When Books Went to War

by Molly Guptill Manning

  If momentum continued to build, it seemed possible that the campaign’s goal would soon be met. Turning to the White House for help, the VBC requested that Friday, April 17, 1942, be designated Victory Book Day. The president obliged. At a press conference, he “asked the cooperation of all citizens, newspapers and radio stations to make [it] a success.” When reporters asked President Roosevelt what types of books should be donated, he responded jokingly: “Anything except algebra,” before stating simply that the public should give the same books that they had read and enjoyed. The Army and Navy were composed of civilians, and their reading tastes were no different from the home front’s.

  The president, who described himself as a “reader and buyer and borrower and collector of books” for all his life, held the VBC and other book organizations in high esteem, for he sincerely believed that books were symbols of democracy and weapons in the war of ideas. Shortly after he declared April 17 as Victory Book Day, Roosevelt released a statement on how books played an essential role in the fight for freedom:

  We all know that books burn—yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. In this war, we know, books are weapons.

  With the president’s Victory Book Day declaration, Connor worked volunteers into a frenzy to prepare for the final charge to meet the campaign’s goal of ten million volumes. Librarians were impressed by the public’s response. Stories of citizens and businesses going the extra mile proliferated. A man in New York City’s Chinatown painstakingly went from one apartment to the next collecting books in a rickshaw. Milkmen collected books from their customers’ doorsteps. Libraries prominently posted thermometer charts that tracked book donations. Even children got involved. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts pounded the pavement, collecting books through door-to-door solicitations in their neighborhoods. One Boy Scout troop collected an astounding ten thousand books in a single day. Around the nation, heaps of books were piled into donation bins. Nearly nine million books had been collected by the end of April 1942.

  One million to go. As most commencement ceremonies for colleges and universities were held in May, the VBC decided to ask American universities to protest Germany’s book burnings—which had begun at its universities—by assembling books for donation. Letters were mailed to every college and university in the United States proposing this idea. The letter urged that books be exhibited in a conspicuous place, such as at the center of graduation festivities. It would be a powerful contrast: American colleges collecting piles of books for donation to the services to memorialize the piles of books collected by the Nazis for burning. In the event that universities wished to remark on the significance of the books collected, the VBC recommended a passage from Milton’s Areopagitica: “Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”

  Although the VBC’s letter was not sent until the beginning of May 1942, many schools organized last-minute collections to coincide with graduation festivities. Among them were the University of Arkansas, Tougaloo College, the University of Denver, the University of Kansas, the University of Scranton, and Bowdoin College. Several universities used the VBC’s suggestions as a blueprint for their own book ceremonies, right down to reading the passage by Milton.

  The VBC was not the only organization to think back to the 1933 book burnings that May. With the passage of nine years and a formal declaration of war, the book burnings were cast in a new light: a warning of the destruction that would follow. In nine years’ time, cities were destroyed, millions of lives were lost, and devastation had spread across Europe like a plague. As one newspaper remarked, “Hunger, forced labor, imprisonment, concentration camps, unarmed crowds of fleeing citizens slaughtered from the skies, nations murdered without cause”—these “are the spectacles that have succeeded those bonfires of books.”

  One of the most acclaimed book-burning memorials of 1942 was the radio program They Burned the Books, by Stephen Vincent Benét, a Pulitzer Prize winner. Renowned for his epic poem John Brown’s Body, and the short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” Benét was known for his ability to intertwine history with fable in striking prose. Aired by the Columbia Broadcasting System, They Burned the Books was such a sensation that copies of the script were immediately printed and sold in book form. Over the next four years, this program would be retransmitted over the airwaves countless times.

  They Burned the Books begins with a stark warning: “Justify the enemy. Appease him. Excuse him. Pardon, condone or accept him. And, by any intelligent process of thought, you will arrive at the diabolical, tortured, debased world of Germany and her Axis partners.” A bell then tolls nine times, after which the Berlin book burnings are reenacted for listeners. The narrator introduces several of the authors whose works were destroyed, and recounts the reasons given by the Nazis for throwing their books into the flames. One was the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose well-known poem “The Lorelei” had been famously set to music by Friedrich Silcher:

  I know not if there is a reason

  Why I am so sad at heart.

  A legend of bygone ages

  Haunts me and will not depart.

  The air is cool under nightfall.

  The calm Rhine courses its way.

  The peak of the mountain is sparkling

  With evening’s final ray.

  The lyrics of “The Lorelei” had been memorized by millions of Germans; burning copies of the song would not eliminate it. Instead, the Nazis, “with totalitarian courtesy . . . kept the song—and blotted out [Heine’s] name.” “Author well-known—since 1842. Author unknown—since 1933,” the narrator scoffs. “That’s what they do to soldiers of humanity, that’s how they rob the soldier of his sword.”

  After discussing the works of Heine, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser, and many other authors whose books were burned, the narrator urges that they could live on in the minds of those who had read them, but only if Americans chose to fight for their preservation, and for intellectual freedom. “This battle is not just a battle of lands, a war of conquest, a balance-of-power war. It is a battle for the mind of man.” Although America did not realize in 1933 that the book burnings were the beginning of Hitler’s total war, “we know it now,” the narrator intones. The war being fought was for all the books that had been burned, for all the voices the Nazis tried to silence, and for all the innocent people whose blood had been spilled. History featured many instances of people trying to squelch freedom of thought, but the most egregious offender of them all was Adolf Hitler. “We are waiting, Adolf Hitler. The books are waiting, Adolf Hitler. The fire is waiting, Adolf Hitler. The Lord of Hosts is waiting, Adolf Hitler.”

  By 1942, the words that Goebbels spoke one dreary night in 1933 had begun to come to fruition, but not as he had hoped. The pile of ashes in Berlin’s Bebelplatz was not forgotten. Those ashes were now a symbol of the freedoms at stake and the danger that the Axis powers presented. Now books would flourish in numbers greater than before. Authors would not be silenced. A new phoenix would arise: an army of words, thoughts, ideas, and books.

  Within one month of the ninth anniversary of the Berlin book burning, another million books were collected by the VBC. The campaign’s goal had been met. Librarians across the United States celebrated. Letters from appreciative servicemen emphasized what a difference a box of books could make. From Africa, a man wrote “to let you know that your efforts of boosting morale of the troops going overseas are not in vain. On our voyage over here,” he said, “there were thousands of us on the ship, [and] we were all overjoyed beyond
words to find that we had some books to read to pass the time during our leisure moments, and there were many.” A lieutenant in the Army Air Corps stationed in Alaska thanked the VBC for not forgetting the men in his remote corner of the war. He noted that, even as he wrote his letter, men were reading the books the VBC had sent, “and I can assure you that they are very grateful.” From the United States Naval Station in Rhode Island, a captain reported that books were being devoured. As the men were not permitted to leave the station, the reading room was one of the few places where they could relax and lose themselves in books.

  As the armed forces swelled in size, however, the need for books grew. Many felt that the VBC, having met its goal, could not simply stop its work. But even its continuing efforts would not be enough. There were two problems: the exhausted supply of donated books and the growing pool of millions of men in the services who needed to travel light. Hardcover books were fine for training libraries, and even onboard battleships. But they weighed down every soldier who had to carry them into the field.

  The VBC struggled for renewal in 1943. It bore the brunt of scathing criticism from Isabel DuBois, the head of the Library Section of the Navy. DuBois oversaw nearly a thousand Navy libraries and eight hospitals, and took great pains in developing lists of quality books with which to stock them. The VBC trespassed on DuBois’s duties, and she did not appreciate the intrusion. She had opposed the 1942 VBC and vehemently resisted the notion of a 1943 campaign. After receiving a shipment of victory books in the summer of 1942, DuBois wrote to Connor that if the books she received were a “sample of the books which have been sorted by librarians, it is the worst indictment of my profession I have ever seen. These were the same titles which I discarded in 1917 and 1918 and the 25 years in between has not made them any more valuable.” She added: “When I think of the tremendous waste in transportation and handling, it leaves me simply appalled. In other words, are gift books worth it? As you know, I never thought they were, but I am more firmly of the opinion than ever.”

  The VBC also faced stiff political opposition from the government’s Charles Taft, who only reluctantly approved funding the campaign again, despite his complaint that he was “positive it is not making an impression in the larger centers.” He was “convinced that this is because the librarian has been made chairman.” “I raised serious questions at the very first meeting as to the use of the librarians in this capacity,” he said. “If this were just a brief drive I would not say anything about it but it is expected to be a continuing effort, and I am satisfied that it is going to bog down unless you establish as a general policy that a live wire layman be put in charge of the campaign effort in every large center.” Between 1870 and 1900, librarianship had swung from 80 percent male to 80 percent female, though men held the majority of executive posts and women generally played second fiddle. The VBC’s first director, after all, had been described as “#1 in the field of Women Librarians.” Taft clearly was not a fan of the female-dominated group.

  When John Connor and the VBC survived the funding scare, he wrote to Althea Warren, describing the ordeal. “Taft began once again his gospel of the inadequacy of librarians and his preference to have business men do the job. He was permitted to speak his piece,” Connor said, but when others had “finished extolling the efforts of the librarians in the VBC effort, there was little that Charlie could do by way of rebuttal.” Connor expected a sympathetic response, and Warren did not disappoint. “How glad I am to have missed Mr. Charles P. Taft! Didn’t he make you want to haul off and slap him in the jaw? He is so full of criticism and with no suggestions to help,” she said.

  The 1943 campaign produced fewer books than 1942, and many of them were not useful to the troops. Connor made arrangements to route unwanted books to organizations and areas that would appreciate them. An outspoken proponent of racial equality, he sent volumes to Japanese internment camps and begged the Army to send more to its African American troops.

  Connor also sent books to American POWs, though it wasn’t easy and had to be done via the YMCA’s War Prisoners’ Aid division. The books donated to the YMCA had to be rigorously sorted, as the rules governing what books would be accepted were onerous. For example, nothing published after September 1, 1939, was allowed, nor were materials that had any relation to geography, politics, technology, war or the military, or “any subject which may be considered doubtful.” Books had to be new or in mint condition; no signs of previous ownership or erasure were permitted. Anything written by or including material of Jewish authors or “émigrés from enemy or enemy-occupied countries” was rejected because such books would not be allowed in German-controlled POW camps.

  The VBC turned to publishing companies for help. In the month of March 1943 alone, the campaign collected fifteen hundred books from Funk & Wagnalls, over fifteen hundred from Harper & Brothers, four thousand from Doubleday, Doran, two thousand from W. W. Norton & Company, one thousand from G. P. Putnam’s Sons, and sixteen hundred from Alfred A. Knopf—to name just a few. Of them all, Pocket Books was consistently generous in donating its popular paperbacks. The five thousand books given to the campaign by Pocket Books in March 1943 supplemented the sixty thousand provided the month before. Beloved by the servicemen because they were lightweight and smaller than the traditional hardcovers, they easily made the rounds overseas as well as in camps and hospitals.

  As donations from the public continued to slow, the question arose: why shouldn’t the armed services provide millions of books as part of its budget? Between 1941 and 1943 the Army and Navy had experimented with distributing magazines to the troops. The success of this program doomed the VBC.

  Despite early setbacks, delivery of popular periodicals was one of the greatest transformations in recreation for frontline soldiers to date. Originally, the Army and Navy ordered thousands of subscriptions to more than a dozen magazines, and planned to sort them into sets by bundling one copy of each into a single package for shipment around the world. In the Army, one set of magazines was supposed to reach each unit of 150 men. In reality, fifty- and seventy-pound packages, each containing two hundred copies of the same magazine, piled up at overseas postal-distribution centers, where they languished for months. More often than not, the magazines were never sorted, and instead hundreds of identical magazines would eventually be shipped to one unit. The next month, the same unit might not receive any periodicals. This haphazard distribution was incredibly frustrating for those in the services. As the Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin observed, magazines arrived “late and tattered, if they arrived at all,” and “half of the magazines carry serial stories, which are a pain in the neck to the guys who start them and can’t finish them” because they never receive the next issue. It would take almost two years to straighten out these problems.

  The 1942 reorganization of the Army’s Special Services Division, which was responsible for serving the morale needs of the servicemen, brought an end to slipshod magazine delivery. Special Services set up a giant assembly warehouse near the New York Port of Embarkation, where tens of millions of magazines were received, sorted, and bundled into sets. Initial offerings included: American Magazine, Baseball Magazine, Collier’s, Detective Story Magazine, Flying, Infantry Journal, Life, Look, Modern Screen, Newsweek, Omnibook, Popular Mechanics, Popular Photography, Radio News, Reader’s Digest, Superman, Time, and Western Trails. Each weekly set included one copy of most magazines; for titles such as Life and Time, three copies were provided to keep up with demand. (In 1945, a special “WAC Magazine Kit” was developed, which was distributed to hospitals and Women’s Army Corps units overseas and consisted of Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Mademoiselle, Personal Romances, True Confessions, True Story, and Woman’s Home Companion.)

  The first sorted sets were mailed in May 1943, and from that point forward, magazine deliveries became regular, and the popularity of periodicals continued to grow. Between July 1943 and
January 1946, the number of magazine sets distributed to the servicemen increased sevenfold. Due to the overwhelming demand, additional titles were added to each set, including Overseas Comics, the New Yorker, Pic, and Hit Kit. To keep magazine service affordable for the Army and Navy, publishers sold their magazines at cost. The average price for the September 1944 monthly set of one hundred magazines (based on four weekly deliveries of twenty-five magazines in a set) was only $3.86.

  To minimize costs and make concessions for paper rationing, some magazines experimented with printing armed forces editions. Generally, these publications contained no advertisements, used twenty- to twenty-five-pound paper instead of the traditional forty-five- or sixty-pound paper, and were a fraction of their usual size. Newsweek published a “Battle Baby” edition, Time printed a “Pony Edition,” and the New Yorker, Science News Letter, and McGraw-Hill Overseas Digest all printed special overseas editions. All of these magazines were roughly six by eight inches and used paper that was akin to newsprint. The miniatures saved paper, but the smaller print was brutal on the eyes. Newsweek’s Battle Baby was a reproduction of the regular magazine shrunk down to size, which resulted in text that approximated seven-point font. Sergeant Sanderson Vanderbilt, an avid reader, joked that “after a few more years of squinting my way through pony-size overseas editions of Time,” he would surely go blind. One historian seconded this sentiment: “Even in good light one could not read it very long at a time.”