Molly Guptill Manning
Molly Guptill Manning is an associate professor of law at New York Law School and author of several books including When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II, a New York Times bestseller. Manning is the curator of the exhibit The Best-Read Army in the World, inspired by When Books Went to War, featuring approximately 250 items that showcase the story of how the American government supplied troops with over 140 million books between 1943 and 1947.
When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II
One of the most important pieces of equipment that soldiers carried during World War II was a book. At a time when Nazi Germany banned and burned books—with over 100 million books destroyed across Europe by war’s end—the United States armed its troops with words. Beginning with the largest public book drives in U.S. history, the Victory Book Campaign collected nearly 20 million hardcover donations in 1942 and 1943. Publishers then took up the torch by producing “Armed Services Editions,” miniature paperbacks sized to fit the pockets of a military uniform. Over 122 million Armed Services Editions were printed and distributed between 1943 and 1947. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy, in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific, in field hospitals and on long bombing flights. They helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity and made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. Many soldiers credited books with lifting their spirits, giving them hope and providing solace where there otherwise was none.
The War of Words: How America’s GI Journalists Battled Censorship and Propaganda to Help Win World War II
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.
The first 200 attendees will receive a free copy of When Books Went to War.
This event will be live streaming. WATCH HERE.
