Review: The New York Times Complete World War II 1939-1945, edited by University of Exeter Professor Richard Overy
The old adage about journalism being the first draft of history seems particularly apt in the case of The New York Times Complete World War II 1939-1945.
This fascinating new book – edited by Richard Overy, professor of history at the University of Exeter – offers the best of both worlds: a selection of contemporary reports published by America's newspaper of record during the global conflict that cost at least 55 million lives, interspersed with modern day commentary from one of the leading authorities on the subject.
The United States may have been drawn into the war reluctantly, but, as Professor Overy notes, from the outset the New York Times was unstinting in informing its readers about "places and issues often remote from American interests".
With more than 160 correspondents covering the war in far flung corners of the world, the breadth of the newspaper's coverage was phenomenal. As Professor Overy points out: "The Times printed more words on the war than any other newspaper, an average of 125,000 every weekday, and 240,000 in the Sunday edition."
Without the benefit of modern technology and faced with official silence, censorship and misinformation, Times journalists risked their lives to report the war as it unfolded on the battlefields and the home front. Often their reports were remarkably prescient – such as the correspondent who observed of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, in October 1939 that "many are beginning to believe that he and he alone has the drive and imagination to lead the British Empire through the greatest crisis in its history".
At other times events soon proved them wrong. In April 1940, four weeks before he resigned as Prime Minister, the paper reported that Neville Chamberlain seemed more secure in his position than ever.
The appeal of this book is its twin perspective, which allows the reader to consume the news as those living through the war saw it, whilst the editor's illuminating introductions to each chapter set the coverage in its historical context.
"This was the view of history as it happened, with all its limitations, and it was possible to get many things wrong, since reporters were always looking to an uncertain future, unlike historians who look back on a certain past," writes Professor Overy.
The broad sweep of the Second World War may be deeply engrained in popular consciousness, but the book provides a rare level of detail which helps the reader imagine what it was like to live through. Alongside in-depth reports and editorials about the major events of 1939-45 are equally revealing and often surprising news in briefs, such as 'London Kills Zoo Snakes Lest Air Raid Free Them' and 'Sales of Maps Soar Here'.
An accompanying CD ROM contains every article the Times published about the war – more than 90,000 of them, spanning the invasion of Poland to VJ Day. Even without it, this magnificent book would stand alone as a unique chronicle of what one historian has described as "the greatest event in the history of mankind".The New York Times Complete World War II 1939-1945 is published by Black Dog & Leventhal, priced £26.95.
