The Second World War demanded the publication of books for all sorts of reasons: as propaganda, as education, as entertainment – and publishers responded accordingly. As two excellent recent publications – John B. Hench’s Books as weapons: propaganda, publishing and the battle for global markets in the era of World War II and Valerie Holman’s Print for victory: book publishing in England 1939-1945 – demonstrate, the book publishing industry was called upon to mobilise for war and played an important role in shaping the cultural landscape of the US and British war efforts.
Hench’s book focuses on American publishers and the various efforts they made to mobilise books for the war. Organisations such as the Council of Books in Wartime turned books into ‘weapons in the war of ideas’. Efforts were made both at home and abroad to use books in the fight against fascism and, once liberation in Europe began, to make books (including American books in translation) to liberated populations. Re-education of Germans, including POWs, was also attempted, through publishers’ series such as the Bücherreihe Neue Welt series. A crucial and important part of Hench’s story is how American publishers were able to make inroads into the global publishing market.
Holman’s book tells the story of the British publishers. In Britain, the pressures on the publishing industry was much greater: the Blitz wiped out book supplies and publishers’ offices (on one night alone in 1940, over a million books were lost); paper supplies were short; and as both Hench and Holman make clear, British firms were wary of the American threat to their global markets. Both books explore the sometimes tense relationship between British and American publishers.
Both books explore the audiences for these books: the American GI catered for by the specially produced Armed Services Editions; the German POW given Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque to read; the British soldiers reading Penguin books through Forces Book Club; African soldiers reading British books, learning English and using it to call for greater political equality. Books are deeply political, as these two histories show us.
What both these excellent books with their extensive archival research reveal is the significant role that publishers played in the Allied war effort. They helped to shape the ideological dimension of the war, setting up the Allies as fighters for democracy and liberty by contrast to the book-burning Nazis. They championed the value of the book in education and entertainment and were able to use this essential role in the war effort as a means to expand their markets, consolidate the idea that books were central to healthy democracies and showed to their respective governments the value of the publishing industry to the state.
John B. Hench, Books as weapons: propaganda, publishing and the battle for global markets in the ear of World War II (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010)
Valerie Holman, Print for victory: book publishing in England 1939-1945 (London: The British Library, 2008).