The War Over There: American Librarians Responses to World War II

Alisha M. Linam

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Libraries have long been casualties of war. Infamously, the most extensive library in the ancient world, the Library of Alexandria, was gradually destroyed by acts of war. Knights of the Fourth Crusade targeted the Imperial Library of Constantinople. During the War of 1812, British troops burned the Library of Congress along with the rest of Washington. On August 25, 1914, German soldiers set fire to the Library of the Catholic University of Louvain, shocking the modern world. More recently, the National Library of Sarajevo was destroyed in the Bosnian War in a direct attack against cultural heritage. The cultural heritage of the libraries of Iraq and Afghanistan have been at risk in those war torn countries. Many other libraries have suffered the ravages of war as direct targets or indirect victims. No war, however, has been more destructive for libraries and their contents than the Second World War. Millions of books and dozens of libraries across Europe and Britain were burned or irreparably damaged by war related incidences, including thousands of irreplaceable manuscripts and early books. At the heart of these stories are the librarians who are the caretakers of the books. Their stories have been underappreciated. What do librarians do when faced with war?

Argument and Sources This paper will examine American librarians responses to World War II through the lens of two of their professional journals. Other scholarship has explored the actual destruction of libraries, and librarians have looked at the actions their predecessors took during wartime, but no one has looked at what the professional literature the average

Linam librarian in Kentucky or Montana said or thought about the war. While it is important to

know what the president of the American Library Association (ALA) was doing during the war and what steps were being taken to protect the great collections of Harvard and Yales libraries, modern war histories stress the importance of the home front, which includes those librarians in Kentucky and Montana. By looking at two of the most important and widely read professional library journals at the time, one can explore several questions. What did the average librarian know about the war in Europe? Did the professional journals cover important events leading up to the United States going to war, and what do any silences mean? What roles did librarians take on to aid the war effort, and how did their professional journals help them in their efforts? And finally, what role did the discussions in the professional journals play in the development of the post-war library world? Library Journal was founded in 1876 as the mouthpiece for the library associations of the United States and the United Kingdom and Canada. While the British librarians went on to found their own journals, Library Journal has always embraced a transnational image of librarianship. Traditionally viewed as one of the popular magazines of the profession, it can give an idea of what the collective profession was experiencing. While Library Journal represents the field of librarianship as it is, A.L.A. Bulletin shows a vision of the field as it could be. The A.L.A. Bulletin, first published in 1907, is the forerunner of the modern American Libraries magazine. Where Library Journal became more independent of the library associations, as evidenced by the title, the A.L.A. Bulletin was the official journal of the ALA. Most of its articles are the result of conference presentations while Library Journal tends to deal with more popular topics intended for

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librarians to implement immediately. Of course, wartime significantly upended the general structures of both journals, and the journals responsiveness to the needs of their readership is another interesting part to this complex story.

Historiography When examining American librarians responses to the wartime impact on libraries, one must take a slightly creative approach to the historiography. The literature tends to take two divergent paths. First, scholars have focused on the actual destruction of libraries around the world. This has been the most widely studied aspect of the history of libraries during the Second World War, though even coverage of this area pales in comparison to the work that has been done to document the Nazi looting of museums and of Europes gold, jewels, and especially art. Books are often left as a footnote to the tales of cultural loss. Even though they are a historians primary tools, it is the shinier, more valuable objects that attract the publics attention. Second, there has been some effort by the library profession to document the roles of wartime librarians. Many librarians lost their lives alongside the millions killed during World War II, and many more risked their lives to protect their libraries and to continue to serve the public. Even through the Blitz in England and the Nazi occupation of much of mainland Europe, the librarians kept up their work, providing information and escape from the realities of war through the power of fiction. Hilda Urn Stubbingss Blitzkrieg and Books: British and European Libraries as Casualties of World War II is the most comprehensive work that focuses primarily on the

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destruction of European libraries during the Second World War. Stubbings approaches the topic country-by-country, recounting the stories of how books were lost in Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Britain, Italy, and Germany. In most cases two chapters are devoted to each country, the first giving a description of the prewar country and then giving a history of its experiences during the war. She finally addresses the wartime experiences of librarians and libraries in the second of the chapters. Stubbings spends significant time discussing the disproportionate attention given to art, precious metals, and jewels, the targets of Nazi treasure hunters. She points out that American soldiers also found books in Nazi hordes of loot and that, in fact, books drew quite a bit of Nazi attention. The Bibliotheksschutz were tasked with purging library collections of items contradicting Nazi ideology and after the war the Americans repatriated some three million books to their rightful owners.1 Though not well received by reviewers- Stubbings is not a historian- her book remains the most comprehensive look at the European wartime experience of libraries and librarians in World War II. Moving beyond the exclusive realm of World War II, in Libricide: The RegimeSponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century, Rebecca Knuth examines a wide variety of regime-sponsored books burnings and gives special attention to the actions of the Nazis before and during World War II.2 Knuth defines libricide as large-scale, regime-sanctioned destruction of books and libraries, purposeful initiatives

Hilda Urn Stubbings, Blitzkrieg and Books: British and European Libraries as Casualties of World War II (Bloomington, IN: Rubena Press, 1993).
2

Rebecca Knuth, Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).

Linam that were designed to advance short- and long-term ideologically driven goals.3 Unlike Stubbings, she forwards a thesis that connects book burning to the destruction of culture and as a precursor to genocide. Stubbings merely reported on what she found- Knuth does

the work of a true historian and asks questions of the information that she finds. For Knuth, the destruction of books has a purpose. She writes that when the Nazis destroyed libraries across Europe, they were massacring knowledge as part of their ambition to create a homogeneous Aryan state. Knuth recognizes that the loss is not merely a monetary one, but rather one that spans generations as librarians and archivists strive to piece together the remains and once again offer them up for scholars use. Though World War II is only covered in one chapter, Knuth makes the crucial contribution of placing the destruction of libraries within the discussion of the impact of war on culture. In her later book, Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction, Knuth expands her earlier work, including more instances of twentieth century destruction, but she offers very few new observations on World War II.4 Indeed, her discussion of World War II only revisits Kristallnacht in 1938, a topic she already discussed in Libricide. Moving even further beyond the scope of the Second World War, Lucien Polastrons Books on Fire, translated from its original French by Jon E. Graham, offers a more expansive history of the destruction of libraries and books throughout time and across geography.5 Written in response to the burning of the National Library in Sarajevo

3 4

Ibid., viii. Rebecca Knuth, Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006).
5

Polastron, Books on Fire.

Linam in the 1990s and the destruction of the Iraqi national library during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Polastron covers the destruction of books throughout time while giving some attention to the devastation of World War II. He especially laments the destruction of 20 million books in the Blitz and he draws attention to German soldiers use of Russian

encyclopedias to pave the way over muddy roads. But Polastron is more indignant over the more purposeful destruction of libraries. He especially condemns the BrandKammando, soldiers whose mission it was to burn libraries. Like Knuth, Polastron is highly aware of the cultural significance of book burning. He poignantly writes that the book is the double of the man, and burning it is the equivalent of killing him.6 In A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq, Fernando Bez presents an even more extensive history of burned books than Lucien Polastron.7 Originally written in Spanish and translated to English by Alfred MacAdam, Bez wrote the book after visiting the ruins of destroyed and looted libraries in Iraq. Bez explains, The book is an institution of memoryBooks are not destroyed as physical objects but as links to memory, that is, as one of the axes of identity of a person or a community. There is no identity without memoryAt the root of book destruction is the intent to induce historical amnesia that facilitates control of an individual or a society.8 Like Knuth and Polastron, Bez recognizes the impact of book burning on the cultures whose books are burned. However, Bez does not fully stress the destruction of World War
6

Ibid., x.

Fernando Bez, A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq, trans. Alfred MacAdam (New York: Atlas, 2008).
8

Ibid., 12.

Linam II. He focuses most of his attention on the prewar Nazi book burnings but then largely

overlooks the other examples of book burning throughout the war. It is clear that he wishes to shock his audience with stories of wanton destruction, and he missed several opportunities by neglecting the Second World War. One must understand the historiography of the destruction of libraries more generally in order to appreciate the response to the level of destruction in World War II. On the brink of war, librarians were well aware of the dangers war could pose to their collections. After all, moving entire libraries was a much more momentous task than ferreting away art collections, and in many cases the collections could not be moved because they were still needed. An art museum can be closed for the duration of a war with only some regret, but libraries are much more important not only for the information they contain, but for their immediate, portable morale-boosting capabilities. There are reasons that with the outbreak of war, librarians started book-collecting campaigns in order to have reading material to send to the soldiers on the front. The history of the destruction of books served as a warning to librarians of what could happen to their own collections, and so on the brink of war librarians around the world began their plans for continuing to serve the public while protecting the most valuable items of their collections. Many of their lessons were learned from the destruction of the library at Louvain. Matthew Battless article Knowledge on Fire explores the two destructions of the library at the University of Louvain in Belgium. The two destructions still resonate through library history in the present day, and so understanding the story behind the destruction is crucial. Battless account stands out due to his investigation into the cause for the

Linam destruction of Louvain. He details the opposing stories concerning the 1914 destruction, concluding that the library was burned along with the city as a way for the Germans to make an example to other towns in Belgium. Importantly for the rest of his narrative, Battles includes the story of the rebuilding of the library and the debate over the design. Paid for with American donations, the architect intended for the library to be a monument

to the war that chastised the Germans. The university rector objected, however, insisting on a more neutral design. Battles then moves forward to the Second World War and offers the varying accounts of why the library was destroyed a second time. He reveals that the Germans used the tower of the library as an artillery target as they approached the city, but afterwards they sought to blame the British for the destruction. Battles cannot draw conclusions about why the Germans tried to blame the British, but he does offer reasons for the targeting of the library. First, many of the books used to refurbish the library had been taken from German libraries after the First World War. And second, witnesses claimed that the Germans believed that the library had been built to its original plan, the plan that represented Allied victory and German shame. By targeting the library, they literally blasted away history. Battles then looks back at the Nazi book burnings. He admits that Nazi officials were not the instigators in the first burnings in 1933, but they quickly co-opted the student actions, offering lists of suggested books to be collected and burned. As part of the Nazis war on culture, countless thousands of books were burned by the Germans in addition to the destruction of murals, the hounding of college professors, and the closing of art museums. As the war started, German librarians assisted the military in compiling lists of books to be targeted when invading new territories. Millions of books were destroyed, but

Linam 10 millions were also stolen, selected by specialized German units to be brought back for Germanys libraries. Battles concludes by bringing the story forward to the present, mentioning the destruction of the Bosnian national library and the cultural losses in the invasion of Iraq.9 While Battless accounts of the purposeful destruction of books in World War II is admirable, he falls short of describing the full extent of the loss. Millions of books were selectively stolen and destroyed by the Germans, but millions more were accidental casualties of the war, victims of Axis and Allied forces alike. Before one can move on to the works written by librarians and about libraries, one must confront the most popular book on the prevention of wartime destruction: Robert Edsels The Monuments Men. For much of the American public, The Monuments Men has become their reference point for the impact of World War II on cultural artifacts. The book is only likely to continue to affect interested Americans since it is due to be translated as a major Hollywood motion picture in 2014. Edsel reveals the story of the U.S. Armys Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section and the men and women across Europe who saved and recovered thousands of art works and monuments from Nazi destruction. The book has drawn much popular attention to the danger war poses to a countrys intellectual treasures. But while Edsel focuses his attention on the Rembrandts and cathedrals of Europe, he neglects the millions of books that were not saved by the Monuments Men.10 That story is left for others to tell, and a librarian and an archivist have stepped up to the challenge.
9

Matthew Battles, Knowledge on Fire, American Scholar 72, No. 3 (Summer 2003): 3552.
10

Robert Edsel and Bret Witter, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History (New York: Center Street, 2009).

Linam 11 Kathy Peisss article Cultural Policy in a Time of War: The American Response to Endangered Books in World War II fills in parts of the story that Edsel neglects. She explains that the Second World War was the first U.S. war in which the protection of books and other artifacts became an official aim of the war.11 She details the events that led General Dwight D. Eisenhower to issue a directive for the protection of books and other cultural resources and gives credit to American intellectual elites for being aware of the potential threat and to their connections within the federal government. She also points out that Fascist radio broadcasts declared Americans to be barbarians who, once they entered the war, would care nothing for Europes cultural treasures and would pillage and destroy everything in their path. In fact, Americans had been horrified by the destruction of Louvain in 1914, and news of Nazi book burnings before the war spurred a legion of librarians and archivists into action to protect American books. But American interests in books went further, and Eisenhowers directive was also meant to disprove the Fascists broadcasts. Here Peiss expands the story of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) section to include the books they were also charged with protecting and saving. She reveals the efforts of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to gather copies of books, pamphlets, magazines, and other printed paraphernalia and make microfilm copies. While originally done for intelligence purposes, the OSS in fact saved many obscure works published during the war, including resistance newspapers, from disappearing from the human record. Peiss concludes with the story of the MFAAs efforts to retrieve and repatriate books after the war and challenges current library professionals to take heed of the lessons learned during the Second World War.
11

Kathy Peiss, Cultural Policy in a Time of War: The American Response to Endangered Books in World War II, Library Trends 55, No. 3 (Winter 2007): 370-386.

Linam 12 Eleanor Matterns article World War II Archivists: In the Field and on the Home Front also expands on the story of the MFAA. While Mattern makes many of the same points as Peiss, she takes the narrative another step and includes many instances of the MFAAs work to safeguard archival collections. She also fills in further gaps by identifying key figures on the American home front who promoted the MFAA and who kept Congress aware of its actions and importance. Her stories of American and British archivists recruited by the MFAA further fill in the story of the Monuments Men begun by Edsel and Peiss.12 While there is room left for scholars to explore the impact of the libraries lost in World War II, the American response to that destruction could also use more work. The destruction of libraries in Europe not only saddened Americans, it also prompted action by librarians. Under the auspices of the American Library Association, libraries across the country put together policies that could be implemented in the event of an air attack or invasion. But the American response did not limit itself to American soil. American librarians, alongside intellectuals from various fields, were also concerned about the fate of European treasures and encouraged the government to pass policies supporting the protection of European works of art and other cultural treasures, including books. These strategies and plans have drawn the interest of a range of American librarians, who study the topic to both record the actions of the predecessors and to encourage the profession to consider the continued threats posed to library collections. In Books and Libraries in American Society During World War II: Weapons in the
12

Eleanor Mattern, World War II Archivists: In the Field and on the Home Front, Library & Archival Security 24, no. 2 (2011): 61-81.

Linam 13 War of Ideas, Patti Clayton Becker looks at the American home front and especially at the way the American Library Association structured itself as part of the war effort. She reveals that the executive director of the ALA, Carl Milam, and the Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish were quick to align themselves with President Roosevelts policies during the years leading up to the war. They remembered the importance of libraries to the home front during the last world war, and their foresight put Americas public libraries in a position to be ready to serve the public during World War II. While the library did gain more prestige and importance in the eyes of the public, it was not quite in the way Milam envisioned. The ALA faltered in membership numbers during the war because patrons did not come to the libraries seeking the educational experience that Milam had hoped for. While the ALAs publications continued to stress the importance of wartime education in the public library, Americas public libraries were in fact being used as an escape from the traumas of war through recreational reading. Though Becker never quite makes it to the story implied by her title, her work is important because it reveals the inner workings of the ALA in wartime.13 Brett Spencers Preparing for an Air Attack: Libraries and the American Air Raid Defense During World War II explores the more physical response to the threat of the war reaching American soil. He writes that when American librarians heard about Nazi raids that damaged British libraries, they went into a frenzy of information gathering on how to protect their own libraries and made lists of items that needed the most protection. The Library of Congress took notes from the British Library and the Louvre in its efforts to

13

Patti Clayton Becker, Books and Libraries in American Society During World War II: Weapons in the War of Ideas (New York: Routledge, 2004).

Linam 14 defend against potential Nazi bombing campaigns. University libraries across the nation developed contingency plans to complete evacuate their special collections over the course of a day if bombing appeared imminent. Air raid defense was not just a matter of protecting libraries, however. Spencer explains that libraries also developed information centers for the public and provided the latest air defense information. Librarians also offered up their physical buildings as meeting places for local civil defense committees and even as community bomb shelters. After the example of Europe, American libraries were prepared for the destruction that never came, but in the meantime, Spencer argues, the library became more firmly established in the American mind as a community necessity.14

The Burning of the Books- 1933 American librarians may have had a personal awareness of the takeover of the Nazi regime in Germany, but the first professional recognition came in 1933. While the book burnings of 1933 would later be attributed solely to the Nazi regime, it was actually started by the German Student Association under the guidance of Nazi officials. The party controlled the speeches and held the reigns, but the German Student Association, the actual students who used the libraries that were culled, were the boots on the ground. On April 6, 1933, the German Student Association called for the destruction of books that did not align with their principles as part of their Action against the un-German spirit campaign. In the Twelve Theses, purposefully invoking Martin Luthers 95 Theses, they went on to call for
14

Brett Spencer, Preparing for an Air Attack: Libraries and the American Air Raid Defense During World War II, Libraries & The Cultural Record 43, No. 2 (2008): 125147.

Linam 15 a purification of the German language and a cleansing of German literature from the taint

Figure 1: Berlin, Opernplatz, Bcherverbrennung. Students burning books in Berlin, 10 May 1933. From the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

of Jewish intellectualism. Universities, they insisted, should be devoted to the building and support of German nationalism.15 On May 10, 1933, the German Student Association burned over 25,000 un15

Frederick T. Birchall, Nazi Book-Burning Fails to Stir Berlin, The New York Times, May 11, 1933.

Linam 16 German books across Germany as they marched with torches and sang songs. They lit bonfires and jubilantly threw books into the fire as bands played and crowds cheered. Association members invited Nazi leaders to speak.16 In Berlin, the demonstrations took place on the Openplatz, and Joseph Goebbels was the chosen speaker. In his fiery speech, he insisted that The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path...The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death - this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed - a deed which should document the following for the world to knowfrom this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise.17 Fires continued to burn across Germany throughout May and June as students at thirty four universities heeded the call to cast off the un-German spirit. German newspapers hailed their actions and Berlin radio broadcasted the speeches and songs across
16

Ibid.

17

Joseph Goebbels speech in Der Vollzug des Volkswillens: Undeutsches Schrifftum auf dem Scheiterhauten, Nchtliche Kundgebung der deutschen Studentenschaft, Vlkischer Beobachter, 12 May 1933, translated by Hugo S. Cunningham, http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/volkisch.html .

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the nation. Using a list compiled by German librarian Wolfgang Herrmann, the books the students consigned to the flames were the works of noted socialists Brecht and Bebel and the founder of communism, Karl Marx. Foreign works by Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence, Leo Tolstoy, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Jack London were amongst many others that had once been welcomed by German students to be burned at the hands of German students.18 Significantly, works by Jews were burned indiscriminately, including works by the poet Heinrich Heine, who had warned in the nineteenth century, Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people.19 The long years of Nazi censorship and state controlled culture had begun. Curiously enough, there is no direct reference to Germanys book burnings in either of the professional library journals until the next year, 1934. There are articles by German librarians and articles about German libraries in the 1933 issues, but if the American library community ground to a halt and vociferously protested, it is not reflected here. In Library Journal librarians on both sides of the Atlantic were complaining about the high price of German science periodicals and proposing ways to fix the problem.20 In the September issue of the A.L.A. Bulletin, it was announced by the ALA that Hugo A. Krss, the director general of the Prussian State Library in Berlin, would attend the annual ALA

18

Matthew Battles, Knowledge on Fire, American Scholar 72, No. 3 (Summer 2003): 35-52.
19

Graham Ward, True Religion (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 142.

20

Charles H. Brown, German Periodicals in American Libraries: Deflation or Extinction? The Library Journal 58, no. 18 (June 15, 1933): 525-528; Editorials Ibid., 544-545.

Linam 18 Conference alongside librarians from other countries. His ticket was paid for by a grant from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation.21 There is one timely book review of a book called Burned Books: Neglected Chapters in British History and Literature in the A.L.A. Bulletin. Admittedly the review could have been sent to press before May 10 since this is in the October issue, but there is no mention of Germany here. The review doggedly sticks to Britain with no comments on any books ever burned outside of Britain, present or past.22 Given the frequency of publications and the fact that most issues include rather recent news, the lack of mention about the books burnings in Germany in 1933 is a mystery. Librarians would have certainly been aware of the events since it was covered in the major national newspapers. On 5 May, alongside reports that the Nazis planned to seize Austria and a notice for an Anti-Hitler march planned for 10 May that expected 200,000 participants, The New York Times warned that the Nazis planned to purge their libraries. The story explained: Numerous books by Marxist or Jewish authors have already been received by the Berlin section of German students, who, in the course of the campaign against the un-German spirit have appealed to the public to surrender all writings of this kind. They will be publicly burned May 10 in the square opposite Berlin University in Unter den Linden.23 The next day another article reported that works by Helen Keller and
21

Foreign Representation at the A.L.A. Conference, A.L.A. Bulletin 27, no. 9 (September 1933): 348.
22

Theodore W. Koch, Review of Burned Books: Neglected Chapters in British History and Literature by Charles Ripley Gillet, A.L.A. Bulletin 27, No. 10 (October 1933): 401402.
23

Nazis Want Drama on Olympic Card, New York Times, May 5, 1933.

Linam 19 Jack London would be included amongst those of 160 authors. Librarians who participated in aiding the students would receive the honor of being included on a list of dependable libraries, and while private homes would not be raided, it was suggested that families leave poisoned literature on their doorsteps.24 When the day of the burnings arrived, The New York Times ran Helen Kellers letter to the German students in which she told them, History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas.25 In spite of the rain that dampened the full scale of the book burnings across Germany, the paper goes on to report that the publicity stunt was successful and it continued to run stories registering various groups disapproval. Again, while the professional library literature does not reflect a reaction by American librarians, they would certainly have known about it. Perhaps the professional journals felt that this sort of event was beyond their purview. Perhaps they wished to retain their relationships with their German counterparts. Regardless of the reasons, the coming war would change the scope of what was covered and included in American library journals. There is finally a brief acknowledgment of the burned books in the 1 June 1934 issue of Library Journal. There, in 120 words, is a notice about the opening of The German Library of the Burned Books in Paris on the first anniversary of the 10 May burnings in the presence of refugee authors. Its shelves were filled with 20,000 books and pamphlets that bear a silent witness to the high distinction of the works which good

24

Guido Enderis, Nazi Fires to Get 160 Writers Books, The New York Times, May 6, 1933.
25

Helen Keller Warns Germanys Students; Says Burning of Books Cannot Kill Ideas, The New York Times, May 10, 1933.

Linam 20 Hitlerites must not read. Devoted to research by historians, students, writers, and sociologists, the library committee declared, It stands for the fact that, although the Nazis can burn books, they cannot destroy freedom of thought or the great teachings of the past.26 It appears that the memory of the burned books would not ignite a fire in the professional literature until the true scope of Nazism became more apparent during the war.

1939- The War Arrives If the average librarian depended on Library Journal or the A.L.A. Bulletin in 1939 for her outside news, she probably felt that war would never reach American shores. While Hitler had been a menacing shadow over Europe for most of the decade, American librarians could not have predicted Germanys invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, especially not based on the articles in their professional journals, anyway. While publishers advertised books about the increasingly hostile and menacing Third Reich, there is no indication in the literature that suggests that the world was once more on the brink of war. Nevertheless, Britain offered an ultimatum, giving Germany until 11:00 am British Standard Time on 3 September to withdraw troops from Poland. When that deadline passed, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain took to the BBC to announce that Britain was at war with Germany. Canada followed the rest of the Commonwealth into the war on Germany on 10 September. The US, however, declared neutrality. The growing war in Europe was not yet their war. So while British librarians began their plans to secure their
26

German Library of Burned Books, The Library Journal 59, no. 12 (June 1, 1934): 470.

Linam 21 libraries and dusted off old plans from the Great War, American librarians were still concerned with developing their collections on gardening.27 Not all American librarians were ignorant of the impending threat, however. While there was no oracle shouting prophecy between articles on gardening books and best practices for collection development, there was a growing sense of paranoia about propaganda. Articles appeared in Library Journal warning librarians to take heed and carefully weed their collections of anything that challenged democracy. They were advised on how to identify propaganda. Librarians also reiterated the importance of books to democracy. In Power of Books in a Democracy, Mrs. Evelyn Steele Little reminded librarians of the importance of supporting a diverse collection. Though the librarian may not agree with the content of a book, Mrs. Little urged the wary librarian to consider the advantages of reading controversial works. She also recollected the Nazi book burnings of 1933 and referenced the totalitarian control over the press in Nazi Germany.28 Again, as evidenced by the newspaper reports surrounding the book burnings in 1933, librarians would not have been ignorant of what was going on in Europe. What is curious is that the professional journals project a sense of ignorance. Perhaps, though, this may have been wishful thinking. Other than the threat of propaganda, the war in Europe was not yet the war in America. While tragedies were occurring in Europe, American librarians had to continue on with business as usual.

27

The Library Journal 65, no. 5 (March 1940).

28

Evelyn Steele Little, The Power of Books in a Democracy, The Library Journal 64, no. 11 (June 1939): 441-445.

Linam 22 1940- The World At War By 1940, American librarians could no longer ignore the situation in Europe. Germany quickly moved to attack Denmark and Norway, followed by Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, which all fell quickly to Germanys fighting forces. Secure in continental Europe, Hitler turned his attention to the jewel in the crown: Britain. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are storied with tales of British and German friendship as the German born House of Hanover ruled Britain and consecutive monarchs married German born princesses and princes. Even before the eighteenth century the British and the Germans had been united as Protestant countries against a largely Catholic Europe. That relationship had, of course, unraveled during the Great War, but Hitler hoped to one day mend their differences. He was convinced that if he did not humiliate or destroy Britain, he could see his new European empire and Britains old empire of the sea reach a point of cooperation for mutual benefit.29 Coaxing Britain into submission did not go quite as Hitler had planned, however. The Battle of Britain began in the late summer of 1940. From the very beginning it depended heavily on the Luftwaffe, Germanys air force, to clear the way for a ground invasion. The Kanalkampf, or Channel Battle, lasted from 10 July until early August. German bombers flew across the Channel to bomb Englands southern coast and later the mouth of the Thames. As bombs fell on Dover, Weymouth, Portsmouth, and other ports perched among the white cliffs, the cover of the July issue of Library Journal featured a quote by John W. Studebaker, the U.S. Commissioner of Education, that was included in nearly every edition until the end of the war in 1945: When people are burning books in
29

John Keegan, The Second World War (New York: Penguin, 1990), 95.

Linam 23 other parts of the world, we ought to be distributing them with greater vigor, for books are among our best allies in the fight to make democracy work.30 As librarians on the coast of Britain struggled to keep their libraries open in spite of the danger of the bombs, American librarians were quick to offer their sympathy, and as will be seen in later editions of the professional literature, they were also willing to learn from British experiences.31 Meanwhile, American librarians were also aware of what was happening in mainland Europe, not just in Britain. They had heard the news that the library of Louvain had once again been burned, and they knew many librarians would find themselves in sticky situations as they were forced to turn over their libraries to the hands of Nazis who would in turn decimate their collections. At least some European librarians took the opportunity to flee the war. In response, the A.L.A. Bulletin ran a letter from the ALA Committee to Aid Refugee Librarians. The letter explained the purpose of the committee, primarily to provide relief and assistance to librarians escaping war and totalitarianism in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Denmark. The committee encouraged libraries, especially at the university level, to aid their fellow librarians by finding them temporary positions for the duration of the war.32 While the Germans did wreck destruction on the towns and shipping trade, they did not achieve their goal of weakening the Royal Navy. They had reached an aerial stalemate, and so beginning in August Hitler ordered Operation Eagle to commence. The Luftwaffe
30

Cover, The Library Journal 65, no. 13

31

Edith Young, A Library in War-Time, The Library Journal 66, no. 1 (January 1941): 27-28.
32

Refugee Librarians, The A.L.A. Bulletin 34, no. 7 (July 1940): 178.

Linam 24 received orders to attack the Royal Air Force directly in the air and overcome them in fast paced aerial battles. Again, things did not go according to Germanys plans, and they were soon changing their offensive strategy once more. From 26 August to 6 September the Luftwaffe attacked Britains Fighter Commands airfields before shifting to the Battle of London from 7 to 30 September. During that offensive effort the Luftwaffes fighter planes guided bombers on daylight raids, but by the end of October they were weakened to the point of having to only fly at night. This period, known to the British as the Blitz, was highly destructive, but still not as strategically efficient as the Germans had hoped. In attacking Britain, Hitler was faced with his first significant defeat.33 Meanwhile, the United States was still not ready to go to war. Though their support of Britain was an open secret and many American hearts bled to hear of the 40,000 lives lost in the Blitz, many still felt that the war in Europe was not an American fight.34 While the United States made efforts to maintain its neutrality, the ALA found itself doing the same thing. The ALA made the point of clarifying its voice in all matters concerning the war. When the Progressive Librarians Council passed a resolution to urge Roosevelt to avoid war at all costs, the ALA stepped in to assure its members and the nation at large that the PLC did not represent the 17,000 members of the ALA.35 The ALA would take stands against the burning of books and was clearly in favor of democracy, but it would not extend beyond the purview of librarianship and make calls for war or for peace.

33

Keegan, 94. Ibid., 100.

34

35

Repudiation by A.L.A. in Library World News, The Library Journal 65, no. 13 (July 1940): 399.

Linam 25 By September 1940, all of Europe was firmly entrenched in the war, and France had been in Germanys hands for some months. In the September edition of Library Journal, the evacuation of the American Library in Paris was discussed at some length. As the Germans approached Paris, the librarians had been determined to stay at the library as long as possible, though many of their staff had already evacuated. Part of the their contingency plan was to join the hospital evacuees to Angoulme. As things grew critical in Paris, the two head librarians, Evangeline Turnbull and Dorothy Reeder, finally found a taxi that could take them to Angoulme, but they found they were only in the way there, and so they decided to move out of France. The librarians evacuated to London on June 12, but according to Library Journal, they returned to Paris on July 22. Their eagerness to keep the American Library in Paris open to the public, regardless of the situations surrounding them, was heavily applauded by the editors of Library Journal. Let this be an example, they said.36 The October 1940 Library Journal includes the first mention of American libraries beginning to prepare for the possibility of war. Given that news of the war had finally reached the practical articles of the professional literature, one must realize that by late 1940 American librarians across the nation were starting to feel some concern. The administration of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery in San Marino, California, urges the readers to begin photographing their collections and storing the copies in separate locations from the originals.37 While war on American soil is still viewed as a

36

American Library in Paris, The Library Journal 65, no. 15 (September 1940): 600. Need for Safety Measures, The Library Journal 65, no. 17 (October 1940): 774.

37

Linam 26 remote possibility, the war in Europe was already heightening American librarians awareness of the fragility of their paper collections. News of libraries being destroyed in the Blitz, including some irreplaceable items, drove American librarians and archivists to embrace microfilm technology on new levels to preserve the information held in their collections into perpetuity.

1941- The Realities of War The Blitz continued into 1941. While British forces confronted the Germans in Africa and the Italians in Greece, even Buckingham Palace was not spared by the Luftwaffes night raids, sustaining damage on 8 March. Library Journals January 1941 begins with a dim note in the form of an article entitled A Library in War Time. Written by Edith Young, a British assistant librarian in Brighton, it describes the efforts of keeping a library open during the Battle of Britain. Indeed, as she wrote the letter she could hear a dogfight occurring overhead, and at one point she paused when she heard a bomb fall, though luckily that one fell into the sea. She explains the librarys procedures for blackouts and the process her library took to convert the working library into an air raid shelter. She writes that the library had become a true community center, provided First Aid and gas exams in addition to hosting a mid-wifery course- as she points out, just in case. The librarians converted one of their basements into a public shelter, which she reports was full every night of people from the bombed parts of Brighton, and in her words, during the day when things get too hot overhead.38 As 1941 progressed, the war was becoming more
38

Edith Young, A Library in War-Time, The Library Journal 66, no. 1 (January 1941): 27-28.

Linam 27 real to American librarians, and its existence could no longer be completely ignored by the professional journals. Even in the beginning of 1941, one begins to see the publishing industrys response to the war in Europe, and the book lists only grew and the war continued. In the advertisements in both Library Journal and the A.L.A. Bulletin, libraries are encouraged to purchase books about the Second European War and the Defense of America.39 In an update on the American Library in Paris, librarians learned that after the American librarians returned to Paris in July 1940, the Germans allowed them to reopen in the library on September 16, 1940. The library was placed under the protection of the American Embassy and German officials were anxious that it should stay open to the public. At least at this point in the war, at least, operations at the library were allowed to continue, with one caveat: librarians were given a list of books by the Germans that had to be placed in a secure location and they would only be available to researchers with some particularly good reason. A letter from Dorothy Reeder, the head librarian at the library reported that the library was running on limited hours since it was now short staffed, but it was making the effort to deliver books to prisoners of war. The Rockefeller Foundation pledged $25,000 to the library, seeing it as a way to aide the people of France without further provoking the Nazi regime.40 Meanwhile, the United States made its first tangible move toward supporting the Allied forces and ending its neutrality. On 11 March 1941, President Franklin Delano
39

Advertisements, The Library Journal 66, no. 1 (January 1941): 32-33; Books for Sale, A.L.A. Bulletin 34, no. 1 (January 1941): 13-14.
40

The American Library in Paris, The Library Journal 66, no. 1 (January 1941): 5.

Linam 28 Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill into law. Officially titled An Act to Further Promote the Defense of the United States, the bill provided the mechanism by which the U.S. government could supply materials to Britain and China, and later the Soviet Union, Free France, and other Allied nations. The countries were allowed to borrow supplies with the promise to repay the United States after an Allied victory.41 The United States also took a more active role in its defenses starting in April 1941 by operating the Neutrality Patrol. Enacting the Pan-American Neutrality Act of 1939, the United States issued a ban to all Uboats from the U.S. coast to Bermuda. As British convoys experienced more success in transporting goods (aided by escorts from the U.S. Navys Atlantic Fleet), the Germans lost more U-boats, and as the U.S. Navy became an overt combatant rather than a hostile neutral, the Germans began focusing more of their U-boat patrols on the U.S. coast in September 1941.42 For a country not at war, the United States engaged in quite a bit of warlike behavior. In May 1941, editors stressed the important role librarians had in national defense. While they were perhaps not staked out on the coast looking for U-boats, librarians needed to give wholehearted support to the defense program, without losing sight of regular obligations to our communities, to contribute effectively to present needs, yet to build for an even more significant role in the peace to come. It was noted that President Roosevelt had called on Americans to support a total effort for a total victory for the democracies of the world when the Lend-Lease Bill was signed into action, and the editors suggested that a declaration of war would make little difference if librarians were already seeking this
41

Keegan, 112. Ibid.

42

Linam 29 goal. They admit that the ALA had been criticized in previous months for becoming too war conscious.

Figure 2: Library After Air Raid, London, 1940 Archive of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.

This lends some credence to the idea that at least some librarians believed that if the United States was not engaged in the war, the American Library Association should not be involved either. In the end the editors defend the ALA for being war conscious as it had allowed them to develop policies and programs that would now aid President Roosevelts call to action. They called for librarians to engage in active, even aggressive librarianship as they encouraged their patrons to read American history and other works

Linam 30 that would remind them of the importance of democracy in such times.43 It took several months for Britain to calculate its losses from the Battle of Britain, but by June 1941, Library Journal and the A.L.A. Bulletin were reporting on the losses from the Blitz. The loss of human life had been tremendous with 40,000 people dead, but the loss of generations of scholarly work was also great. The journals report that in London alone, six million books had been lost. Among the destroyed books were the Scandinavian collection at University College, the Moscatta Library and Museum of Anglo-Judaica which contained over 100,000 volumes, 7000 books at Kings College, 25,000 at the Guildhall, and 20,000 books at Hinet Public Library. In Manchester the bombs took a further 50,000 volumes from the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and the National Library for the Blind had lost 300 Braille books. The Library of the Birmingham National History and Philosophical Society, like much of Birmingham in general, was reported as a total loss.44 Both journals published letters from librarians in England who report that thousands of books from their collections had been lost when patrons homes were bombed. Such daily destruction added a new duty to a librarians job specifications as he or she now had to keep lists of which patrons had lost their homes or lives so as to avoid any inappropriate reminders about returning books to the library.45 Up until April 1941, American librarians had little news about their colleagues in
43

Editorial Forum, National Defenseand Beyond, The Library Journal 66, no. 7 (May 1941): 448-449.
44

The War on Books in Library World News, The Library Journal 66, no. 12 (June 1941): 515-516.
45

Edith Young, A Library in War-Time, The Library Journal 66, no. 1 (January 1941): 27-28.

Linam 31 German occupied countries. While he does not make it clear how he obtained it, librarian Magnus Kristoffersen from Nebraska shared information about the libraries of Denmark gleaned from a speech given to the Association of Librarians in Copenhagen by a Dr. G. Krogh-Jensen. Kristoffersen wrote that the German occupation had been difficult, but library readership reached record numbers after the occupation began. Needing to escape from their own harsh realities, the Danish people turned to fiction. Kristoffersen took the opportunity to encourage his fellow American librarians to keep this in mind when they built their own collections- that reading is as much about escape as it is about relaxation and enjoyment.46 While the American professional journals attention was fixed on the war in Europe, there was another threat brewing across the Pacific. Japan had been at war with China for several years, and occupied the Chinese territory of Manchuria. Seeking to expand further into the Pacific region and gain the natural resources the tiny island nation needed in order to sustain its growing empire, Japan first had to neutralize the threats posed by the colonial powers of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. When the Japanese invaded French Indochina in 1940, the United States had curtailed its imports to Japan, which created much resentment among the Japanese. Still wanting to expand their empire, the Japanese Imperial General Headquarter only saw one way forward. In the early morning of 7 December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched an aerial attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.47
46

Magnus K. Kristoffersen, Libraries in Denmark, The Library Journal 66, no. 7 (April 1941): 319-320.
47

Keegan, 250-256.

Linam 32 The war had officially come to the United States, and the next day, on 8 December 1942, the United States declared war on Japan. Due to Japanese attacks on Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, the British declared war on Japan on the same day. Overnight the remaining neutrality sentiment in the United States had largely disappeared from the American peoples minds, and the United States became even more open in its support of Great Britain. By 11 December, Germany and Italy had declared war on the United States, and the United States returned the favor. The United States, which had long been a clandestine friend of the Allies, had now truly entered the Second World War.48 On December 15, 1941, one finds the first call for a National Defense Book Campaign to provide reading materials for soldiers.49 The American librarians would still have many lessons to learn about providing services during wartime, but they at least understood the value of a good book. Having heard from their European colleagues that soldiers and civilians alike were drawn to fiction in difficult times, American librarians were quick to join the war effort and send their soldiers off to war with the best books America had to offer.

1942- America at War From the very first article in the January issues of the A.L.A. Bulletin and Library Journal, it is clear that American librarians had learned to do more than just collect books for soldiers. The articles detailing the experiences of their European colleagues may have
48

Ibid., 310-311.

49

National Defense Book Campaign, The Library Journal 66, no. 22 (December 1941): 1042.

Linam 33 been scarce, but the librarians had clearly learned from them, and the journals made up for lost time once the war was officially an American war. There was an immediate call by the ALA for all libraries to become bureaus of ready information on what to do in the event of blackouts and attacks. The Blitz in London was taken as a warning- if it could happen there, it could happen on American shores. Wartime brought the very real threat of aerial and coastal attacks. The U.S. Navy diligently combed American waters, guarding against attacks by German U-Boats. While many Americans were looking for the best ways they could be of help to the war effort, Library Journal and the A.L.A. Bulletin were quick to assure their librarians that their greatest contribution would be to continue serving as librarians. Their first task as wartime librarians would be to tailor their ready reference sections to educate their patrons on how to prepare for the real possibilities of the war reaching American shores. Librarians were told that they would be helping the soldiers by helping their families at home. Throughout 1942, librarians were constantly reminded to maintain up-to-date collections on the latest safety procedures and methods. They were also encouraged to increase the technology information section of the library. The United States did not enter the European theatre of the war immediately. Rather, they focused their efforts on the Pacific where they had been attacked by Japan. In late spring of 1942, the U.S. and Japan engaged in several naval battles which climaxed in the 3-6 June 1942 Battle of Midway. While it was not enough to end the war, the Battle of Midway was a catastrophe for Japan. The United States then turned to the task of ejecting the Japanese from the Solomon Islands to clear Allied shipping lanes. This was not easy. Beginning in August 1942, the United States invaded Guadalcanal, a long, drawn out

Linam 34 invasion that lasted for the rest of the year and until February 1943.50 Meanwhile, Germany was focused on waging war with the Soviet Union. Hitler ordered the invasion of Russia in 1941, and at first it seemed like the German invasion was going well. The Germans were able to slice quickly and deeply into Russia, all the way to Moscow, but ultimately the decision to invade the USSR would prove to have been a huge mistake. Just as Napoleon had found, Russia was too big and its winters too harsh. The Nazis failed to capture Moscow or Leningrad, and so in late summer of 1942 Hitler focused his attentions on Stalingrad. While the Germans initially had success in capturing their targets on the way to Stalingrad, the protracted siege of Stalingrad would last until February 1943. The Russians may not have put up much resistance in the beginning, but eventually they rallied for their country and put up a show of force against their German invaders. While the Germans were able to hang on in Russia through 1942, the next year was a different story. The Soviets, in the end, won and forced the Germans to retreat after a loss of well over one million people.51 Back in the United States, there was still a great concern in the library community that Nazi propaganda would infiltrate the minds of American readers. Though Japan had attacked the United States first, the library journals were still more concerned with the German threat that had been looming in the distance for over a decade. In the article Libraries in the Present Emergency, a librarian wrote, Books are the weapons with which battles of ideas are fought and libraries are the arsenals in which those weapons are
50

Keegan, 271-278. Ibid., 173-208, 220-237.

51

Linam 35 housed.52 Librarians across the nation were encouraged to guard against anything that contained a whiff of Nazism. But in their diligence they could not be too overzealous. Library Journal nor the A.L.A. Bulletin wanted a repeat of the 1933 book burnings on American soil. Along with the warnings for librarians to guard collections against outside influences, they were also told to be sure that their selection processes did not mimic Nazi practices. This was not an opportunity for libraries to do away with questionable or potentially unwholesome books. Some librarians might not have appreciated the works of Oscar Wilde, but the war and the battle against Nazism was no time to weed him from the collection. Rather librarians were to embrace such books as examples of the values of American democracy. There was another way libraries were able to participate in the war effort beyond their collections: the very building containing the collection could be of use. In many American towns the library was one of the sturdiest buildings available, and so they were recruited as potential air raid shelters, drawing on the experience of the British. Libraries also had the potential to serve as makeshift schools if a school was bombed.53 Librarians were also called upon to be morale builders. Benjamin Chubak, a librarian at the College of the City of New York, put it bluntly when he told his fellow librarians that it is the most important duty of the librarian to have available all material which is known to affect favorably the mental state of the people of this nation.54 To help do that, librarians could
52

In the Present Emergency, The Library Journal 67, no. 6 (April 1942): 370, 363. Air Raids and the Schools, The Library Journal 67, no. 4 (March 1942): 256-258.

53

54

Benjamin Chubak, The Librarian: Morale Builder, The Library Journal 67, no. 7 (April 1942): 347-348.

Linam 36 turn to the examples found in their professional journals, which not only called them to action, but showed them how to do it. Libraries with active programs sent in their plans and policies so that other libraries could create their own. The Library of Hawaii in particular, having experienced the turmoil of Pearl Harbor more directly, offered a wide array of examples of how to be a responsive wartime library. While being ever diligent in their collection building and reader services departments, the library also increased their community outreach, extending their book car service to Red Cross stations and working with Navy librarians to see that the local troops had all of their reading needs met.55 While librarians would not have forgotten the book burnings of 1933, Americans outside the library world had also not forgotten. Nine years after the events of May 10, 1933, Stephen Vincent Bnet, an American poet, wrote a poignant radio play to commemorate the anniversary. In it, he dramatized some of the well-known authors whose works were cast into the fires on those ominous nights. Literary figures Schiller and Heine, and Americans Mark Twain and Walt Whitman argue against a nameless Nazi and insist on the importance of literature and the upholding of intellectual freedom.56 As mentioned before, the gardening issue was a yearly fixture every summer in Library Journal. It was only natural, then, that the gardening issue would continue once the Victory Garden became popular. Where once librarians were instructed on which books to buy about growing lilies and tulips and roses, now the library profession was to encourage women to till up their ornamental plants and replace them with edible plants.
55

Lucile Wilkinson, The Library of Hawaii in War Time, The Library Journal 67, no. 9 (May 1942): 453-456.
56

Stephen Vincent Bnet, They Burned the Books. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942.

Linam 37 Tomatoes, squash, potatoes, cucumbers, cabbage- in wartime there was no time for the pretty, only the useful. The self-sufficient home was the patriotic home, and so the patriotic library must aid the community in learning to cultivate their backyard farms.57 Throughout the war, both journals were quick to pick up any mention of books or libraries by the president or other important officials. A.L.A. Bulletin ran one such letter that had been sent by President Roosevelt to the American Booksellers Association on 6 May 1942. He wrote, I should have liked to be with you in person to extend my greetings and talk to you, for I have been a reader and buyer and collector of books all my life. It is ever more important that your work should go on now than it has ever been at any other time in our historyWe 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 mans eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. In this war, we know books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for mans freedom.58 Such addresses further served to remind librarians of their roles in a war that was just as much about ideologies as expanding territories.

57

The Library Journal 67, no. 5 (March 1942).

58

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Letter to American Booksellers Association, A.L.A. Bulletin 36, no. 6 (June 1942): 401.

Linam 38

1943- The Turning of the Tide By 1943, the tide had turned in the war, and this turning was evident from the very first editions of Library Journal and A.L.A. Bulletin published in January. The United States was gaining ground in the Pacific, and Hitler was facing his most difficult challenge in the form of Russia. Librarians started to consider what would happen after the war, and even how war could have been prevented in the first place. A librarian from the Buffalo Public Library lamented in the Readers Open Forum that the war had come unexpectedly for many Americans. And while he chastises the media as well, his main criticism is for librarians. He insists that the books stood on our shelves, the facts were at our disposal, but our readers were not alert to those facts for they were not aware, or not sufficiently aware, of those booksthere was a lack of determined and purposeful librarianship that would use the tools to advantagethat would try to awake the sleepers. He went on to warn librarians that they should not sleep on the job again, and they should keep in mind that just because the war was, at the moment, in the United States favor, the victory had not yet been won. He argued that librarians should continually keep the morale of their patrons in mind, and that in the event of victory, they should push their patrons to read books that remind them of the what could have been lost if the war was lost.59 Like the above article, much of the professional literature of 1943 was devoted to questions and not the planning that was so heavily represented in 1942. The war measures were in place, and the weakening of Germany and Japan eased the fears American
59

Felix Pollack, Letter to Readers Open Forum, Books in Wartime, Library Journal 68, No. 1 (January 1943): 3-4.

Linam 39 librarians had of invasion. While still a possibility, it was a rather distant one, and so their minds turned to other matters such as what would happen in the postwar period. In one article published in February, the author applauded librarians for all they had achieved since Pearl Harbor, drawing from articles submitted by libraries across the nation. Librarians had cooperated with Civilian Defense Councils; served as collection centers for tin, rubber, and paper; collected over ten million Victory book for the troops; provided meeting spaces for local first aid and defense classes; and continued throughout to serve their patrons with the latest news on the war and with morale boosting reading to keep the countrys spirits up before the news from the war became more favorable. But the purpose of the article was not to merely praise librarians. The author wanted to press upon librarians to accept the tremendous task of developing an intelligently-informed, publicminded citizenry so as to influence our legislators to not make the same mistakes after this war as was made after the last. Education, the author argued, was the key to holding the American interest in enforcing a peace treaty in the long run and avoiding another great war.60 While most of 1942 had been internally focused on the wars impact on American libraries, by 1943 the journals began to carry more stories about foreign libraries again. Reports were sent from Canada, which was struggling to accept the National Selective Service. Canadian librarians were encouraged to help their patrons accept their duty by guiding their reading selections to democratic texts, much in the same way as British and American librarians were doing.61 Meanwhile British librarians reported that they were
60

Librarians and the Peace, The Library Journal 68, no. 3 (February 1943): 124-125. Canadian Libraries and the War, A.L.A. Bulletin 37, No. 1 (January 1943): 1.

61

Linam 40 struggling to make up for the lack of trained staff since men and women were being called up to the army or the civil service. Libraries were forced to seek out retired and married former librarians to fill the role of trained librarian until the rest of their staff could come home from the war. British librarians also found themselves trying to fulfill even more expanded roles, organizing book drives, participating with the military to staff military libraries, and dealing with shifting populations on top of, in certain cities, damaged buildings.62 By October, there was even a report from the director of the State Central Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow. He wrote that in 1941, as the Hitlerites were pressing down upon Moscow, the library offered an exhibition entitled The Best Representatives of American Literature that proved most popular with the beleaguered comrades.63

1944- The High Price of Victory For the United States, 1944 began with the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy and with the continued chase of the Japanese across the Pacific islands. Slowly but surely Allied forces continued to gain ground and in May 1944 the plan was set to begin the French liberation. On 5 June, the Allies captured Rome, the first Axis capital to fall. That was overshadowed by the offensive strike taken the next day. On 6 June 1944, American
62

British Libraries in Wartime, A.L.A. Bulletin 37, No. 1 (January 1943): 7-12.

63

M. Rudomino, From a Russian Librarian, A.L.A. Bulletin 37, no. 9 (October 1943): 302.

Linam 41 troops joined the British in storming the beaches of Normandy in the first offensive strike of Operation Overlord. Their goal was to being the process of liberating mainland Europe from the weakened Nazi regime. Once the beach was secure, troops took three weeks to prepare for Operation Cobra, which advanced the Allied Forces deeper into Normandy. The troops liberated Paris on 25 August 1944, and by 30 August the Germans had been forced to retreat beyond the Seine. If the war had not already been turned in the Allies favor by the German defeat in Russia, it certainly was by September 1944.64 On 2 September Allied troops arrived in Belgium and Brussels was liberated the next day. Operation Market Garden began later in the month and started the turning of the German flank, but hopes of an early end to the war faded as British troops failed to capture Arnhem, leading to the failure of the operation.65 Allied troops continued to push east into Germany, however, picking off cities one at a time. By the end of the year they were engaged in the Battle of the Bulge, and things were looking favorable for the Allies.66 If American librarians had lost some of their concern for the possibility of bombings or an invasion in 1943, that concern was completely gone from the literature in 1944. While the war still played a prominent role, and libraries were still conforming to wartime service standards, a new normalcy had settled in and librarians were looking towards the conclusion of the war. It perhaps took a little longer than expected, but victory seemed assured. After the Potsdam conference the ALA met with government postwar

64

Keegan, 369-395. Ibid., 437. Ibid., 436-447.

65

66

Linam 42 committees to discuss how libraries could contribute to demobilization and readjustment. They, like the government committees, were concerned about the veterans returning home and being reincorporated into society after the trauma of war. The government committees suggested that American librarians could help in this process on the local level by helping veterans find information about jobs and training programs and by pointing them in the direction of books that might help with any post service mental or health problems they might have faced.67 Just as the ALA had been pushing its librarians during the war to fully embrace their potential within their communities, they were now pushing for librarians to continue to be important figures in their neighbors lives. Still taking the opportunity to report on libraries in foreign lands, two reports stand out above the rest as librarians from China and Russia detailed their wartime experiences. In January 1944, the A.L.A. Bulletin ran a report from Ding U. Doo, the librarian of Chinas national university, Sun Yat-sen University in Kwangtung. He lamented that he had not had more time at the beginning of the war to prepare his collection for removal- he was prepared for air raids but not an invasion- and details his mad three day scramble to pack up 50,000 of the librarys 210,000 books into 300 cases. He then transported the cases over three thousand miles from Canton to Yunnan where the library continued to serve the community how it could. Officials then ordered the library back to Kwangtung to serve what students could not leave, and so back across the three thousand miles the three hundred cases went. Since the main library building had been destroyed, Dr. Doo divided his collection across 15 smaller libraries spread throughout the city. Able to pack up the

67

Floyd W. Reeves and Carl Vitz, Demobilization and Readjustment and the Library, A.L.A. Bulletin 38, no. 2 (February 1944): 43-53.

Linam 43 library and move with only a few hours notice, the library was thus able to continue to serve patrons throughout the war.68 Once the Germans had retreated, news came from librarians in Russia of the destruction they left behind them. Many cultural sites, including Tchaikovskys home, had been purposefully targeted by German soldiers. Over one million books were destroyed at Kiev University and another four million confiscated and sent to Germany. Millions of other books were burned by the Nazis at libraries across the country, and thousands more were transported to Germany. Librarians from Leningrad also reported that even during the hardest months of the war, the Leningrad Library of the Academy of Sciences remained open, and though the temperature in the building sometimes reached 25 degrees below zero, they did not burn the books for fuel. As areas of Russia were liberated, the Soviet government sent books to the areas to being to restore some normalcy to the war torn people.69

1945- Looking to the Future By early 1945, Allied troops were closing in on Germany from the west and the east. The Battle of the Bulge ended with a decisive Allied victory in mid January, and on 4 March Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at the Yalta Conference to begin deciding their postwar plans for Europe. By 19 April, Soviet troops had reached the suburbs of Berlin,
68

Ding U. Doo, A Librarian in Wartime, A.L.A. Bulletin 38, no. 1 (January 1944): 4-5.

69

Ethel M. Tacke, Soviet Libraries in the War, The Library Journal 69, no. 11 (July 1944): 384-388.

Linam 44 and a couple of days later launched the opening assaults in the Battle of Berlin. Hitler had long since moved to his bunker, and his staff began to turn on him. He committed suicide on 30 April, and on 2 May the city of Berlin was surrendered to the Soviets. At one minute past midnight on 8 May, the ceasefire went into effect and Britain celebrated V-E Day.70 However, the war was not yet over in the Pacific theatre. The United States spent the first part of the year fighting in Iwo Jima and the Philippines, continuing to grab land away from the Japanese. At the 17 July Potsdam Conference, the Allies agreed to insist on an unconditional surrender by the Japanese. To bring a swift conclusion to the war, on 6 August the United States launched the first nuclear attack in the history of the world, dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, followed on 9 August with another bomb dropped on Nagasaki. On 15 August, Emperor Hirohito broadcast the surrender of Japan, bringing an end to the most deadly war in the history of the world.71 While the victory and end of the war was still several months away, the library journals discuss the war as if it has all but concluded. All of their war related articles are about building the peace and reporting on foreign libraries. In January 1945 librarians began to question what would be done with all of the surplus books they had sent to the front for soldiers to read, and plans were made for their distribution. Writers continued to stress the need for librarians to be sensitive to the vocational and mental needs of returning veterans.72 But the war had raised other issues as well. While Americans had sacrificed so

70

Keegan, 516-533. Ibid., 574-585. The Library Journal 70, no. 1 (January 1945).

71

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Linam 45 much in the fight against Hitler and had preached the value of democracy, many Americans were beginning to question why some of their fellow Americans were not being treated as equally as others. Beginning with a letter from the president of the Chicago Public Library questioning why the ALA would continue to host conferences in hotels where African American librarians were not welcomed, a conversation was started about the position of the ALA and equal rights. Althea Warren, the retiring president of the ALA, had suggested that it was time to return to holding annual conferences in Southern cities since the A.L.A. means nothing to the Negro librarian. African American librarians countered this, arguing that they had been members of the ALA for many years, and without the annual conference they would not have access to the educational and career building benefits that made them value their membership. Warren replied that it had not been her intention to offend, but she and the committee for the conference had been unable to find a suitable hotel in the North or the South that would place no restrictions on African American guests.73 The first rumblings of the Civil Rights movement had reached the attention of the American Library Association. As the war wound down in Europe and then in the Pacific, so too did war talk in the professional journals. Just as the journals had ignored the war for as long as possible, they excluded it as soon as victory was imminent. By April 1945, the only mention of the war in the A.L.A. Bulletin came in one postwar building article. In May 1945 came the last acknowledgement of the anniversary of the burning of the books in Germany in May 1933by 1946 the library world had moved on from such remembrances.74 While both journals
73

A.L.A. and Equal Rights, A.L.A. Bulletin 39, no. 1 (January 1945): 29-30. May 10: An Anniversary, A.L.A. Bulletin 39, no. 5 (May 1945): 1.

74

Linam 46 sporadically ran articles about the plight of the returning soldier throughout the summer, by July 1945 the A.L.A. Bulletin had begun to return to its prewar format, running full page articles for each of their new elected officers.75 As librarians and library staff returned from the war and reentered civilian life, they earned their picture in Library Journal and the A.L.A. Bulletin, but in some months those pictures were the only reminder that a war had ever occurred. When the war was done, the professional journals were done with it too.

Concluding Thoughts When one looks back at the A.L.A. Bulletin and Library Journal of the war years, a definite pattern emerges. Slow to discuss the war while it began in Europe, an acknowledgment was finally forced when reports started to filter in from war-ravaged libraries, particularly from Britain. Tales of thousands of lost books sparked the imaginations of American librarians, and they were forced to being to ponder what would happen if the war ever came to their shores. These ponderings were increased when the United States began offering more and more aid to the Allies, but still up until the United States officially declared war, the greatest concern to American librarians was the threat of Nazi propaganda. After Pearl Harbor, however, the library journals completely changed course and had no room for any articles that did not pertain to the war effort. At first focusing on preparing for the physical realities of war in the event of an invasion, with Allied victories the articles soon shifted to the psychological effects. By 1943 the journals were so optimistic about the wars outcome that they began to offer suggestions for the
75

New A.L.A. Board Members, A.L.A. Bulletin 39, no. 7 (July 1945): 2-10.

Linam 47 postwar library. This postwar thinking only increased with more Allied victories, and by the end of the war the journals had completely moved beyond the war and back into civilian concerns. While American librarians sympathized with their colleagues in other parts of the world, they had only been jolted out of their isolationism by the direct attack of Pearl Harbor, and when the war concluded they were only too happy to return to normal as soon as possible. Given the national scale of the publications, it can be difficult to discern the individual voices of the thousands of librarians across the nation, but one can safely conclude that the hesitant librarians became staunch supporters of the war effort once the war finally came to them. Their contributions to their communities cannot be underestimated as they provided a focal point for preparation and morale boosting. The professional journals themselves were crucial to this as they were able to enforce a certain amount of uniformity across the nation with their suggested policies and plans. In the fight against Hitler and the Axis, understanding and valuing democracy became crucial, and librarians were poised to provide the books to support it. As the soldiers returned home, the libraries were able to transition back into civilian libraries, but even then the journals reminded them that they had an important role in the postwar world. Veterans were a huge concern for communities across the nation, and librarians were once again eager to help by doing what librarians do best, in times of peace and war: providing information. American librarians did not face the destruction that their European colleagues did, but they nonetheless stepped up to the challenges of the home front and did their bit to help the Allies and democracy win the war.

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Works Cited Bez, Fernando. A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq. Translated by Alfred MacAdam. New York: Atlas, 2008. Battles, Matthew. Knowledge on Fire. American Scholar 72, No. 3 (Summer 2003): 35-52. Becker, Patti Clayton. Books and Libraries in American Society During World War II: Weapons in the War of Ideas. New York: Routledge, 2005. Bnet, Stephen Vincent. The Burned the Books. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942. Edsel, Robert M. and Bret Witter. The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. New York: Center Street, 2009. Keegan, John. The Second World War. New York: Penguin, 1990. Knuth, Rebecca. Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. Knuth, Rebecca. Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Mattern, Eleanor. World War II Archivists: In the Field and on the Home Front, Library & Archival Security 24, no. 2 (2011): 61-81. Peiss, Kathy. Cultural Policy in a Time of War: The American Response to Endangered Books in World War II. Library Trends 55, No. 3 (Winter 2007): 370-386. Polastron, Lucien X. Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries Throughout History. Translated by Jon E. Graham. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2007. Spencer, Brett. Preparing for an Air Attack: Libraries and the American Air Raid Defense During World War II. Libraries & The Cultural Record 43, No. 2 (2008): 125-147. Stubbings, Hilda Urn. Blitzkrieg and Books: British and European Libraries as Casualties of World War II. Bloomington, IN: Rubena Press, 1993. Ward, Graham. True Religion. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.