I saw this as well.
How U.S. Publishers Won Hearts, Minds and Wallets of Allied Nations’ Readers
The book’s author, John B. Hench, will discuss and sign his work on Tuesday, Oct. 5, at noon in the Mary Pickford Theater on the third floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event, sponsored by the Center for the Book, is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.
I went to this today as part of my job and wrote the following summary, which is a bit stilted but is how we write at the Pentagon-we are limited to 15 lines. The Library of Congress sponsored a discussion and book signing by John B. Hench in DC on 5 OCT 10. The subtitle of the book is: “Propaganda, Publishing and the Battle for Global Markets in the Era of World War II.” In his book, Hench describes a joint US and UK program where the US Office of War Information and the Council on Books in Wartime and its UK equivalent selected books for distribution in newly liberated France and later Germany and Japan. These books were initially delivered to Omaha beach a few weeks after D-Day and, by war’s end , 6M books were disseminated throughout Europe and Asia. The program was described as “consolidation propaganda” and was intended to maintain calm and ensure compliance of law and order of the liberating forces by illustrating the values of the US and UK through its literature. These books also served to “disintoxicate” Nazi propaganda that depicted the US and UK as nations of gangsters as seen in much of Western cinema. A key factor in the program was an effort to reduce the number of occupying forces in Europe so that more troops could be released to the Pacific theater. The US and UK book publishing industry played an active role in the program with an additional interest in creating foreign markets for Anglo books after the war. The offices, councils and programs ended in 1945.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for the recap, Bob. I was hoping to attend, but got tied up with afternoon tasks. I'm really hoping to attend the upcoming Darnton talk, though.
ReplyDelete-- Heather Walrath