pens. This stunning volume includes fourteen pages of photographs and illustrations.
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“Molly Guptill Manning’s The War of Words is a mesmerizing, poignant, and beautifully humane portrait of World War II. How astounding to be immersed in the lives and words of the GIs and WACs to the point that you can practically taste the C-rations, and to see their editorials and poems alternate between mordant humor and the very real terror of mortality. From the Bitching Post to the Gripe Club and beyond, there was a quiet heroism to the military journalists defying censorship and preconceived ideas about boosting morale in absurd and oppressive situations. As sparkling as it is weighty, Manning’s book is a gem.”
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Stephanie Gorton, author of Citizen Reporters: S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine That Rewrote America