“I have decided, or rather I decided several months before it started, or may be several years say, not to write propaganda in this war at all. I am willing to go to it and will send my kids to it and will give what money I have to it but I want to write just what I believe all the way through it and after it. It was the writers in the last war who wrote propaganda that finished themselves off that way. There is plenty of stuff that you believe absolutely that you can write which is useful enough without having to write propaganda….If we are fighting for what we believe in we might as well always keep on believing in what we have believed, and for me this is to write nothing that I do not think is the absolute truth.”
-To Maxwell Perkins, Finca Vigia, Cuba,
May 30, 1942

It would be nice to designate the Second World War with a factual title, such as The Good War, or The Best War Ever, but in retrospect neither of these titles would be an honest opinion to the military or the civilian victims of the war. Historians and journalists alike, being that one cannot be the other and therefore should never be confused but for the instance of the following should be entitled to the same mistakes, insinuate that the portrayal of the Second World War was an accurate one without the tremendous censorship and propaganda that transpired out of the First World War. Undoubtedly, to believe such an apparent statement of propaganda would be to dismiss the actions and the transformation of the techniques used by propaganda agencies between the two wars. Institutions, which included the U.S. Government, its military branches, and more important media outlets, were well aware of their failings in the eyes of the American public before the treaty of Versailles in 1918. It became necessary for these entities, as the prospect of a second European conflict approached, to rebuild the trust which American citizens once had with its published news. Tactics would have to be less obvious and simplified to instill that trust, while still insuring that strong isolationist views were transformed directly into patriotic support. When war did begin it then became necessary to secure these patriotic views while sons, brothers, and fathers were being returned to their families in caskets. Two main goals had to be achieved in order to insure the trust of the American public and to secure the message sent to them. The first was the establishment of the Council of Books in Wartime, an organization formed in 1942 by the publishing industry, which enacted a comprehensive program to meet the Army’s objectives in the distribution of information to the civilian and military populations. The formation of the Council allowed for military control over published material, but publically could appear as a privately controlled organization. The second goal was to acquire respected writers and authors to perform the duties of war correspondents in the overseas theatres. These authors were important tools of propaganda and because of their celebrity status would guarantee a respect from a reading audience. The major problem with such a maneuver would be dealing with the authors themselves, many of whom would have earned their respect by producing straightforward and honest writing. To take control over the writers, “Correspondents were not allowed in the theatres of war unless they were accredited, and one of the conditions of accreditation was that the correspondent must sign an agreement to admit all his copy to military or naval censorship.” The military censors became overworked men in a desperate war against the overbearing personalities of many of the selected correspondents. One such celebrity author, and the focus of the following work, was Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway has been chosen most importantly for his pre-war stance against propaganda and censorship, which would continue throughout the war and after. Also Hemingway’s celebrity before and during the war set him apart from the common journalist. His distinctive celebrity status along with his prewar stance on propaganda and censorship provide for a unique study in the way military censorship affected war correspondents, and proves that no one writer was immune to the influence of the army censor. Hemingway’s success as a fiction writer had brought him celebrity and favoritism with the American reader, but through his experience and wounding as a soldier during the First World War, and his time as a war correspondent in Spain when the Loyalist lost governmental control to Franco’s fascists, Hemingway developed his persona as an unbending promoter of the truth. Even before he left for Spain in 1938, Hemingway released two letters (articles) for the American people in Esquire magazine. The two pieces, entitled Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter and The Malady of Power, not only reinforced the author’s stance as a promoter of American isolationism, but also forewarned of the power and growth of propaganda since the first European conflict. Hemingway’s body of fictional work had also endeared him to the public following World War I. Short stories such as Soldier’s Home and Big Two-Hearted River took into account the aftermath of war and how it affects the people who are involved in conflict. Both narratives dealt with the personal struggles soldiers faced once they returned from the front, and Hemingway explained the approach to these types of stories by saying “the writer's standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be. For facts can be observed badly; but when a good writer is creating something, he has time and scope to make of it an absolute truth.” For Hemingway, as a onetime soldier, it was of the utmost importance for him to tell the soldier’s story with truth, and to never curve the lines in order to preserve a thought or view in which some would deem necessary for the public to believe.
Prior to World War II, the American Press faced a complete lack of respect from the American public due to the war coverage of the First World War. Most people would consider the publishing industry a hapless pawn of the U.S. Government’s wartime propaganda agency. O.W. Riegel stated in 1937 that if an American was asked about “the reliability of what they read in newspapers, he is very likely to be answered in the negative”. Christopher Loss further extended that same theory by providing that if “the publishing industry’s participation in the First World War was remembered at all, it was remembered negatively”, and further explains that propaganda in the media had “undermined the nation’s “Home Front” morale, and, worse still, duped the wider American public into supporting Wilson’s war to end wars.” Due to the negative outlook towards American media outlets, it became necessary to bring credibility to magazines and newspapers during the coverage of the Second World War. To exclaim that there was no propaganda or censorship within the media during the World War II would be a farce, yet scholars like William Leary Jr. insist that even within the magnitude of the publishing venture of World War II “the program was free from censorship,” and that if the armed services did use censorship “they used this authority with great discretion.” Others like journalist John Jamieson, who also served as captain in the U.S. Army, commended the military immediately following World War II, commenting that “the Army’s wartime record on the censorship of library materials was notably clean. Almost no Army-wide censorship for moral or political reasons was imposed by the War Department, and there was comparatively little locally imposed censorship.” To the Army’s credit the only way to overcome the negative impact propaganda and censorship had on the American people during and after the First World War, was to make the nation believe that they had little or no influence within the publishing and media industries during World War II. The reality of the situation was in fact that the U.S. military did indeed censor all reports and correspondence coming from the front, and threatened expulsion for those who refused to comply. Michael Adams insists that “In America, the Office of Censorship vetted public and private communications, while the Office of Facts and Figures, and later the Office of War Information, published propaganda in support of the war effort.” The result of these offices was that the American public was witness to a clean war where mistakes were never made and the loss of life was minimal. Two of the government agencies, the Office of Censorship and the Office of Facts and Figures, eventually became the Office of War Information in 1942 by an executive order from President Roosevelt. One of Ernest Hemingway’s good friends and poet Archibald MacLeish was head of the Office of Facts and Figures and later became an assistant when it transformed into the Office of War Information. The Office of War Information was assigned with the problem of news control, part of which was assuring the continued public support of the government’s war effort. Elmer Davis was selected to head the newly created office because of his successful role as a war correspondent leading up to 1942. Davis’ appointment held off attacks that the new agency would stiffen the ability for news outlets to send information from the overseas theatres, and also kept Republicans at bay who claimed the agency was a propaganda tool for Roosevelt’s reelection bid. The Office of War Information’s goal was to emphasize America’s commitment to the “Four Freedoms” throughout Allied countries, and to unify the country by clarifying the ideals and principles for how Americans would view the war. Even though the Office of War Information was established amongst calls for patriotic unity and a need for a balanced and reliable agency to outline how the war was to be reported, it still entailed all the duties of an agency built for propaganda purposes. For example, the powers of the Director of the Office of War Information were laid out to achieve an absolute control over information, and in Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9182 he described the position as “consistent with the war information….to issue directives….as he may deem necessary and appropriate to carry out the purposes of the Order, and such directives shall be binding.” These implements of authority, given to the Director by the President, broadened the power of all agencies within the Office of War Information and guaranteed that all information and data could be directed by the office’s necessity. Michael Sweeny, in his work Secrets of Victory: the Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II, finds it curious that within the Executive Order there is no mention of censorship, even though the new office it created “absorbed the foreign news-gathering and propaganda functions of the Office of Information,” which included correspondents like Hemingway. The military and the press were able to pull off the idea of a propaganda and censorship free coverage of the Second World War by establishing credibility with the American public. One of the ways they did this was by convincing famous writers, who were already held in a higher regard to most other journalists, to participate in the correspondent coverage of both the European and Pacific campaigns. One in particular, Ernest Hemingway, had been a well known isolationist and anti-war promoter before the war. In a pair of articles for Esquire in 1935, he foresaw the future conflict to come and provided vivid warnings to the American public. Even touching on how propaganda would play its part, Hemingway exclaimed in the first letter that “If there is a general European war we will be brought in if propaganda (think of how the radio will be used for this), greed, and the desire to increase the impaired health of the state can swing us in.” From his own experiences during the First World War, Hemingway further mentioned how the correspondents had to work citing that “All references to this mobilization were censored out of cables and radiograms. Correspondents who mentioned it in mailed stories were threatened with expulsion.” Later on in the first letter, Hemingway goes on to warn the American people that “Propaganda is stronger now than it has been ever before.”
The second letter, in which Hemingway titled The Malady of Power, goes on to speak of the looming election of 1936 and the choices the American people needed to make. Hemingway questions the sitting President by asking “If he is ambitious personally, to leave a great name, or to eclipse the luster of the name he bears, which was made famous by another man, we will be out of luck because the sensational improvements that can be made legally in the country in time of peace are being rapidly exhausted.” The letter includes another Hemingway forewarning that “War is coming to Europe as surely as winter follows fall. If we want to stay out now is the time to decide to stay out. Now, before the propaganda starts.” Through his works, Hemingway added credibility to his already famous notoriety with the American public declaring that he was no tool of propaganda or of the platforms of the current party in office, and yet he still believed in the power of the American ideal, finishing off the article with “In the next ten years there will be much fighting, there will be opportunities for the United States to again swing the balance of power in Europe; she will again have a chance to save civilization; she will have another chance to fight another war to end war.” These tactics provided a separation for Hemingway from the news media of the First World War by displaying his pessimistic views on the current situations, but his work still embodied him to the American people by tapping into their patriotic instincts as Americans. Most people would like to believe that propaganda is simply the spread of ideologies in which the public disagrees with, but in contrast propaganda is an inescapable fact of modern life that constitutes views the public agrees and disagrees with. It is impossible for any form of media to cling to the idea that they are impartial, and it needs to be understood that if the press wants to establish itself as credible, it needs to publish more propaganda not less. For instance, Hemingway’s own call against propaganda in the Esquire letters is simply propaganda for isolationism, and by publishing such propaganda the American press earned credibility with the American public by portraying more opposing sides to the propaganda argument. Further into Riegel’s examination of the propaganda issues, which followed the First World War, he states the straightforward fact that “The real and fundamental propaganda menace in the American press today lies in the danger that the range of propagandas will narrow, and that the standard commercial press will come to represent only a very small number of political philosophies.” Riegel goes on to explain that “If our democratic institutions, including the press, are to be preserved, there must be many voices, and they must speak with vigor, even though their words invoke the image of that awesome monster, Propaganda.” In order to further its credibility with most Americans, the press and the military needed to supply multiple views of the political structure leading into the Second World War, which would provide for the American people the groundwork for a belief that there was an uncensored coverage on the actions of the World War II. It was under these circumstances that led Collier’s Magazine to acquire writers like Ernest Hemingway to participate in its coverage of the European Front. Acquiring writers who were known to present opposing views and who questioned the credibility of government policy, allowed for media outlets to solidify the idea that they presented an unbiased view of the war. Ernest Hemingway would not start his coverage of World War II until May of 1944. Instead he separated himself from the fighting in Europe and the political workings of Washington by staying at his house, La Finca Vigia, in Cuba. Hemingway’s delay in venturing into the European conflict can mostly be attributed to his rocky marriage. Hemingway’s wife Marty had taken a role as a war correspondent in London early into the war, and Hemingway wish to avoid confrontation with her and his impending divorce. It has been written and even constituted by Hemingway’s own works, the posthumous Islands in the Stream, for example, that the time he spent in Cuba was used to participate in war activities, and Hemingway wanted to make it clear that he was not trying to avoid his patriotic duties. Hemingway insistently regarded himself as a U-boat chaser and a contributor in the realm of counter-intelligence, but these titles can be argued and often deemed comical. Hemingway did organize a counter-intelligence agency known as the “Crook Factory” to monitor Nazi agents, who were collecting Allied shipping information in and around Cuban waters. But for his exploits as a submarine hunter, very little contact was ever made with any German U-boats, and Hemingway was often accused of “inventing the whole operation simple to make sure he would be supplied with rationed fuel” for his boat the Pilar. The U-boat hunts on Hemingway’s sport-fishing boat the Pilar, which David Kennedy called “swashbuckling” and “amateurish”, became mere drinking and fishing voyages. A complete lack of production from these U-boat expeditions lead to an increase of boredom and depression for Hemingway, which eventually pushed him to become involved in the European Theatre of the war. In August of 1943, Ernest Hemingway wrote in a letter to Archibald MacLeish from his home in Cuba questioning the current state of the war correspondents and inquiring about his personal involvement. Hemingway asks, “Is there any chance that we might send guys to war not to write govt. publications or propaganda but so as to have something good to read afterwards? Do you think I have enough category to get any such assignment after finishing work here?” Six months later Hemingway had accepted an offer from Collier’s to cover the daylight bombing raids on Germany by the Royal Air Force (R.A.F.), and arrived in London in May of 1944. Due to his increased celebrity after the 1940 release of the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway’s arrival in London became news itself and further established his image to the American readers as the premier war correspondent. The For Whom the Bell Tolls release fell just before the newly incorporated Council on Books in Wartime, which was made up of members of all the major publishing companies, and controlled censorship in the publishing industry. These leaders of their industry hoped to expand the growing paperback trade by working with the Federal Government and the military during the war. The goals set forth by the Council “articulated three principle uses for books in wartime: to influence the thinking of the American people concerning the war effort; to help maintain the nation’s morale; and to communicate essential information about the importance of each individual’s contribution to winning the war against the Axis Powers.” In short, the Council on Books in Wartime was organized to support the military and to influence the ideas and views of the American public, which also included its soldiers. It was essential, therefore, not to publish books such as For Whom the Bell Tolls, which had a vivid portrayal of the Spanish Civil War and brought aspects of war to the American public in a negative light. It was the type of work that reinforced Hemingway’s style of a straightforward approach to writing, and contributed to his continued endearment with the American reader.
The great success and celebrity that came with For Whom the Bell Tolls brought hope to the publishers at Collier’s that Hemingway’s articles written for them would be sought after reading, but Hemingway’s writing style and approach brought worry to those in the U.S. Government. A. E. Hotchner explains Hemingway’s approach to writing in the forward of his personal memoirs, which were written shortly after the famous author’s death. Hotchner expresses how Hemingway’s goal was to account for all things- “to tell the whole truth about them, holding back nothing; tell the reader the way it truly happened, the ecstasy and sorrow, remorse and how the weather was, and, with any luck, the reader will find his way to the heart of the things itself.” J. Edgar Hoover despised the idea of Hemingway’s involvement in any overseas activities saying “I of course realize the complete undesirability of this sort of connection or relationship. Certainly Hemingway is the last man, in my estimation, to be used in any such capacity. His judgment is not of the best, and if his sobriety is the same as it was some years ago, that is certainly questionable.” Hemingway’s tendency to write his mind was one of the reasons Hoover worried about him. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hemingway wrote to his editor Max Perkins examining that “Now the myth of our matchless Navy has been exploded as badly as the myth of Gamelin the great General. If we are to win this war rather than simply defend and cover up the incompetents who will lose it, Knox should be relieved as Sec. of Navy within 24 hrs of the Pearl Harbor debacle.” Statements like these brought fear into the censors of the Army, who it was said “could not get into trouble by cutting out information, but they could find themselves in a lot of difficulty by letting material pass that should have been censored.” The idea of having to face the celebrated author would undoubtedly have brought trepidation to any censor giving the responsibility of controlling the often belligerent writer.
On June 5, 1944 Ernest Hemingway loaded himself onto an attack transport that was heading to the beaches of Normandy. When the morning light shown upon the French coastline on June 6, Hemingway found himself in the company of infantry soldiers aboard a landing craft, or LCV. Hemingway would become one of only fifty Allied news correspondents to be allowed to cover the D-Day invasion. It was not until July 22, 1944 that the article, entitled Voyage to Victory, was published in Collier’s about the account of Hemingway’s D-Day activities, and when it was it reeked of Hemingway’s flair. The author refused to hold back on his description of the beaches as they were bombarded from battleship fire and wave after wave of American soldiers. Hemingway illustrated the scene by acknowledging the fact that “the first, second, third, fourth and fifth waves lay where they had fallen, looking like so many heavily laden bundles on the flat pebbly stretch between the sea and the first cover.” If there were any doubt to whether or not Hemingway would accurately depict the D-Day invasion, it surely disappeared when he wrote “I saw a piece of German about three feet long with an arm on it sail high up into the air in the fountaining of one shellburst.” The author did have some misgivings about whether his piece would supply the reader with the correct images, and in an effort to make an excuse in case of failures he concluded the piece by explaining that “real war is never like paper war, nor do accounts of it read much the way it looks.” The straightforward approach to his D-Day coverage was applauded back in the states, and Collier’s requested more articles from the writer. It was not the same for the military, who began to deny him such close access to the battle, unless, of course, they approved his future writings.
While struggling to rejoin the infantry in France, Hemingway wrote articles back in London about the fliers of the R.A.F., which had been his original assignment. Hemingway yearned to return to the infantry, who he felt were his men, and was able to reach an accord with the Army in time for the Battle for Paris. In his first article back with the infantry at the front lines just outside of Paris, Hemingway relays his frustrations with the Army’s newly found censorship of the author. Out of frustration Hemingway writes, “The main highlights of this period that I remember, outside of being scared a number of times, are not publishable at this time”, and goes on to say in regards to the division’s commander that “I would like to be able to write an account of the actions of the colonel both by day and by night. But you cannot write it yet.” In the Army’s defense, their censors also held the responsibility of ciphering out any information that could hinder the strategic operations of the military in their battle against the Germans.
The pieces that Hemingway wrote for Collier’s in his second tour of duty in France were filled more with his own heroics, and episodes of fun throughout the French countryside as he marched with Allied troops toward Paris. These post D-Day articles rely on Hemingway’s self-propaganda to entertain the reader. The Army censors began to receive articles from Hemingway that were more appropriate to their own desired portrayal of war, and Collier’s found that any of Hemingway’s anecdotes could be profitable. The correspondences that Hemingway wrote following D-Day were filled with his own interactions with soldiers and the French guerillas portraying him as their adopted leader. These pieces were meant to amuse and to promote Hemingway’s image as a tough-guy rogue. The articles also portrayed the young American soldiers as the saviors of Europe, and described their acceptance by the French people by saying “The third time we went through the town the men were all helmeted and we were cheered wildly, kissed extensively and heavily champagned, and we made our headquarters in the Hotel du Grand Veneur, which had an excellent wine cellar.” The image was sent back home to the American reader as one where happy endings were happening all across Europe, and it helped to reassure the public that the war had a necessary means. Hemingway even harped about the German troops and presented a feeling to his American audience that they had given up the long fight. In the same correspondence he writes that “a very young Pole deserted from the German tank unit ahead of us. He buried his uniform and his submachine gun and filtered through the lines in his underwear”. The images of a thankful Europe, happy American soldiers, and of a deserting enemy all helped to promote the images that the Office of War Information and other agencies wanted to be projected onto the American public.
Hemingway’s defiance would continue throughout his time in Europe, even though his articles now faced heavy censorship. In letters and personal correspondents, Hemingway presented his frustrations with the Army censors’ attack on his work. The author began a love affair with Mary Welsh, another war correspondent while in Europe, and their letters reflected his annoyance as he tried to find comfort in someone who faced similar writing restrictions. Hemingway writes to his love interest and future wife Mary at the end of July in 1944 telling her “Mary I cannot write you well because of how many people read it or can read it in transit making me shy and so difficult to write.” In September the author apologizes to her again and says “Am sorry to write so dully. But always write for censorship in letter.” Later on in the same letter Hemingway goes on to tell Mary that “These pieces (for Collier’s) – with censored parts put back- could make a book.” Mary was not the only one to receive complaints. On September 15, 1944 the writer sent his son Patrick a letter exclaiming the difficulties of his work saying “I had to write a couple of pieces and try to get them passed”, continuing “I can’t write you the details but once the campaign is over I will.” The culmination of Hemingway’s struggle with the military censorship of his personal and professional writings came to a head in a Collier’s article entitled War in the Siegfried Line.
The article begins with a few paragraphs from Ernest Hemingway, but the majority of its six pages are filled with the accounts of Captain Howard Blazzard of Arizona. Hemingway explains right from the beginning, to his reader, the reason for his approach to the article exclaiming that it was “so this will not be held up by the censor while all the claims are threshed out.” Continuing his obstacles with covering the battle into Germany, Hemingway introduces Captain Blazzard to his audiences simply by stating that he may be able to “give you a little idea of what happens in combat.” Hemingway, as a writer, found that the continued censorship, of his work by the military, compromised his writing style and his relationship with his audience back in the states. The piece on the Siegfried Line became one of the last for Hemingway during the war, and his bitterness continued long after. Ideas of a novel never culminated from the Collier’s pieces like he had suggested to Mary, and it was not until 1950 when the author published any resemblance of a World War II manuscript. The disappointing Across the River and Into the Trees did not correlate to any of his own wartime experiences, and the only piece that depicted his period with the infantry, a short story entitled Black Ass at the Cross Roads, was not released until after his death.
Hemingway was not the only correspondent to struggle with censorship, or find the military censors to be harassing. Walter Cronkite was held up from filing a report on a blind bombing raid that the military had undertaken. The report was a challenge to the myth that all targets were military targets, and that they were hit effectively with pinpoint accuracy. Films of dead bodies and military atrocities were also confiscated and lost among the wartime commotion. Other photographers received word that censors could not review their film due to technical problems. The censorship even reached the radio airwaves, which at one time Hemingway claimed would be the vehicle of future propaganda. Adams writes that “Eric Sevareid tried to broadcast descriptions of faceless, limbless boys in military hospitals, the censors told him to write about new miracle drugs and medical instruments instead.” Adams carries on to say that some others gave into the censorship of the military and even censored what they wrote on purpose just to make sure it would not be held up. John Steinbeck, who was a tough writer and had no issue in exposing sides of human misery, was one of these correspondents. Adams states that Steinbeck “admitted that as a war reporter he deliberately slanted his stories to omit anything that might shock civilians.”
It is important to understand that Ernest Hemingway was not the only one to struggle with censorship, and for all of his celebrity, he could not find a way around it. The power he had in his celebrity status during the Second World War exceeded almost every other writer at the time, and though he was given some leeway, he still faced censorship and approval by the military for his work. What kind of voice did the common journalist have against the military propaganda machine if the world’s most famous writer had none? Probably very little, and therein lies the problem with any ideology which suggests that the Second World War was free from, or consisted of watered-down censorship.
It is surprising that many historians and journalists have overlooked that large scale of censorship that could be found during World War II. Ernest Hemingway’s struggles to find freedom while writing his articles for Collier’s was only a small example of the power that offices, like the Office of War Information, had on the media that was viewed by the American people. The government’s complete grasp on all faucets of information allowed for the construction of one future as it transferred America from the Second World War into the Cold War. The fact that today many historians keep silent about the extent of censorship during World War II is actually a visible sign of how strong the war propaganda was and how effective it became in shaping the public’s image of the war for the generations that followed. The Director of the Office of Censorship stated prior to its merger into the Office of War Information that he “did not want to call attention to his office”, and further saying that “he was convinced that if America had to be subjected to it (censorship) during World War II, it had to be the right kind.” Both aspects were important in the success of media censorship and the propaganda cause because each allowed for the preservation of an ideal image of World War II to continue long after the fighting stopped. Keeping a low profile allowed America to believe that government interference was limited, and therefore the news and images of the Second World War must ultimately be an accurate portrayal of the way it was.
The other major arm of the propaganda and censorship project, the Council of Books in Wartime, succeeded almost as well as the government agencies. The Council, who “would not approve books that contained statements or attitudes offensive to our Allies, any religious or racial group, trade or profession; that were not in accord with the spirit of American democracy,” made sure that each American reader found the right views presented to them in each book placed on the shelves during the war. Allowing that the armed services had all and final approval on the censorship and selection of book titles, the Council was still able to put together an appropriate selection of titles to cater to most tastes of the American reader. Even Hemingway’s earlier works found their way into reproduction, but to his chagrin many were censored, allowing that any “reasonable doubt concerning the character of any material should be resolved in favor of prohibition.” The Council of Books in Wartime’s ability to work hand in hand with the armed services and the Office of War Information allowed for a complete government stranglehold on the publishing industry from books, magazines, to newspapers both local and national. It also made sure that the American reader was presented with the war as a battle between two ideologies, one of the free and democratic Allies and one as the slave and dictatorial Axis.
The Second World War was dominated by propaganda on both the Axis and Allied sides. The Axis, especially Nazi Germany, was predominantly known for their propaganda before and during the war, but the United States was just as active in its control of the news that reached American shores. After the bungling of propaganda and wartime news that returned to the States during the First World War, American media outlets and government agencies had to reevaluate their techniques in establishing a controlled wave of information to the American public. The influence of well known American writers was a main weapon used by the U.S. Army, through the Council on Books in Wartime and the Office of War Information, to censor and mold all news that was transported from the fronts to the American citizen. It is then important to understand how authors, like Ernest Hemingway, were used to promote the good war for the U.S. Army as a tool of propaganda. Hemingway in 1935 used his influence and his columns in Esquire to warn the American people and to predict the coming war. In the second of the two articles he further describes the war to the American public, and lays out what the war will bring to the United States. These articles would further correlate to his pieces for Collier’s, while he was a war correspondent during the Second World War, as pieces of evidence that illustrate the difference in his writings. The contrast between the Esquire and Collier’s articles show the difference between censored and the non-censored writings that the author published. The Collier’s articles, which were censored, present a break from the traditional straightforward style of writing that Hemingway was known for, and represents the major problems faced by war correspondents in the field. Ernest Hemingway is known for his fiction and nonfiction prose on war from a Farwell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Islands in the Stream, and to his journalistic works such as Voyage to Victory, so Hemingway can be seen as a perfect illustration of how the difference between works that are produced with the censorship and propaganda of government authorities compare to his original pieces.
Hemingway’s own wartime experiences influenced his views on war, and contributed to the problems he had when facing the military censors. The only problem with using Ernest Hemingway as an example of wartime propaganda is the fact that Hemingway is a well known self-propagandist. It was a challenge to decipher what is Hemingway’s own self-indulgence to what is written in benefit of the war effort. When the censors became more involved in what Hemingway was sending back to the states, it became more apparent that he was using his own anecdotes to fill lines of the page. Without the day to day operations to write about the readers at Collier’s were given stories of Hemingway’s own escapades to occupy their time. The author writes in October of 1944 “Since we were not to advance farther with the column, I took evasive action at this point and waded down the road to a bar.” Hemingway’s works are an important example of wartime journalism during the Second World War, and yet it is also just as important to view his works as a piece of the larger puzzle of propaganda that the U.S. military laid out for the American public before, during, and after the war. Back in Cuba at the end of World War II, Hemingway was once again allowed to write without the censorship that followed him as a correspondent of the European Front. At his house, La Finca Vigia, he was published in a foreword for a book by another author entitled Treasury for a Free World. In the foreword Hemingway once again was allowed to provide his audience with an untainted view on World War II and the world that is left from it:
“We have waged war in the most ferocious and ruthless way that it has ever been waged. We waged it against fierce and ruthless enemies that it was necessary to destroy. Now we have destroyed one of our enemies and forced the capitulation of the other. For the moment we are the strongest power in the world. It is very important that we do not become the most hated……An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and the dead.”
Because of the censorship Hemingway faced as a correspondent, these final thoughts on World War II maybe some of the most honest and sincere that the author was allowed to write on the subject, and yet because of his talent of expression many of the readers of his Collier’s articles were still able to develop a sense of the triumphs and difficulties that front-line soldiers faced in combat. To Hemingway and to the other war correspondents, credit must be given for the demands they faced in providing the American people with an image of battle, which to their eyes could be seen but not allowed to be placed on paper.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:
Hemingway, Ernest. "Battle for Paris." In By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, by William White, 364-373. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter." Esquire, September 1935: 36-43.
Hemingway, Ernest. "How We Came to Paris." In By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, by William White, 374-383. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Letter to Archibald MacLeish". La Finca Vigia, Cuba, August 10, 1943.*
Hemingway, Ernest. "Letter to Mary Welsh". Villebaudon, France, July 31, 1944.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Letter to Mary Welsh". Houffalize, Belgium, September 11, 1944.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Letter to Max Perkins". San Antonio, TX, December 11, 1941.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Letter to Patrick Hemingway". Hemmeres, Germany, September 15, 1944.
Hemingway, Ernest. "The Malady of Power." In Hemingway on War, by Sean Hemingway, 307-309. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Voyage to Victory." In By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, by William White, 340-355. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.
Hemingway, Ernest. "War in the Siegfried Line." In By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, by William White, 392-400. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.
Hemingway, Sean. Ed. Hemingway on War. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.
Hotchner, A.E. Papa Hemingway. New York, NY: Random House Inc., 1966.
*All personal correspondence of Ernest Hemingway can be found at the archives of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library from a generous donation by Mary Welsh Hemingway. Email Research Desk at Kennedy.Library@NARA.gov

Secondary Sources:
Adams, Michael C.C. The Best War Ever: America and World War II. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Hawkins, Lester G., and George S. Pettee. "OWI-Organization and Problems." The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 7, 1943: 15-33.
Jamieson, John. "Censorship and the Soldier." Public Opinion Quarterly, Fall, 1947: 367-384.
Kennedy, David M. The American People in World War II. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty: From Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondents as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
Leary, William M. "Books, Soldiers, and Censorship During the Second World War." American Quarterly, Vol. 20, 1968: 237-245.
Loss, Christopher P. "Reading Between Enemy Lines: Armed Sevices Editions and World War II." The Journal of Military History Vol. 67, July, 2003: 811-834.
Lyttle, Richard B. Ernest Hemingway: The Life and The Legend. New York, NY: Atheneum, 1992.
National Archives. Hemingway, Ernest. http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/spring/hemingway.html (accessed November 12, 2009).
Riegel, O.W. "Propaganda and the Press." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 179, May, 1935: 201-210.
Sweeney, Michael S. Secrets of Victory: the Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Tessitore, John. The Hunt and The Feast: A Life of Ernest Hemingway. New York, NY: Franklin Watts , 1996.

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[ 1 ]. Hemingway, S. Ed. 299
[ 2 ]. Knightley 232
[ 3 ]. National Archives. Hemingway, Ernest. http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/spring/hemingway.html (accessed November 12, 2009).
[ 4 ]. Riegel 201
[ 5 ]. Loss 816
[ 6 ]. Leary 237,238
[ 7 ]. Jamieson 367
[ 8 ]. Adams 9
[ 9 ]. Hawkins and Pettee 18
[ 10 ]. Sweeney 15
[ 11 ]. Hemingway, E. Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter. 36,37,40
[ 12 ]. Hemingway, E. The Malady of Power. 308-309
[ 13 ]. Riegel 208, 210
[ 14 ]. Lyttle 142
[ 15 ]. Kennedy 144
[ 16 ]. Hemingway E. “Letter to Archibald MacLeish”
[ 17 ]. Loss 815
[ 18 ]. Hotchner Introduction P. X
[ 19 ]. Tessitore 157
[ 20 ]. Hemingway, E. “Letter to Max Perkins” – General Maurice Gamelin was the unsuccessful commander of the French military in 1940 during the Battle of France. – Frank Knox would remain Secretary of the Navy most of the war until his death in April of 1944.
[ 21 ]. Tessitore 232
[ 22 ]. Hemingway, E. Voyage to Victory 354,355
[ 23 ]. Hemingway, E. Battle for Paris 367
[ 24 ]. Hemingway, E. Battle for Paris 369
[ 25 ]. Hemingway, E. Letter to Mary Welsh
[ 26 ]. Ibid
[ 27 ]. Hemingway, E. “Letter to Patrick Hemingway”
[ 28 ]. Hemingway, E. War in the Siegfried Line 392, 393
[ 29 ]. Adams 9
[ 30 ]. Ibid 9
[ 31 ]. Sweeney 15
[ 32 ]. Leary 239
[ 33 ]. Ibid 240
[ 34 ]. Hemingway E. How We Came to Paris 378
[ 35 ]. Hemingway, S. Ed. Introduction P. xxix.