74. Shadegg, Clare Boothe Luce, 200, quoting Bridgeport Post.
75. Herbert Hoover to CBL, Nov. 7, 1944, HHP.
10. TO THE FRONT
1. John Billings diary, Nov. 8 and 11, 1944, JBP. The final count was FDR’s 25.6 million to Dewey’s 22 million.
2. Time, Nov. 20, 1944.
3. Time Inc. staffers reflected the split. Billings voted for Dewey, and reported that Harry was “hurt” that Al Grover, his personal aide, had voted for FDR. Others complained of their boss’s “blind partisanship.” John Billings diary, Nov. 7 and 8, 1944, JBP.
4. Bridgeport Telegram, Nov. 24, 1944.
5. U.S. forces numbered 231,306 and the British 253,859 in the final battle for Rome. Clark, along with Omar Bradley, would be given a fourth star in 1945, after victory in Europe. In his memoir, General Clark wrote that CBL’s “special interest in our problems … gave all of us a real lift and helped to clarify the Italian war in the minds of the people back home.” Clark, Calculated Risk, 423.
6. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 17, 1944.
7. Ibid.; Tere Pascone, “U.S. Doughboy Is ‘Great Hero’ of the War,” Bridgeport Post, Jan. 2, 1945. Pascone made a scrapbook about CBL’s European trip consisting of articles from the Bridgeport Post and Bridgeport Herald, Nov. 22 to Dec. 19, 1944, now in CBLP. When not otherwise indicated, documentary details in this chapter derive from this source.
8. Bernard Baruch to Lord Beaverbrook, July 26, 1935, CBL.
9. CBL to HRL, Nov. 28, 1944, CBLP.
10. For CBL’s fact-finding tour of Western Europe at the onset of World War II, see Morris, Rage for Fame, 369–88.
11. CBL to HRL, Nov. 28, 1944, CBLP.
12. Morris, Rage for Fame, 106–09; CBL interview, May 3, 1982.
13. After returning to Washington, CBL heard from Simpson that he had been in London during her visit after all. He reported that as an army officer he had supervised British police work in Palestine before the war. This suggests a career in military intelligence, and may explain his unavailability to her in the fall of 1944. He spoke vaguely of being personally dissatisfied, lonely, and having to live with his mother. Julian Simpson to CBL, Nov. 26, 1944, and Feb. 8, 1945, CBLP. For CBL’s later, disillusioning reunion with her old lover, see chapter 21.
14. CBL to HRL, Nov. 28, 1944, CBLP.
15. Ibid.
16. Bridgeport Post, Nov. 27, 1944.
17. See Morris, Rage for Fame, 383–84.
18. Bridgeport Post, Dec. 2, 1944.
19. Burns, Roosevelt, 460. Unemployment plummeted, from 8 million to 670,000. Of huge social significance was the migration of large numbers of rural blacks to industrial towns, where they were hired by armament factories to work alongside whites. A similar racial breakthrough, as CBL had tried to hasten in Congress, would eventually occur in the military, starting the United States on a fresh civil rights path.
20. CBL interviewed on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Sept. 18, 1979, transcript in CBLP. Also see “Members of the Military Affairs Committee, including Clare Boothe Luce, visit various fronts,” Dec. 29, 1944, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3y_sk2tVYw, Human History Archive, published online Dec. 19, 2013.
21. Bridgeport Telegram, Dec. 7, 1944.
22. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 12, 1944.
23. Ibid.
24. Bill Mauldin, The Brass Ring (New York, 1971), 235; Mauldin obituary, The New York Times, Jan. 23, 2003. In 1945, Mauldin won a Pulitzer Prize for his war coverage.
25. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 16, 1944.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.; Bridgeport Post, Jan. 2, 1945.
29. CBL broadcast from Rome, Dec. 27, 1944, WNAB transcript in CBLP; Bridgeport Post, Jan. 2, 1945.
30. Bridgeport Post, Jan. 2, 1945. Years later, CBL would send a memo to her secretary: “It now becomes public policy for me to finish off Augusto’s education. Will you send a cable with a check made out not to … his (drunken) father, but to the master of the Institute.” CBL to Dorothy Farmer, n.d., 1953, CBLP. CBL also paid for Al Morano’s son’s schooling for several years.
31. Martin Blumenson, Mark Clark: The Last of the Great World War II Commanders (New York, 1984), 3.
32. Clark, Calculated Risk, 424–25. The Englishman whom Clark replaced, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, became Supreme Allied Commander of the Mediterranean Theater.
33. Wilson A. Heefner, Dogface Soldier: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. (Columbia, Mo., 2010), 222–23; Chief of Military History, “North Apennines 1944–1945,” U.S. Center for Military History website, http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/nap/72-34.htm/.
34. Generals Clark and Alexander had been at odds over separating American and British forces in order to capture Rome. Clark had wanted the glory of entering the capital, but Alexander preferred to keep the Allied armies together and have them encircle and destroy the German Tenth Army as they fled from the British Eighth Army. Clark won the argument, but German war memoirs confirm that by dividing their forces, the Allies had enabled them to flee, and hunker down to prolong the fight in the Apennines. Herbert Mitgang, “The Forgotten Front: For Soldiers Who Took Rome, Glory Was Fleeting,” The New York Times, June 6, 1984.
35. CBL interview, Apr. 2, 1982; Arlington National Cemetery website on Lucian King Truscott, Jr. He had trained his Third Infantry Division to be the best in the Seventh Army. Battle-hardened from months of fighting in North Africa, Sicily, and Anzio, his troops had recently fought their way north to Bologna in record time. They accomplished this by marching, even through mountains, at four miles an hour instead of the usual two and a half, in what had become known as “the Truscott trot.”
36. Mauldin, The Brass Ring, 241.
37. Life, Oct. 2, 1944.
38. Robert Geake, letter to New York magazine, Apr. 12, 1982.
39. Pascone, “U.S. Doughboy Is ‘Great Hero’ of the War.”
40. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 18, 1944.
41. Ibid., Dec. 20, 1944.
42. Time staffer Tom Durrance cable to Filmore Calhoun, Dec. 30, 1944, TIA.
43. Mauldin, The Brass Ring, 234–39.
44. Ibid., 237–38.
45. CBL interview, April 2, 1982. CBL sent for the twenty-three-year-old Mauldin after their trip, and asked what he wanted to do after the war. Having already sold some drawings to Luce publications, he assumed she wanted to hire him. But face-to-face, he felt intimidated by the “most frightening person I’d ever met in my life.” He said he had no long-term plans. Sensing that he might want to capitalize on his current fame, CBL advised him to get a college education first. “If you need any help,” she said, “let us know.” She seemed sincerely interested in his advancement, Mauldin thought, “in a power-wielding sort of way.” But he was noncommittal. Later he found that lacking a degree did hold him back, and he regretted not having taken CBL’s advice and offer. But he managed to win a second Pulitzer Prize and make the cover of Time. Mauldin, The Brass Ring, 234–39; see also Todd Depastino, Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front (New York, 2008).
46. CBL interview, Apr. 2, 1982.
47. Ibid.; Stars and Stripes, Dec. 28, 1944.
48. Truscott to CBL, Apr. 10, 1945, CBLP.
49. Ibid., Mar. 18, 1945, CBLP.
50. John Billings diary, Dec. 22, 1944, JBP. Billings said that HRL was “demanding reservations by air to get back here Wednesday next”—i.e., Dec. 27.
51. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 26, 1944; CBL to Bernard Baruch, Mar. 2, 1945, CBLP.
52. Major James M. Wilson noted CBL’s sincere desire to find out all she could “well in the forward area.” Louisville Courier-Journal, CBL scrapbook, n.d.
53. CBL broadcast from Rome, Dec. 27, 1944, transcript in CBLP; Stars and Stripes, Dec. 26, 1944.
54. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 26, 1944; Pascone, “U.S. Doughboy Is ‘Great Hero’ of the War.”
55. CBL broadcast from Rome, Dec. 27, 1944, transcript in CBLP.
56.
Ibid; Stars and Stripes, Dec. 26, 1944.
57. Morris, Rage for Fame, 430–31, 441–42.
58. Ibid.
59. CBL interview, Apr. 2, 1982: “He had this death-grip on me.”
60. Ibid.
61. CBL broadcast from Rome, Dec. 27, 1944, transcript in CBLP; Bridgeport Post, Jan. 2, 1945; photograph of The Women tent, Life, ca. Dec. 30, 1944.
62. CBL broadcast from Rome, Dec. 27, 1944, transcript in CBLP; Bridgeport Post, Jan. 2, 1945, CBLP.
63. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 26, 1944.
64. Ibid.
65. CBL, “Converts and the Blessed Sacrament,” Sentinel of the Blessed Sacrament, Nov.–Dec. 1950.
66. Ibid.
67. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 26, 1944; CBL said that an American artillery officer broke the cease-fire to put a stop to “that irreverent nonsense,” and “laid down quite a lot of thunder” on the revelers. CBL broadcast from Rome, Dec. 27, 1944, transcript in CBLP; Bridgeport Post, Jan. 2, 1945.
68. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 28, 1944.
69. Blumenson, Mark Clark, quoting Clark’s diary, 239.
70. CBL wore the scarf often in Italy, and eventually gave it to the Arizona Costume Institute.
71. Michael Musmanno to CBL, Jan. 26, 1960, CBLP.
72. Stars and Stripes, Dec. 28, 1944. In response to CBL’s suggestion that tired Fifth Army soldiers might benefit from being rotated home after a fixed period at the lines, Truscott pointed out that this would disrupt operations. “To rotate 10,000 men per month might require 72,000, unless the theater was to get along without the 10,000.” Truscott to CBL, Jan. 7, 1945, CBLP.
73. CBL broadcast from Rome, Dec. 27, 1944, transcript in CBLP; Stars and Stripes, Dec. 29, 1944.
74. CBL to Truscott, ca. Jan. 1945, CBLP.
75. Truscott to CBL, Jan. 7, 1945, CBLP.
76. The Washington Post, Dec. 31, 1944.
77. Bridgeport Post, Jan. 2, 1945.
11. WANING DAYS OF WAR
1. Passaic Herald News (N.J.), Jan. 5, 1945; D.C. News, Jan. 4, 1945.
2. Passaic Herald News (N.J.), Jan. 5, 1945.
3. Washington Times-Herald, Jan. 3, 1945.
4. Hollywood Citizen News, Jan. 5, 1945. Gahagan Douglas was elected by a narrow margin, and the press immediately set her up as a rival to CBL. See chapter 3, “The ‘Glamor Girls’ of Congress,” in Braden, Women Politicians.
5. General Dunlop to CBL, Jan. 10, 1945, CBLP.
6. Al Morano interview, Oct. 6, 1981; Army Report from HQ Thirty-second Division, Nov. 1, 1944, CBLP.
7. DFB to Isabel Hill, July 5, 1944, CBLP.
8. DFB to CBL, Aug. 17, 1944, CBLP; DFB to CBL, Mar. 10, 1944, CBLP.
9. Bridgeport Post, Jan. 15, 1945.
10. CBL to General Mark Clark, Jan. 24, 1945, enclosing a copy of her House speech. She ended the letter by saying she hoped to visit Clark’s command again “in the not too distant future.” CA.
11. The New York Times, Jan. 19, 1945.
12. Stars and Stripes, Jan. 18, 1945.
13. CBL repeated Truman’s remark in a broadcast on WMAL Blue Nework on Feb. 9, 1945. Transcript in CA.
14. DFB to CBL, Jan. 25, 1945, CBLP. DFB left the hospital without a limp.
15. Ibid. Adding to CBL’s black mood at this time was a legal dispute. Howard Crosby Brokaw, brother of George and the trustee of two funds set up by their father, had filed a claim in New York Surrogate Court to a part of Ann’s legacy to which, as next of kin, Clare had assumed she was the sole heir. The plaintiff said that Isaac Brokaw’s will was unclear regarding disposition of the money left to a grandchild who died during her minority. He therefore sought a share of cash from the two trust funds that in eight years had yielded Ann some $212,000. CBL was later declared the sole beneficiary of $14,655 left in her daughter’s account at the time of her death. International News Service, Mar. 23, 1945, CBLP.
16. Heefner, Dogface Soldier, 222–23.
17. Clarke, The Last Thousand Days, 154–55.
18. CBL to Walter Winchell, May 17, 1945, CBLP.
19. Charles Willoughby to Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Feb. 4, 1945, CBLP.
20. Ibid.
21. Willoughby to CBL, Feb. 15, 1945, CBLP.
22. CAW to CBL, Feb. 15, 1945, CBLP.
23. CBL interview, Jan. 9, 1982.
24. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, eds., The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/.
25. Burns, Roosevelt, 582.
26. Naugatauk Daily News, Mar. 3, 1945.
12. A GLORIOUS WOMAN
1. HRL to CBL, [Mar.] 3, 1945, CBLP.
2. CBL interview, Jan. 5, 1987.
3. Harold Alexander to CBL, ca. Mar. 8, 1945, CBLP. Also see CBL, “Outlines of Italian Trip,” manuscript in CBLP.
4. Nevertheless, several of Alexander’s tactical errors had been noticed. In Sicily, for example, he had allowed some sixty thousand Germans to flee with equipment across the Strait of Messina. Now, many months later, these escapees were still holding off half a million British and American troops in northern Italy.
5. The editor and artist Fleur Cowles said that CBL “slept with every general on the Western Front.” Clementine Churchill was so incensed by rumors of CBL’s vamping of Alexander that after the war she refused to sit at the same table with her at Hobcaw Barony. Fleur Cowles interview, Nov. 2, 1981; Elizabeth Navarro (Bernard Baruch’s former nurse) interview, May 17, 1984.
6. CBL, “Outlines of Italian Trip,” 1; U.S. Army Mediterranean Theater of Operations HQ, “Resume of Itinerary and Inspections for Mrs. Luce,” transcript in CBLP, 1–2. Except where otherwise cited, all details of CBL’s 1945 European itinerary come from these sources.
7. Arthur B. Dodge, Jr., interview, Aug. 28, 1988.
8. CBL interview, Feb. 5, 1983.
9. Bill Mauldin, Up Front (New York, 1945, 2000), 35–36.
10. Truscott to CBL, Apr. 10, 1945, CBLP.
11. CBL notes on 1945 Italian trip, CBLP; Blumenson, Mark Clark, 125.
12. CBL column, Tucson Daily Citizen, Apr. 2, 1945.
13. See also CBL, “The Forgotten Front,” Life, May 14, 1945, and CBL in Charleston Gazette (W. Va.), Mar. 31, 1945.
14. CBL notes on 1945 Italian trip, CBLP. As early as 1934, in a syndicated article CBL celebrated the “beauty” of war machines.
15. Ibid.
16. Truscott to CBL, Mar. 18, 1945, CBLP.
17. Apr. 1, 1945, reprinted in PM, Apr. 3, 1945. The columnist Walter Winchell questioned CBL’s motives for going abroad. “Insiders believe Congresswoman Luce visits Italy so often because in her campaign for the U.S. Senate [sic] she will fight for Italians. Her district (in Connecticut) has almost 40 percent Italian descent.” Burlington Daily Times News (N.C.), Apr. 3, 1945.
18. CBL, “Miscellaneous Chit Chat: Items from here and there about this and that,” transcript, ca. 1945, CBLP.
19. CBL miscellaneous undated notes on Italian trip, CBLP.
20. Ibid.
21. Brazil Herald, Mar. 3, 1959.
22. CBL and Vernon A. Walters, History and the Nature of Man, Vernon A. Walters Lectures in History, United States Naval Academy (Annapolis, Md., Jan. 10, 1979), 2.
23. Truscott to CBL, “Monday”—most likely Mar. 26, 1945, CBLP.
24. Ibid.
25. Harold Macmillan, War Diaries: Politics and War in the Mediterranean 1943–1945 (New York, 1984), 724–25. Until otherwise convinced by HRL, CBL tended to side with Evelyn Waugh’s axiom that punctuality was a virtue of the bored.
26. Ibid.
27. Arthur B. Dodge, Jr., interview, Mar. 18, 1989.
28. Ibid.; Dodge to SJM, May 2, 1989, SJMP.
29. Undated manuscript, CBLP.
30. Coshocton Tribune (Ohio), Apr. 8, 1945.
31. Colonel Ray J. Stecker to CBL, Jan. 31, 1945, CBLP.
32. Truscott to CBL, Apr. 10, 1945, CBLP. Berchtesgaden was Hitler’s favorite getaway in the Bavarian Alps.
13. OPENING OF THE CAMPS
1. Burns, Roosevelt, 599–601.
2. CBL diary, Apr. 16, 1945, CBLP; New York Herald Tribune, Apr. 17, 1945.
3. Where not otherwise indicated, the following account of CBL’s tour of the camps is based on her report to the House of Representatives, Congressional Record, May 3, 1945; CBL interview, June 9, 1981; Bridgeport Telegram and Bridgeport Post, Apr. 22 and 26, 1945.
4. “Liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp by 6th Armored Division of US Third Army,” http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Buchenwald/Liberation0.html. When parts of the camp were dismantled after the war, some of the stone from the buildings was used to reconstruct Weimar. Mark Fisher, “Germans Rework Buchenwald’s Dual History,” The Washington Post, July 22, 1991.
5. Among the British delegates were Lords Stanhope and Addison, Sir Archibald Southby, Mavis Tate, and the rising Labour star Tom Driberg.
6. Sunday Times Signal (Lanesville, Ohio), Apr. 22, 1945.
7. Congressional Record, May 3, 1945.
8. Ibid.
9. Edward R. Murrow in “Broadcast from Buchenwald,” Apr. 15, 1945, http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Buchenwald/Liberation3.html.
10. Congressional Record, May 3, 1945; Port Arthur News (Tex.), Apr. 21, 1945.
11. Congressional Record, May 3, 1945.
12. Ibid.
13. Sheboygan Daily Press (Wis.) and Sunday Times-Signal (Zanesville, Ohio), Apr. 21 and 22, 1945.
14. Congressional Record, May 3, 1945, British report.
15. Martin Gilbert, The Day the War Ended (New York, 1995), 49.
16. Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War (New York, 2009), 305. Also see Gilbert, The Day the War Ended, 148–49. Eichmann was caught in Argentina in 1960. He was tried by an Israeli court, found guilty of mass murder, and hanged in 1962.
17. Evans, The Third Reich at War, 696.
18. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (New York, 1986), 591.
19. See http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/MainCampsEng.html.
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