An Accidental Journalist: The Adventures of Edmund Stevens, 1934-1945

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An Accidental Journalist

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An Accidental Journalist The Adventures of Edmund Stevens 1934 –1945

Cheryl Heckler

University of Missouri Press Columbia and London

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Copyright © 2007 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 11 10 09 08 07 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heckler, Cheryl, 1959– An accidental journalist : the adventures of Edmund Stevens, 1934–1945 / Cheryl Heckler. p. cm. Summary: “Stevens was the longest-serving American-born correspondent working from within the Soviet Union. In his career, which spanned half a century, he distinguished himself as a war reporter, analyst, and cultural interpreter. Heckler focuses on Stevens’s work, especially his reporting for the Christian Science Monitor, and his life from 1934 to 1945”—Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8262-1770-7 (alk. paper) 1. Stevens, Edmund. 2. Journalists—United States—Biography. I. Title. PN4874.S6867H43 2007 070.92—dc22 [B] 2007028963 This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Stephanie Foley Typesetter: BookComp, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typefaces: Minion and Eurostile

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To Brady, in celebration of History and Truth and his own military service. This book has been written in honor of the World War II veterans I love best: Carl Sickles, Albert, Edward, and Dale Heckler.

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: An Accidental Journalist

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Part 1. An American in Russia 1. The Early Years in Moscow

29

2. Kirov’s Death and the Purge

45

Part 2. Covering World War II 3. Russia and Germany against the Baltics, Norway, and Finland

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4. Italo-Greek War

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5. Ethiopia with Selassie and Wingate

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6. Desert War of 1942

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7. With Churchill in Moscow

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8. Wendell L. Willkie, Iraq, Iran, Victory in North Africa

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9. A Moscow Correspondent Once Again

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Appendix. An Inevitable Journalist: Samples of Stevens’s Reporting

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Bibliography

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Index

285

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Acknowledgments

I was introduced to Edmund Stevens’s work while researching Italian journalist Indro Montanelli in Fucecchio in 2002. I had unearthed a remarkable set of correspondence between Montanelli and Stevens, and although I knew nothing of Stevens at that moment, Montanelli’s admiration for Stevens was clear—and unusual. I began researching Stevens, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist for the Christian Science Monitor, who worked in Russia most of his life and died there in 1992. After meeting his son, Edmund Stevens Jr., and his son’s wife, Shari, in Boston in 2003 and discovering the unpublished memoirs, I set to work bringing back the voice of the late journalist. The original manuscript was both compelling and frustrating. Clearly, Stevens had had a remarkable career, but he left too many unanswered questions. Then came fourteen boxes filled with Stevens’s papers, which had been shipped from Moscow in the spring of 2005 to Edmund Jr.’s home in Lincoln, Massachusetts. The materials ranged from personal letters to more than one hundred recipes that his wife, Nina, had collected with thoughts of publishing a cookbook. While the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting itself wasn’t among Stevens’s possessions, a simple certificate from the Pulitzer committee was found tucked in between some correspondence with his editors at the Christian Science Monitor and a brochure announcing his upcoming speech at the Cincinnati Rotary Club. His presentation, “The Next Stage in the War,” happened just three weeks before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Stevens had developed his memoirs over time, and I located several versions of the text, from an initial forty-page outline to a more than four hundred–page collection that ranged from his earliest childhood memories (walking down a flight of stairs in his mother’s shoes) to the ix

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death of Boris Pasternak. The boxes included hundreds of photographic images—from slides of the rare artwork that Nina had collected for more than forty years to photos of the Kharkov hangings in 1943. There were images of Nina, Edmund, and their daughter, Stasia, with Nikita Khrushchev at a reception in Moscow in the late 1950s; photos of Greek soldiers fighting the Italians in 1940; and pictures of beloved family dogs, as well as Nina’s expansive flower and vegetable gardens at their final home in Moscow. The discovery of Edmund Stevens’s unpublished memoirs has proven to be a significant turning point in my professional career, and I remain very grateful to his son, Edmund Jr., for his trust in permitting me to work freely with the original memoirs as well as his father’s letters and notebooks. The opportunity to breathe life back into Ed Stevens’s original text—written twenty-five years ago—has been a great gift. It’s allowed me to crawl right inside the mind of a world-class journalist and discover for myself the unimaginable journey and invaluable perspective of a reporter willing to navigate different roles as he witnessed the unfolding of historic events: survivor and witness to Stalin’s Great Purge; young war reporter covering the devastation of the Russo-Finnish war; journalist forced to become a combatant and military strategist under Lieutenant Colonel Orde Wingate in Ethiopia; husband to Nina; father to Edmund Jr. and Stasia; and experienced war reporter in the North African desert. Using Stevens’s own manuscripts, which included several revisions, along with his published Monitor articles, journalist’s notebooks, and personal letters, I examined his early years in Moscow working as a propagandist for Communist International, his transformation into a world-class journalist in the late 1930s, and his contribution as a World War II correspondent, including his coverage of the fall of the Baltics, the bitter Winter War between Finland and Russia, the collapse of Romania, the Italo-Greek war, the battle for Ethiopia, and the Kharkov trials and executions. This book has been a great journey, made with gratitude to many. I want to thank my children, Brady and Leah, for all their love, support and patience while “yet another book project” took up residence in our home; the very bright and quick-witted Rachel Carie for her humor and friendship; and the Heckler clan for all the blessings it has given me these last four decades, especially Albert, Annie, Ralph, Marsha, and Abby. I want to extend my gratitude to Dr. Richard Campbell, for his excellent

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work in the journalism program at Miami University and for his help on this project in particular; Dr. Kerry Powell and Professor John Lowery, my own former professors and now cherished colleagues; and Judi, Patti, Sacha, Hugh, Susan, Cheryl, Chris, Bettina, and Ed. Jim Tobin’s work on Ernie Pyle gave me a great model for examining Stevens’s life and work. Leigh Montgomery and the staff at the Christian Science Monitor helped me locate Stevens’s original articles. My colleagues Sante Matteo, Bill Hardesty, John and Linda Parks, and Rich Erlich gave me constant professional support. I also want to thank my undergraduate research assistants Sarah Renner, Maura Wall, JoAnna Munafo, Mike Houts, and Kevin Shkolnik; Dr. Ron Cox for teaching me how to aim well, keep my eyes on the target, and fire accordingly; Jon Sadler and Donnie Becker for reasons they understand well; and the very gracious Thomas Woodford, a gift from God indeed.

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An Accidental Journalist

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An Accidental Journalist

My initial impression of the Soviet capital, and Mecca of world communism, was one of drab grayness: gloomy skies overhead, dirty snow underfoot, and swarms of people of both sexes and all ages, for the most part clad in identical padded jackets wearing caps with earflaps. In March there was still no sign of spring, though in Budapest the leaves were green already. At first I felt a bit lost. My Russian was hardly up to my needs. Edmund Stevens

Edmund Stevens entered Russia in 1934 as an American Communist hoping to contribute to the Bolshevik cause as a translator and writer for the Publishing Cooperative of Foreign Workers in the Soviet Union, part of the publishing house of the Communist International. He arrived in the Russian capital with his Columbia University education, fluency in three languages, and letter of introduction from Earl Browder, the head of the American Communist Party, sewn into his jacket lining. He immediately landed an editor’s post (which paid three hundred rubles per month), began learning Russian, and went to work for the organization that stood at the very center of the international Communist movement. Given how things turned out for Stevens professionally, a greater irony is hard to imagine: the journalist who would win a Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for his uncensored description of Stalin’s reign of brutality actually began his career in Moscow more than fifteen years earlier when he barely spoke Russian and was working as a bureaucratic writer for an agency that produced Communist propaganda. In fact, Stevens was an accidental journalist whose work would 1

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span a half century and stretch across four continents—from Moscow to Oslo, from Boston to Cairo. Stevens’s determination to travel Russia in the early 1930s is a compelling fact unto itself because, as historian Michael Emery observed about this period, the United States was in the dark about the larger issues within the Soviet economic, political, and social systems: Russian secrecy; the dominance of British, French, Italian and German affairs; the scarcity of regular correspondents in Russia or on her borders, the “return to normalcy” in America during the 1920s; deep American and British prejudices against the Communists—these were obstacles the American foreign correspondent had to overcome when reporting from Russia. By the late summer and early fall of 1928 the world knew only that followers of Leon Trotsky had fallen from grace and had been thrown out of the party and that Russia was struggling to keep her balance, somewhat like the Weimar Republic in Germany.1

Despite Emery’s compelling account of America’s perception of Russia, Stevens seemed well suited to link his future to that country. He was born July 1910 in Denver, Colorado, where his father served as head of the Colorado Medical Society. A native of Peoria, Illinois, Stevens’s mother, Florence Ballance Stevens, was widowed when her son was a toddler. In 1913, she introduced him to a life of travel that may have later sparked the wanderlust that defined much of his life and personal choices. She took him to Italy where they remained until 1919 and where he attended school through the fourth grade before returning to the States and settling in New York. Once back in America he developed a skewed relationship with formal education—attending a new school every year or two—and learned to be independent, strong willed, and outspoken in his views. In the fall of 1923, young Edmund Stevens entered South Kent School, an affiliate of the Kent School in Connecticut. In a familiar tale about budding writers, the precocious thirteen-year-old won first place in a school-wide literary contest but was suspended the following year when the mimeographed newspaper he created published “a rather scurrilous poem about shenanigans in the shower room—a poem enti-

1. Emery, On the Front Lines: Following America’s Foreign Correspondents across the Twentieth Century, 32.

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tled ‘Ode to the Odious.’”2 He dropped out of the school and began picking up odd jobs instead. Despite his decision to leave school and enter the working world, by all accounts, Stevens knew relative financial comfort even during the Great Depression and was no stranger to relying on the generosity of others, especially his mother. Florence Stevens could afford to indulge her son, and she often did so, even allowing him to return to Italy at the age of fifteen without her. He went, instead, with a friend and spent months traveling the southern half of the country, visiting old family friends in Rome and, according to his memoirs, realizing for the first time that he saw himself as an American expatriate. It was apparently a remarkable and liberating discovery for him. “I began to feel almost more Italian than anything else,” he wrote.3 He also developed an admiration for Mussolini because of “the semblance of order he had imparted to an Italy still rent by regional antagonisms.”4 Stevens’s curiosity, intellect, and self-reliance helped him to thrive in a foreign culture while just a teenager. It was a heady time indeed. He noted dryly in his memoirs, “At the end of the summer this euphoria was disrupted by a cable from my mother saying it was high time for me to return to the states and resume my formal education.”5 But young Edmund returned to America his own man. He went back to New York, and at age sixteen he enrolled in a “kind of cramming institution”6 to complete his high school credits and joined a local fascist organization that held frequent demonstrations in the Bronx and got into street fights with an antifascist group in the neighborhood. “Two of our members were actually killed in a brawl, and we held an elaborate funeral attended by Italian diplomats,” Stevens noted in his memoirs. “My bosom friend during this period was a Sicilian by the name of Salvatore (Toto for short) Gentile. There were plenty of girls around, and we used to go off on weekends with double dates. Toto made good money as an expert plasterer and generally picked up the check. We wore black shirts and often carried daggers.”7 This passage foreshadows

2. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 9. Edmund’s and Nina’s memoirs, letters, and photographs are in the possession of their son, Edmund Stevens Jr. 3. Ibid., 11. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 12.

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Stevens’s later behavior and a life defined by political experimentation along with the thrill of danger, feminine companionship, an emphasis on having a good time, and the easy decision to allow someone else to pay the bill. One can imagine the charming, fair-haired teenager as he let Mama Rosa pinch his cheek at the local tratoria in Little Italy, knowing it would increase the odds she’d offer his whole table tiramisu and a bit of grappa on the house. In 1927, now at age seventeen, he passed the college entrance boards with honors. He was accepted at Columbia University and enrolled to study economics and government only to struggle with grades his first year because he was too busy attending debutante balls, perfecting his recipe for bathtub gin at Delta Phi fraternity parties, and organizing a “social problems” club that helped him shed Fascism for his new political interest—Communism. At Columbia, Stevens cofounded the Communist-front National Student League with the goal of creating chapters all over the nation. He joined the staff of the campus newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, and organized campus demonstrations supporting socialist causes. The National Student League also supported striking garment workers in New York and even sent a delegation to Kentucky, where they aided striking mine workers.8 Stevens dropped out of Columbia in the 1929–1930 academic school year to return to Italy—this time with his aunt Harriet, his mother’s sister, who had bought a new Ford and wanted him to drive her around Europe. They covered Paris, Wiesbaden, Munich, and then returned to Italy. “We spent a good bit of time in Munich. The Nazis were on the move, and I got a smell of what was coming.”9 They spent the summer of 1930 on the Adriatic and then returned to the U.S. in the fall. Stevens resumed his studies at Columbia—along with his double life of experimenting with leftist worker politics and—in contradiction—squiring wealthy young women around New York. Despite his Communist leanings—or perhaps because of them—Edmund must have looked especially beguiling in his white tails as he escorted his dates to their coming-out balls. In the summer of 1931, he and three friends purchased a Buick and drove into the South. “Our cover was that we were selling Literary Guild subscriptions,” he wrote in his memoirs. “But we were really trying to organize NSL [National Student League] chapters on 8. Ibid., 13. 9. Ibid., 14.

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other campuses.”10 The group went to Washington, Chapel Hill, N.C., Atlanta, Mobile, and San Antonio. One stop included the Tuskegee Institute, “where we were welcomed with open arms and spent a week defying Jim Crow rule.” That same summer, he took a course at the University of Texas because he needed more college credits and then returned to New York for the fall semester.11 After earning his bachelor’s degree in 1932, Stevens decided to pursue a graduate degree in economics at Columbia. Earlier that year, at age twenty-two, he had met Andre Gyomroi, a Hungarian woman ten years his senior and fluent in four languages. “I was attracted not only by her physical beauty but by the brilliance of her mind and encyclopedic knowledge,” he wrote in his memoirs. “After a rather tempestuous courtship we decided, somewhat foolishly, to get married.”12 Andre received a teaching post in Bennington, Vermont, and during the following academic year, Stevens commuted to New York. They quickly grew apart, though, and Stevens apparently became disenchanted with graduate school as well because he didn’t complete the program; he wrote no more about Columbia in his memoirs and only referred to Andre again when explaining that one could purchase an internationally recognized divorce decree in Russia for three rubles (an action he took within months after arriving in Moscow). In late 1933 and early 1934, Stevens made plans to travel to Moscow. As he wrote in a 1984 article for Architectural Digest, “Good jobs were scarce in the United States, which was still in the throes of depression. . . . There were reports of American engineers and technicians who had been invited to work [in Russia] on industrial projects at lucrative salaries. My forte was literature, primarily journalism, and I was fluent in Italian and French.”13 In fact, in all Stevens’s autobiographical notes about this period, themes emerge about his search for economic opportunities abroad—opportunities that were better than the ones he expected to find in the United States. But the evidence points to a much more complex reason—or set of reasons—for his departure. Edmund Stevens already had defined himself as an expatriate and evidently felt no serious attachment to America. He loved to travel, and he had learned 10. Ibid., 13. 11. Ibid., 14. 12. Ibid., 18. 13. Ibid.

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to thrive on foreign soil. At this point in his life, he wanted to see if he could thrive abroad professionally as well. No evidence could be found regarding the kind of relationship Stevens had with Earl Browder, but, without question, Stevens was influenced by the New York intelligentsia’s attraction to Communism—an infatuation prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s and well documented by historians. Given that he had a letter from Browder secured inside his jacket lining, Stevens certainly traveled to Moscow determined to impress Communist officials with his connections and to aid the cause. In any case, Edmund Stevens set sail for Russia in the spring of 1934, willing to pin his future to the adventures and romantic notions he had about the great Communist society waiting west of the Ural Mountains. Journalism historians acknowledge Edmund Stevens as the longestserving American-born correspondent working from the Soviet Union. Stevens was passionate about influencing the way his readers in the U.S. thought about Russia and its citizens, government, and social policy. One way to examine this point is to consider some limited but important similarities between the young Edmund Stevens and the man whose writing most influenced Stevens’s decision to enter Russia in the first place—philosopher, social scientist, and revolutionary Karl Marx. Both men had extensive formal education in economics and politics; both shared a similar attitude about the relationship between the individual—or common man—and the state; and both saw writing as a means of analyzing and influencing social awareness and change. More important, both attempted to use their writing abilities to influence their audiences through observations and analysis of the world in general and Russian social and political culture in particular. Stevens left for Russia at the height of Marxist influence in that country. He wanted to be an activist and a reformer and to contribute to the deliberate expansion of Communist ideals and values. His underlying belief was that Marx had gotten it right. The same motives that had spurred Marx to synthesize journalism, activism, and social theory in the mid-nineteenth century also spurred Edmund Stevens right onto that transatlantic steamer in 1934 with adventurous plans to experience Russia and contribute to the great social revolution that he believed would improve the lives of millions of people around the globe. What awaited him, though, was a harsh awakening. The unfolding of social history is seldom tidy, and Stevens arrived in Moscow at a particularly harrowing time—the period in which Marx’s theories were being bru-

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talized in and through Stalin’s vicious, tireless slaughter of his own people. Instead of making any significant contribution to the promotion of the Marxist theories and Communist ideals he once esteemed, Stevens soon discovered that life inside Russia during the bloody period known as the Great Purge was all about physical survival. As writers, intellectuals, political chiefs, and military leaders vanished from Russian society, so did Stevens’s idealistic view of Communism. Initially, it was replaced by the paralyzing fear that he and his young family would not survive. By 1937, now age twenty-seven, Stevens had remarried—to a stunning, bright, and resourceful Russian woman named Nina—and he was petrified that he could not adequately provide for her and their infant son, Edmund Jr., who was nicknamed Vova. As Nina noted in her own memoirs, throughout her courtship and early marriage with Edmund, she was afraid of what she considered his lack of marketable skills: “He could never make a living in Russia. He had only a BA degree from Columbia and no professional skill.”14 But when Stevens’s idealistic view of Communism was stripped away, what remained—ironically—was the most significant characteristic he shared with Marx—his ability to produce effective observations and powerful analyses of the world and Russian social and political culture, a sort of dual role as reporter and sociologist. Scholar Abby Scher identified the link between the two disciplines: As I got to know the history of social thought, and especially of sociology, I discovered that in the United States, the discipline was founded by journalists. . . . We don’t often consider, though, that Karl Marx was a newspaper editor in 1842 and 1843—he said the experience pushed him to study political economy—and continued to write journalistic essays for newspapers throughout his life. You can see this overlapping history today in the overlapping skills still shared by journalists and sociologists—skills such as interviewing, data collection, reflection, and writing.15

While Marx used his “overlapping skills” to trigger a social revolution and an entirely new Russia, Stevens would use his to explain and analyze social revolution as it unfolded before his own eyes. He would thrive as a journalist during World War II, solidify the Christian Science 14. Nina Stevens, memoirs, 74. 15. Scher, “Sociologists as Journalists,” Contemporary Sociology 28, no. 4 (July 1999): 403–4.

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An Accidental Journalist

Monitor’s reputation as an international leader in reporting and interpreting Russian culture, win a Pulitzer for his analyses of postwar Russia, and stand in journalism history as the only American-born reporter to work out of the Soviet Union for nearly half of the twentieth century. But in early 1937, Stevens could not imagine any of these future achievements because he was too busy scrambling to feed his family. With Nina working as a secretary for 180 rubles a month and a one-year-old son at home, Stevens lost his editing job at Communist International in the midst of Stalin’s purge. “In the spring of 1937 I was fired from the publishing house, which had been virtually gutted. The senior officials had been ‘repressed’ in virtually all the language sections,” he wrote in his autobiographical notes. “This [firing] proved to be a blessing in disguise. I got accredited as a journalist and as aide to the representative of the AmericanSoviet Chamber of Commerce.”16 At that moment, he seemed to see only the immediate solution to his desperate financial straits, but in the broader portrait of the life of Edmund Stevens, the simple phrase, “I got accredited as a journalist,” probably represented a sweeping away of propagandist remnants in his writing and the emergence of the inevitable journalist dwelling there—that is, a man defined by his wide-ranging knowledge of world history and his uncanny skill at putting himself in the front row of unfolding international events. He would eventually make good on his goals of influencing others through his firsthand observations and analyses of political, military, and social revolutions.

Inevitable Journalist An assessment of Stevens’s initiation as a journalist in Russia in the 1930s needs to be viewed in the context of news reporting from Russia in the 1920s and the achievements of two other journalists significant to this period: Walter Duranty of the New York Times, whose career demonstrates the pitfalls and difficulties that journalists of Stevens’s era faced inside Russia; and William Henry Chamberlin of the Manchester Guardian and Christian Science Monitor, who represents the reporting model and writing style Stevens emulated as a fledgling Russian correspondent. The situation facing journalists immediately after the revolution is effectively summarized by historian Dimitri von Mohrenschildt: 16. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 20.

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American news of Russia from the Bolshevik coup d’etat of November 7, 1917, to the end of the civil wars in the spring of 1921 was confused and contradictory. Representatives of the American conservative press were not admitted to Soviet Russia and were reporting either from neighboring Baltic states or the territories occupied by the White armies; consequently, their reports were, for the most part, prejudiced and unreliable. On the other hand, foreign representatives of the American liberal and left-wing press, who were admitted to Russia, were scarcely better equipped to give a fairer picture of the great Russian upheaval. The difficulties of reporting Russia were enormous—a totally unfamiliar country in a state approaching anarchy, a strange and difficult language, strict censorship. Moreover, it was only natural that American correspondents in Moscow were prone to conceal the darker side unfavorable to the Bolshevik regime; some because of personal sympathies with the ideals of the Revolution, others for fear of incurring the regime’s enmity and, as a consequence, being forced to leave the country. Thus dispassionate and accurate reporting of the early phase of the Revolution was out of the question.17

During the 1920s, the steadily increasing interest in postrevolutionary Russia by liberal and left-wing American intelligentsia drew many wellknown Americans and journalists to Soviet Russia, and they issued reports that, for the most part, ranged “from unqualified enthusiasm to praise with minor reservations.”18 Historians identify two primary reasons for this: (1) these writers were clearly sympathetic to the Soviet experiment; and (2) censorship works. Punitive censorship was a hearty, almost revered, tradition in Russia—both systemic and systematic— dating back to Nicholas I and the mid-nineteenth century.19 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviets completely banned articles on topics such as famine and prison camps, and correspondents whose reports were uncomplimentary to the regime were threatened with expulsion or refusal of reentry.20 Into this environment, in August 1921, stepped Walter Duranty, whose oft-quoted comment that “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs” seemed to downplay repression within the Soviet 17. Von Mohrenschildt, “The Early American Observers of the Russian Revolution, 1917–1921,” Russian Review 3, no. 1 (Autumn 1943): 64. 18. Dimitri von Mohrenschildt, “American Intelligentsia and Russia of the N.E.P.,” Russian Review 6, no. 2 (Spring 1947): 62. 19. Daniel Balmuth, “The Origin of the Tsarist Epoch of Censorship Terror,” American Slavic and East European Review 19, no. 4 (December 1960): 497. 20. Von Mohrenschildt, “American Intelligentsia and Russia of the N.E.P.,” 62.

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regime and seemed genuinely calloused in light of the millions of Ukrainians who perished to famine in the early 1930s—a story he knowingly underreported and even dismissed.21 Many praised Duranty as one of America’s outstanding foreign reporters, and he claimed the 1932 Pulitzer for his economic reporting from Russia. Others, however, accused him of being little more than a shill for Stalin and the Soviet government.22 More than anything else, Duranty’s work from Russia offered insight into just how difficult it could be for correspondents to report truths within that environment. William H. Chamberlin lived in Russia from 1922 to 1934, writing for the Manchester Guardian and the Christian Science Monitor. In fact, the two were similar in many ways: Both saw themselves as American expatriates, both married Russian women, and both were solid Communist sympathizers before entering Russia to work. As journalists, both saw their primary task as analyzing Russian culture as well as social and political developments. Both started with the Guardian in Manchester, England, which had been providing strong, continuous coverage out of Russia since before 1920,23 before moving on to the Monitor. Both were considered well-educated men; however, Chamberlin had extensive in-house newsroom experience at papers in the U.S. before heading to Russia, a point that leads to one of the more compelling questions about Stevens: how did he know what the Guardian and the Monitor were looking for in their articles? Certainly, he read the papers as often as he could, perhaps regularly, perhaps even voraciously. But, as media sociologist Warren Breed pointed out consistently in his research, reading the content and trying to emulate it is only a small part of a journalist’s socialization to a newspaper’s rituals and policies. As an undergraduate, Stevens also was a regular writer for the Columbia Spectator, but the chasm between college paper and world-class international publication is wide indeed. One of the most remarkable elements about Stevens’s emergence into the profession is that he was able to make the transition without benefit of inhouse socialization to a paper’s defining structure, policies, and internal values. Breed’s examination of newsmen’s socialization and policylearning identifies in-house exposure as the primary method by which reporters learn and internalize their obligations, values, and rights within 21. Emery, On the Front Lines, 314. 22. Ibid. 23. Robert W. Desmond, Tides of War: World News Reporting, 1931–1945, 265.

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a news organization.24 But Stevens never experienced the newsroom directly until mid-1941 when he worked out of the Monitor’s Boston headquarters for a few months after being sent home from Ethiopia where he contracted a form of malaria that was nearly fatal. Although many journalists begin their careers writing stories about robberies and local government meetings for small community newspapers, Stevens’s early assignments included covering the high drama of Stalin’s third show trial, and he was soon in the thick of war reporting. In a column penned shortly after Stevens’s death, Earl Foell, the former editor of the World Monitor, wrote of his late colleague, It was in 1934 that Ed Stevens first grappled with the reality of the land later to become his home. Ed was Moscow agent for the Cunard Line, turned freelancer in 1938 for the Manchester Guardian. A year later he began freelancing for the Monitor, covering the squeezing of the Baltic states by Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR and the start of the RussoFinnish War. His dispatches were both pungent and analytical, and he soon became a staff writer. The little wars on his terrain graduated into World War II, and Ed graduated into the wandering life and risk-taking of a war correspondent.25

For both citizens and journalists, war correspondence is among the most highly valued reporting in democratically free countries worldwide, and it has been for centuries. It is valuable to both groups because, as sociologist and journalism scholar Herbert Gans stated, “American news media have always emphasized stories of social disorder, both at home and abroad.”26 War is social disorder of the first magnitude. The invasion of an army disrupts the status quo social order with violence or the threat of violence to force a new reality onto a community, region, or nation. Citizens value this information because they want to understand what may be the new reality for themselves or those they care about. For journalists, war reporting is highly valued because they have been socialized to understand how important it is within the newsroom and among their peers and by reading, listening, or watching dispatches sent 24. Breed, “Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis,” Social Forces 33, no. 4 (May 1955): 326–35. 25. Foell, “Edmund Stevens, 1910–1992,” World Monitor, December 10, 1992, 2. 26. Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time, 53.

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home from frontline correspondents. A war reporter is more likely to have his or her work appear on page one or at the start of the broadcast. A war reporter is more recognizable and highly regarded among peers, who consider her or him braver, more adventurous, more intelligent, and more resourceful than colleagues covering city council or school board meetings back in Dayton or Peoria. Stevens was driven by these elements and, again, in a way that differed from his regular colleagues at the front—Indro Montanelli, Leland Stowe, George Weller, Cy Sulzberger, Edward R. Murrow, and Ernie Pyle. All of them came up through the newsroom and rose to the rank of war correspondent after proving themselves within the socialized structure of a news organization. But Stevens’s lack of traditional socialization, combined with the nature and agenda of the Christian Science Monitor, would produce atypical dispatches—ones that strove to set aside a nationalistic agenda and overt American patriotism. To understand this point, it’s beneficial to compare Stevens’s coverage in Europe during the first two years of the war to Pyle’s and Murrow’s. Pyle and Murrow reported from Britain and France at different points between September 1939 and December 1941. As journalism historian James Tobin observed, He [Pyle] may have been willfully ignorant of high politics, but his streetlevel images were saturated with meaning. His word portrait of the great London fires communicated profound sympathy for the British cause. In this he joined Murrow in building a structure of solidarity between Americans and British, providing the emotional struts and beams upon which Franklin Roosevelt would soon erect the policy of Lend-Lease, by which the United States extended aid to Britain.27

Stevens was inspired by the same kind of wanderlust that motivated Pyle. He had the analytical skills of Murrow, but while Pyle and Murrow focused on the tragedy’s main characters of Britain and France, Stevens covered the lesser-known actors (those who might be listed as the “also killed” in an obituary for a famous person who died in an accident) of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Greece, and Romania. Too many Americans didn’t realize that many countries fell before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but Monitor readers knew it, in large measure because Ed 27. Tobin, Ernie Pyle’s War: America’s Eyewitness to World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 56.

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Stevens saw the tragic pattern firsthand, starting within days of the signing of the German-Russian nonaggression treaty. His would be a war correspondence with a Eurocentric analytical agenda and an unusually intimate knowledge of Russian thought and culture, and his dispatches would prove to be highly valuable to the Monitor.

The Christian Science Monitor When Mary Baker Eddy founded the Monitor in 1909, her goal was to establish a paper that would stand as a model for other newspapers and that would increase understanding among humanity and between nations by emphasizing the historical significance of an event rather than its sensational elements. When Stevens began writing for the Monitor in 1939, the newspaper was circulated to more than 145,000 in more than one hundred countries five days a week.28 He joined a cadre of reporters that included Ronald Maillard Stead, Mallory Browne, Joseph C. Harsch, Gordon Walker, Frank Robertson, and John Beaufort. But even among these distinguished correspondents, Stevens was the first Monitor reporter to cover fighting in World War II—and he did so as a freelancer for the first few weeks, until the Monitor realized his skill.29 He was in Latvia when Russia entered the Baltics in the fall of 1939, and he covered three major military campaigns in a matter of months. The courtship between the newspaper and Stevens soon blossomed into a marriage of virtually identical professional agendas: the Monitor insisted on analysis of the situation, and Stevens’s education, nature, and training drove him to analyze—especially the land and the people living west of the Urals. Early in his writing career, the man who began as an accidental journalist became for the Monitor on Russian culture what Ernie Pyle was for the average GI. On December 14, 1939, in an article entitled “How a Russian Major Obeyed Orders,” Stevens reported from Viborg, Finland: Yesterday the Russians with 10,000 men and 10 field batteries had tried five times to ford the River Taipalle. After losing six tanks they had retired five kilometers. In the pocket of a Red Army Major, killed in action, the Finns found two written orders. 28. Erwin D. Canham, Commitment to Freedom: The Story of the Christian Science Monitor, 397. 29. Ibid., 301.

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An Accidental Journalist The first instructed him to effect the crossing and advance 13 kilometers. The second order, received after his first failure, informed him that unless he succeeded he must appear before court-martial. Between these alternatives he had chosen a hero’s course.30

Stevens wrote about Russians as vulnerable humans with heroic virtues, a theme not typically replicated in American reporting outside of the Soviet Union. Besides that, his coverage during the last two years of the war—when the U.S. and Soviets were allies—was “favorable and generous” regarding Russian heroism.31 While the life and perspective of the average Russian almost always served as Stevens’s first focus in his analyses, he consistently followed through with observations about the Kremlin leaders themselves. American newspapers blasted Stalin for aligning with Hitler in a nonaggression treaty, but Stevens provided another perspective. In a June 4, 1940, analysis, he observed, The Kremlin leaders apparently made an agreement with the Nazis last fall because they knew they were in no position to fight Germany. At the time this caused surprise, both at home and abroad, where the real reason behind the agreement was not realized. For years people had said that though Russian economy as a whole was only hitting on three cylinders, everything was being sacrificed to defense and the Red Army was above reproach. Not even the purge, which swept away three fourths of the Red Army’s staff of officers, could destroy this illusion. It was only shattered finally by the practical demonstration of the Finnish War, which proved that the condition of the Red Army, its leadership, organization and standard of efficiency, was neither better nor worse than that of the Soviet Union as a whole. The Kremlin leaders, to give them credit, were aware of this last August when they signed up with the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and dismissed the Allied delegation. They also apparently knew more than the Allies about the true fighting strength of the German Army.32

He did not offer the Americanized slant in his articles as did fellow Pulitzer winners Leland Stowe, Ernie Pyle, or George Weller. But in his reporting, he was able to observe war, to articulate the significance of 30. Stevens, “How a Russian Major Obeyed Orders,” Christian Science Monitor (hereafter cited as CSM), December 14, 1939, 4. 31. Canham, Commitment to Freedom, 345. 32. Stevens, “Soviets Learn Price of Peace with Nazis,” CSM, June 4, 1940, 2.

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the unfolding battle, and to provide an intimate portrait of the Soviet Union. Monitor historian Erwin D. Canham wrote, They were under basic Monitor instructions—not just to seek out “hometown boys” and interview them, not simply to highlight victories, not to emphasize American undertakings to the detriment of Allies, not to overwrite or soup-it-up. Their job was to give an authentic picture of war and its meaning, not solely its adventures. . . . Thus Mr. Stevens, and all the others, were constantly keeping the long-range meaning in view and writing about it. At very early stages Mr. Stevens, to mention only one, was pointing out the dangers of misunderstandings between the British and Americans in North Africa; between Americans and Russians in Moscow; between Poles and Russians in Eastern Europe.33

Edmund Stevens appeared to have no problem following the Monitor’s instructions for its reporters on the front lines. Journalism historians and sociologists identify patriotism as a primary value esteemed and protected by the media,34 especially in times of war. But Stevens’s self-definition as an expat, his world travels, and his agenda for analysis took him down another path entirely. Stevens displayed far less of the ethnocentrism that Gans associated with American journalists: “This ethnocentrism comes through most explicitly in foreign news, which judges other countries by the extent to which they live up to or imitate American practices and values.”35 For one thing, Stevens entered the war a full two years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, after which America—and most American journalists—entered the fray. After the bombing, most U.S. papers were producing “War!” headlines, evaluating the surprise attack, calling for men to enlist, and telling American families to prepare for sacrifice. Meanwhile, Stevens demonstrated a clear understanding of the generally held Eurocentric attitude: “Well, now America is in it with us, and perhaps we will win.” In his own reporting of the Pearl Harbor attack, Stevens demonstrated a broader context, and he offered an explanation of the events that stretched far beyond American borders. He produced an analysis of global implications, which concluded, 33. Canham, Commitment to Freedom, 303. 34. Warren Breed, “Mass Communication and Socio-Culture Integration,” Social Forces 37, no. 2 (December 1958): 109–16. 35. Gans, Deciding What’s News, 42.

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An Accidental Journalist Just as Japan is utterly committed to a victory of its Nazi partner, America’s future is tied up with the Allied cause. It is all one war. The Russians, who have long insisted on the indivisibility of war and have shown considerable realism in their strategy, are fairly certain to appreciate where their interests lie in the Far East. Within the last few days Great Britain, in response to Russian pressure, declared war on Finland, Hungary, and Rumania, on the grounds that those countries were fighting Britain’s ally. On a reciprocal basis, Russia is therefore committed to declare war on Japan whenever Britain requests her in.36

When he returned to the front lines in the spring of 1942, Stevens’s reporting did reflect pride in the American contribution to the British victory against the Germans in North Africa. But while Ernie Pyle’s columns gave hope to sacrificing American families by creating “his mythical hero, the long-suffering G.I. who triumphed over death through dogged perseverance,”37 Stevens’s ethnocentrism played out in other ways. Throughout his war correspondence, he was a Eurocentrist: his dispatches focused on the plight of foot soldiers, refugees, and the common people of Europe. He wrote about the relationship between allied European countries and about the need for greater American aid through troop involvement and fighting equipment. He lamented the loss of independence as country after country fell to Germany and Russia. Clearly sympathetic to the victims of Axis oppression, Stevens’s articles relating to military invasions between 1939 and 1945 reveal specific attitudes of a Russophile and Eurocentrist: the Russian soldiers who invaded Finland in 1939 were cannon fodder for Stalin’s military machinery; the Finnish soldiers—and Greek soldiers one year later— were brave, resourceful, outnumbered, determined, and effective, even though they eventually lost. The Italians were generally incompetent, in Stevens’s eyes, and Haile Selassie’s return to Ethiopia in March 1941 was a clear symbol of hope for the twelve European nations that fell during the first sixteen months of the war to Axis invasion. In fact, one gets the sense that in 1939 Stevens wrote in English because, though he spoke four languages, English was the language over which he had greatest command. When considering the tone and perspective of his World War II correspondence, one can imagine his articles appearing in the Monitor 36. Stevens, “Nazis Again Admit Failure against Soviets,” CSM, December 9, 1941, 1. 37. Tobin, Ernie Pyle’s War, 143.

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as well as in virtually any European newspaper—or any European newspaper published in a country free of a dictator’s control over the press.

“Participant” Journalist With his formal, liberal arts education, extensive European travels, predilection for risk taking, and desire to see social/political revolution firsthand, Stevens not only excelled in reporting World War II events but also characterized the “participant” journalist a full thirty years before John W. C. Johnstone, Edward J. Slawski, and William W. Bowman coined the term. Stevens came of age as a journalist at the same time that American journalism was becoming more professionalized with the creation of professional schools and the articulating of codes of professional ethics and defining and promoting “objective” reporting.38 Johnstone, Slawski, and Bowman identified two distinct ideologies that had emerged over the first four decades of the twentieth century: (1) “neutral” reporting, characterized by “professionalized, objective, restrained, and technically efficient journalism”;39 and (2) “participant” reporting, through which “information must be reported in context, and it is the journalist’s task to provide the background and interpretation necessary to give events meaning. In this sense, the primary journalistic value is relevance, and the cardinal sins, news suppression and superficiality.”40 In other words, “participant” journalists participate by analyzing and contextualizing the unfolding events. According to the researchers, the journalist must play a more active and, to some extent, creative part in the development of the newsworthy. In this image there is not so clear an expectation that newsworthy information will reveal itself naturally, as there is an assumption that the most significant news of the day will come to light only as the result of the journalist’s imposition of his point of view. Here the newsman has personal responsibility for the information he seeks to transmit, and his relationship to news sources is more circumscribed—sources provide leads but the reporter must sift through

38. Johnstone, Slawski, and Bowman, “The Professional Values of American Newsmen,” Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 4 (Winter 1972–1973): 522. 39. Ibid., 523. 40. Ibid., 524.

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An Accidental Journalist for the real story. . . . that which is most worthy while journalistically is believed to emerge from the active efforts of the journalist.41

The journalist is elemental and integral to the news, not restrained on the outside. The researchers also characterized “participant” journalists as individuals with formal, liberal arts educations who had attended more selective universities, experienced more travel opportunities, and majored in a field other than journalism in college.42 While most practicing journalists adapt and articulate elements of both “neutral” participants, recording the who, what, when, and where of the story, and “participant” journalists, focusing on the why and how of the story, Stevens was well suited to be the latter. To understand Stevens’s place in journalism, one must also note the rise of interpretive reporting during this period— which Emery describes as “the most important development of the 1930s and 1940s” in the American press43 that happened, in large measure, because of the socioeconomic revolution of FDR’s New Deal combined with increasingly scientific technology and greater complexity of interdependence among economic groups. In other words, as daily life and social institutions became more complex, newsrooms placed greater value on the “why” of an unfolding event, and reporters became more specialized in their abilities to explain medicine, science, or economic and political developments. But the history, nature, and agenda of the Christian Science Monitor reveal a newspaper strongly defined by writers with the ability to analyze an unfolding event, and Edmund Stevens succeeded in meeting those standards under the often impossible circumstances of the front lines. Stevens probably could not have thrived behind a desk at the Dayton Daily News or Des Moines Register, but he was the right man at the right time for the Christian Science Monitor in covering World War II. The marriage between the Monitor and Edmund Stevens was, indeed, mutually beneficial through the war years and beyond.

Analytical Journalist Stevens excelled as what American journalist Daniel Schorr calls “the untouched observer,” one who is able to see the whole picture because 41. Ibid., 523–24. 42. Ibid., 531–32. 43. Emery, On the Front Lines, 311.

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he is standing the right distance from it. According to Schorr, “The notion of being the invisible stranger always appealed to me.”44 It also appealed to Stevens, along with the chance to witness firsthand the unfolding of history. “Some liked to write, and a few magazine journalists are frustrated or ‘failed’ novelists. Others wanted to be storytellers, enjoying the idea of reporting news to an audience; a few of them saw themselves as teachers, instructing people in current events,” wrote Gans. “But for the majority, journalism offered the opportunity to be in the midst of exciting activities without having to be involved.”45 Edmund Stevens was able to watch an event unfold and to describe it with precision, offering his version of its impact on both the globe and the individual. In only his tenth article for the Monitor—a piece dispatched from Helsingfors, Finland, on November 16, 1939, entitled “Huge Price Paid by Reich in Baltic for Soviet Aid”—he described the almost immediate results of the secret Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact to divide Eastern Europe. He wrote, The new alignment in the Baltic States, far from indicating the final solution of the Russo-German conflict, merely marks the latest stage in a thousand-year old struggle to determine whether the Baltic shall be a Slavic or Teutonic lake. Germany has been forced to relinquish its strategic points in return for Russia’s benevolent neutrality. The truly appalling price that Germany has paid for its Russian alliance is now evident. Reichsfuhrer Hitler, who clamors for colonies, voluntarily surrendered all claim to Germany’s oldest colonies—the Baltic States. The repatriation of the Baltic Germans was the tangible down payment which Joseph Stalin, himself no novice at double-crossing, demanded of his Nazi partner.46

His analysis reflected his understanding of a history-changing event within the much larger perspective of world history. At the same time he was clearly defining for his readers the immediate impact of the nonaggression pact and a summary of what Hitler and Stalin each gained in the bargain. Along with his other characteristics, Edmund Stevens was also 44. Gans, Deciding What’s News, 185. 45. Ibid. 46. Stevens, “Huge Price Paid by Reich in Baltic for Soviet Aid,” CSM, November 16, 1939, 1.

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courageous. He wrote of Hitler and Stalin with the same style that characterized most of his work throughout his career: his articles were strong on imagery and analysis but written without fear of reprisal. Nowhere in his memoirs does Stevens record a single complaint about the censoring he faced throughout the war and during his postwar years in Russia. Ironically, Stevens also wrote nothing in his memoirs about winning the Pulitzer or the hard circumstances behind getting the stories that earned him this prize—the constant harassment and threats against his family throughout 1948 and 1949 until he could secure safe passage for all four out of Leningrad and back to the United States, after which he produced the thirty-four-part series that claimed him the Pulitzer for International Reporting of 1950. But while he did not talk about winning the Pulitzer in his memoirs, Stevens summarized in his introductory essay to This Is Russia Uncensored what he’d faced as he tried to get out of the country in 1949: Of late we had sensed imponderable walls closing in upon us. The air itself was clotted with hate and suspicion. The press attacks on everything American grew in violence and vituperation. Closer to home, no week passed without American correspondents being pilloried as spies. The anti-American campaign penetrated even to the child world. Our son and daughter were taunted by their neighborhood playmates as “Amerikantsi,” by now a term of opprobrium. Small wonder our last contacts with Soviet life around us disintegrated rapidly. Even the press department of the Foreign Ministry, through which all our official relations were funneled, now virtually ignored us. Our least request was ignored or refused. All this was bearable as long as it remained impersonal. But early in 1949 we suddenly discovered that we were constantly being spied upon. Whenever someone entered or left the garden gate in front of our onestory log house a curtain in a window opposite was raised slightly. Young men, too well dressed for loiterers, lounged on nearby corners or strolled back and forth outside. Friends who dropped in were followed home, and in due course called in for questioning. Our next-door neighbors, too, were grilled, and though we had known them for years, they took to avoiding us utterly. Soon we noted that not only was the house watched, but we ourselves were shadowed wherever we went.47

47. Stevens, This Is Russia Uncensored, 1–2.

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Despite these circumstances, the treatment he received from Soviet authorities did not prevent him from returning to Russia in 1956 as a journalist, and any harassment he endured apparently left no scars—at least any he felt the need to process when he sat down to record his memories. Yet the harassment he received became part of the Pulitzer Prize– winning series itself. In his introductory essay, he wrote about catching his own maid spying on his family. One day he entered the room to find her rifling through his address book: Nastia had come to work for us back in 1946 as an apple-cheeked peasant girl fresh from the village. After one year, during which my wife trained her as a tolerable housemaid, she left to marry a policeman. We next heard from her last spring, when she called up and asked for her job back. Since nobody wanted to work for Americans and servants were hard to get, my wife agreed to take her on. With that address book incident, we realized that Nastia, no longer the apple-cheeked peasant girl, had been assigned to us. We also found that she was in the habit of crossexamining our daughter, aged seven, who has that endearing childish knack of total recall for grown-up conversations overheard—drawing her out with the gift of some trivial toy.48

The Stevens family left Russia in late 1949 and returned to Boston. Steven immediately produced his award-winning series, which began with this analysis of Stalin: Seldom in history has a man become a legend in his own lifetime. Yet Stalin the man already has been totally replaced by Stalin the legend where the Russian public is concerned. The legendary Stalin is a mellow, uncle-like character, who lives to accept bouquets of flowers from little girls in token of thanks for their “happy childhood.” He radiates gentle patience and benevolent wisdom. All this bears little resemblance to the sharp, ruthless politician who gained control of the party machinery as Lenin’s hand faltered and who, by a series of deft moves, not only consolidated his own position but outmaneuvered the entire group of Lenin’s close associates, who finally were disposed of during the purges of 1934–1938. Chief cultivator of the Stalin legend is Stalin himself. His mode of life, his every public act of utterance, is calculated to fit this role. Having 48. Ibid., 3.

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An Accidental Journalist divorced himself largely from the everyday business of government, he descends from the Olympian remoteness of his semi-retirement only at rare intervals to make history with a few well-chosen words, usually in the form of a press release.49

Partly by fate but mostly by choice, Stevens was a witness to many of the twentieth century’s most significant and horrific events in Europe and Russia. And by proclamation of the Pulitzer committee of 1950, Edmund Stevens was the first journalist who fully chronicled and analyzed the hardship, Stalinist terror, and corruption behind the USSR’s industrial and economic progress of the 1940s. Stevens’s writing style—from Moscow to Finland and Norway to Greece—demonstrates an analytical ability that inevitably stands up to historic scrutiny. He wrote as one trying to explain to his readers the unfolding revolution in one particular region and the impact that revolution had on both the common citizen of its country as well as the leadership and economic, social, and political structure. Along with his professional skill and ambition, Edmund Stevens also was a conflicted man: at times charming but ultimately self-centered; a distant, analytical journalist and yet a man who was remarkably sentimental with his own children; a husband with many dalliances around the world and yet one who proclaimed in florid prose absolute devotion to his Nina; one accustomed to monetary comfort and yet seemingly unable to save a penny for his own future. Stevens was a fiercely independent, world-class international journalist, forceful in his analyses and often arrogant in his self-confidence. Combined with his determination to get to the front lines of battle, these characteristics led him to what certainly was his greatest professional contributions during World War II—stellar reporting of the lesserknown battles and players among world-changing events, including Finland’s courageous but futile efforts in the Russo-Finnish War; Russia’s invasion of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania; Norway’s “fifth column” fall to Germany; and Ethiopia’s successful reclaiming of its homeland. One of his most significant professional achievements was his reporting of the atrocities that occurred in Romania, while that country and its people were divided by marauding neighbors. The story of Romania’s devastation in mid-June 1940 was not easy to dispatch for 49. Ibid., 6–7.

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the relatively few journalists who witnessed it. That same week Germany claimed Paris, Norway surrendered to the Nazis, Italy declared war on Britain and France, and Stalin began occupying the Baltic States. As news agencies and correspondents scrambled to cover what were clearly considered stories of greater value, Romania fell hard and would have suffered in relative global silence if not for the work of Edmund Stevens.

Many Identities Stevens played an impressive variety of roles between 1934 and 1945: graduate student, Communist propagandist, husband, survivor of Stalin’s Great Purge, father, journalist, war correspondent, military strategist and combatant, Monitor deskman in Boston, veteran war correspondent covering major battles, interpreter for the British prime minister’s entourage in a special meeting at the Kremlin, analyst of the war’s global impact, author, and international traveler. Stevens was not only fluent in four languages but also adept at switching roles, perhaps another clear benefit of his strong liberal arts background, his unorthodox upbringing and early overseas travels, his profound wanderlust, and his lack of professional journalistic indoctrination. In fact, his unorthodox training as a journalist probably made it easier for him to switch roles as life required. Stevens’s ability to adjust his role depending on circumstances and opportunities is a skill most journalists today might learn from. As an embedded reporter with Selassie’s troops, he had little choice but to aid the British in Ethiopia against the Italians, a situation that transformed him into a military aide, with virtual captain’s rank, to Lieutenant Colonel Orde Wingate. While covering the battle between the Germans and the British in North Africa during the summer of 1942, he was tapped to accompany Winston Churchill and W. Averell Harriman on their trip to the Kremlin because of his fluency in Russian and his familiarity with Moscow culture. He traded his role of journalist for that of junior diplomat assigned to address American military interests related to the meeting. Of all his roles during the war years, those of husband and father were probably his weakest. Without question, his roles as war reporter and Russian correspondent were his strongest. His later role as a “writer of memoirs,” however, was mixed. The four hundred pages he left behind reveal more potential than success in terms

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of producing a fully developed and polished text. Some of his accounts are richly written, especially his travelogue description of the land and the people he met in the most remote spots on the planet. But Edmund Stevens’s memoirs do not do justice to his analytical writing skill and his achievements as a frontline correspondent and interpreter of Russian culture. However, when his memoirs are placed within a larger framework that includes the historical background of the unfolding events and Stevens’s own dispatches, many compelling elements surface: 1. A significant contrast between the private and public man. He often wrote of the familial nature and concerns of the men around him in battle, including their fraternal heroics in risking their lives for one another and constant concerns about loved ones back home. Yet Stevens himself was unable to achieve a domestic harmony of his own during the war years, even choosing to leave Nina as she faced a very difficult pregnancy so he could return to the front line. 2. A compelling contrast between what Stevens chose to examine in his memoirs and his unique role in journalism history. For example, Stevens wrote briefly about his time in Bucharest in January 1941. If reading only his memoirs, one would not understand the greater significance of his time there: Stevens witnessed the brutal crushing of the Iron Guard by General Ion Antonescu’s army. 3. An understanding of how certain events affected him personally. His coverage of the Kharkov hanging demonstrated sympathy for the Ukrainians who had endured the horrors of the Wassen SS and who then hanged some of the Nazi soldiers after the city was liberated. Yet, in his memoirs, he ruminated the circumstances that allowed the citizens of Kharkov to stand emotionless as the sentences were carried out. 4. An often humorous contrast between the events he reported and the fuller accounts behind them. When General Bernard L. Montgomery entered Tripoli, he was met by two Italian generals dressed in full military regalia; Monty, on the other hand, was wearing his battle fatigues. In his memoirs, Stevens recorded Montgomery’s reaction to these two nattily dressed generals, something he couldn’t report in the Monitor account: “Monty’s first words were, ‘Who are these fairies?’” 5. A sometimes compelling departure between Stevens’s effective, thought-provoking analysis and his almost blind devotion to the British units he covered and the generals he interviewed and raved about in his articles—Carl Mannerheim, Bernard Montgomery, Claude Auchinleck.

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In some of these dispatches his Eurocentrism overshadows his more objective reporting. He clearly supports the British troops, at times to the point of blind devotion. Most important, when the materials are pieced together, the reader is treated to the insights of a future Pulitzer winner who covered some of the most significant but less-reported battles and events of World War II. After the war ended in 1945, Stevens returned to Moscow with his family only to face increased censorship and open harassment that included watching Russian officials rip apart his daughter’s toys. In 1949, Stevens, Nina, and their two children set sail for Boston, effectively closing the Monitor’s Moscow bureau. They bought property in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and settled in an old farmstead while he wrote the series that claimed the Pulitzer Prize. In 1950, the Stevens family moved again—this time to Rome where Stevens served as chief of the Mediterranean bureau and where he produced a Pulitzer-nominated series about the erosion of French colonialism in Algeria. In his obituary for Stevens, Earl Foell observed, “Stevens’s expose was a dress rehearsal for a generation of correspondents covering the more distant colonial foot-dragging in Vietnam and in Africa south of the Sahara.” In 1956, the Stevens family returned to Moscow, and Stevens began writing for the world’s top publications, including Time, Life, Newsday, the Saturday Evening Post, the Times of London, the Sunday Times, and the Evening News of London. Stevens began writing his memoirs in the 1980s and confided in a friend at the Monitor office in Boston that he wanted them to be a kind of obituary for Lenin’s empire. He produced nearly four hundred pages of text but was not able to see it through to publication. Edmund Stevens died in 1992. It is fitting to release these edited memoirs now—at a time when historians are experiencing an unprecedented openness of Russian archives, when whole documentary collections are being published, and when more historic data about Communism is available than Stevens himself ever could have imagined. This volume focuses on his professional work and life from 1934 to 1946, and in researching and writing this book, I drew on a variety of sources, including Stevens’s articles, correspondence, unpublished memoirs, and his wife’s unpublished memoirs as well. Chapter 1 recounts his entry into Russia in 1934, the turbulent social, political, and economic events of that period, and his

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meeting his future wife—the relationship that would influence his career more than any other. The tumultuous early years of marriage and his transformation into an accidental journalist against the backdrop of Stalin’s Great Purge are examined in chapter 2. Chapter 3 explores Stevens’s initial work as a war correspondent—in the Baltics and Finland—while chapter 4 includes his chronicles of the Italo-Greek War. His unusual adventures with Orde Wingate and Haile Selassie are the focus of chapter 5, and chapter 6 places him in North Africa with Montgomery’s troops. Stevens’s work as translator and cultural guide for Churchill and Harriman in Moscow is examined in chapter 7. In chapter 8, he returns to North Africa to report the Allied victory in El Alamein. Chapter 9 focuses on his return to Moscow as a correspondent during the final year of the war, along with the Kharkov hangings and his coverage of Stalingrad. It also examines his time back in the United States throughout 1945 as he worked on his book, Russia Is No Riddle, and analyzed the final battles of World War II.

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Part 1 An American in Russia

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1 The Early Years in Moscow

In early 1934, Russia was caught up in an ongoing, frenetic, and desperate transformation. Seventeen years had passed since Vladimir Lenin and his followers had claimed victory in the Russian Civil War, established the world’s first Communist state, and suppressed all significant rebellions against the Bolshevik party. According to Russian historian Robert Service, “There had been created a centralized, one-ideology dictatorship of a single party which permitted no challenge to its monopoly of power.” The Bolshevik party itself was strictly organized; the security police were experts at persecution and there was systematic subordination of constitutional and legal propriety to political convenience. . . . On taking power in 1917, the Communist leaders had not possessed a preparatory blueprint. Nevertheless they had come with assumptions and inclinations which predisposed them toward a high degree of state economic dominance, administrative arbitrariness, ideological intolerance and political violence.1

By the time Stevens arrived in Russia that year, fifteen years had passed since the Bolsheviks had begun to export their political strategies, launching Communist parties in almost every country in the world and creating the Communist International (or Comintern). Based in the 1. Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 123. 29

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heart of Moscow, the Comintern was the international organization of Communist parties from around the globe, and its highest priority was providing support for the new Communist regime in Russia. The Comintern would be Stevens’s first employer. It had been twelve years since Lenin had launched the New Economic Policy (NEP). Although this policy was initially designed to make temporary concessions to the peasantry after the civil war, it offered limited economic growth and soon transformed into a dysfunctional and destabilizing force. As Service observed, The NEP had saved the regime from destruction; but it had induced its own grave instabilities into the compound of the Soviet order. The principle of private profit clashed in important economic sectors with central planning objectives. Nepmen, clerics, better-off peasants, professional experts and artists were quietly beginning to assert themselves. Under the NEP there was also a resurgence of nationalist, regionalist and religious aspirations; and the arts and sciences, too, offered cultural visions at variance with Bolshevism. Soviet society under the New Economic Policy was a mass of contradictions and unpredictabilities, dead ends and opportunities, aspirations and discontents.2

By the spring of 1934, eight years had passed since Josef Stalin had emerged from his role as the Bolsheviks’ chief administrative officer to become “an untrammeled despot.”3 His ironfisted paternalism had transformed a system of political violence and economic dominance birthed by the Bolsheviks into a monstrous life force of absolute power. Stalin’s outward appearance as a moderate—who was dedicated to carrying out Lenin’s social policies—thinly veiled the ruthless, paranoid leader who claimed power by outmaneuvering other leaders in the Communist Party, playing them against one another and ordering executions with the blink of an eye. As Adam Bruno Ulam observed, “Until the end of 1927 he still basked in his reputation as a moderate on economic policies. In fact, the approach he was to announce was not different in principle from the policies he had denounced previously. . . . The difference was that Stalin was to apply the policy of squeezing out the sinews of industrialization with a speed and brutality that undoubtedly went beyond the wildest dreams

2. Ibid., 149. 3. Adam Bruno Ulam, A History of Soviet Russia (New York: Praeger, 1976), 59.

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of the earlier ‘get tough with the peasant’ Communists.”4 In 1928, Stalin launched the “second revolution,” a program designed to convert the Soviet Union into a fully socialist state. He repudiated and reversed the NEP and assumed total control over all aspects of the economy. In 1929, the country launched Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan, a ridiculously ambitious plan to transform the nation into an industrial, economic, and social powerhouse. Approved by the Communist Party’s annual congress in April 1929, this plan called for increasing industrial output by 250 percent, electric power production by 400 percent, and agricultural production by 150 percent. As part of his plan, Stalin transformed the country’s agriculture through collectivization, which called for land owned by individual peasants to be combined into larger cooperative farms known as a Kholkhoz. As Ulam noted, The Congress authorized the first Five-Year Plan, an ambitious projection of industrial advance, with many of its goals, as it was to run out, quite unrealistic. On the agricultural side, the directives for the plan called for a considerable increase in collectivization—some 12 to 15 percent of peasant households were to be contained in collectivized and state farms at the end of the plan, as against about 2 percent at its inception—yet it was assumed by everybody and stated by Stalin that collectivization would be entirely voluntary and that the end of the plan would still see individual household farming as the prevailing form of production in the countryside.5

By 1932, more than 75 percent of arable land in the Soviet Union had been collectivized, which created chaotic and desperate living conditions throughout rural Russia. Millions of peasants died in the famine of 1932–1933, a fact that would not be fully understood elsewhere in the world for several more years. The transformation of an agrarian country with limited industrial development and a relatively small working class into an international model of socialist industrial and economic might unleashed many battles: Communist leaders against the peasants; Comintern against Politburo; and Josef Stalin against any perceived obstacle, real or imagined. This was the political, economic, and social environment that Edmund Stevens encountered when he arrived in Russia in 1934. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., 86.

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First Impression • • • My initial impression of the Soviet capital, and mecca of world Communism, was one of drab grayness: gloomy skies overhead, dirty snow underfoot, and swarms of people of both sexes and all ages, for the most part clad in identical padded jackets wearing caps with earflaps. In March, there was still no sign of spring, though in Budapest the leaves were green already. At first I felt a bit lost. My Russian was hardly up to my needs. I had no rubles but managed with cigarettes to get a porter to unload my suitcase and sailor trunk and check them into the locker room of the cavernous Byelorussian station. In my naïve innocence, I looked around for a money exchange booth like the ones in all the major stations. I found a window with the sign “Sberkassa” and stepped inside. But when I had elbowed my way to the guichet with my money, the female cashier was taken aback. She examined the ten-dollar bill I handed her, backward and forward, upward and downward. She evidently had no clear concept about what it was or what to do with it. She shook her head and returned it. Fortunately, a young woman had observed my dilemma. In passable English, she explained that only the bank for foreign trade was authorized to deal with foreign currency. But there was always a ready demand for cigarettes. My guide proved to be a Czech married to an Indian employed by the English edition of the Weekly Moscow News. With her aid, I retrieved my luggage and found a porter who loaded it into a droshki, one of the horse-drawn cabs that still served as the chief means of hired locomotion, given the lack of taxis. I was quickly learning how to pay my way with cigarettes. My guide accompanied me to the cavernous Hotel Metropol, which, along with the National and Savoy, were the three principal hotels, all prerevolution. In the early thirties Moscow was a long way from becoming today’s bulging metropolis. It then had barely three million residents, and at that time generations born and bred under the old regime still comprised a fair share of the adult population. Most of the younger generation had matured during the so-called New Economic Plan (NEP) introduced by Lenin after the civil war, which allowed the provisional revival of private enterprise, in order to restore the shattered economy. Throughout this transitional period, political power was entirely retained by the firm Communist hold on the commanding heights. Within these confines, after the austerity of the

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“wartime Communism,” daily life largely reverted to bourgeois ways. Trade flourished, private businessmen (NEP-men) prospered, and many foreign concessions did well. The classic example was that of American Armand Hammer and his two brothers, Harry and Victor. They built a pencil factory in the 1920s. The NEP was abrogated in 1929 and private businesses nationalized. Most of the foreign concessionaires received ample compensation. The Hammer brothers reportedly were paid several million rubles, with the right to purchase and export priceless works of art. The acquisitions served to finance the Hammer Art Gallery and subsequently the global Occidental Oil Corporation. The Soviet Union’s swift progress as a major world industrial power began with the first Five-Year Plan, drawn up and approved in 1929, after the end of NEP. From the outset it heavily relied on capitalist know-how, especially American, although diplomatic relations were not established until 1933. This also required the employment of Western personnel for such projects as the Dnieper hydroelectric power plant, which comprised the damming of the mighty Dnieper River in the Ukraine, from 1927 to 1932. The plan provided that Moscow, Russia’s historic, political, and religious capital, should undergo a drastic industrial conversion. It called for building steel mills, automobile plants, and other giants of heavy industry. It also meant leveling churches, monasteries, and other historic landmarks that lent Moscow its charm and attested to its central role in Russian culture. The employment of foreign specialists meant providing them with adequate living conditions. Blocks of flats were built for them, shops called “Torgsin” (acronym for “Trade with Foreigners”) sold superior quality foodstuffs and consumer goods for foreign currency or in exchange for gold or other items of value, like the present-day “Beryozka” (“Birch Tree”) shops. In the depths of the economic depression, some foreigners became Soviet citizens. In the purge period, many would regret their loss of consular protection. Launching of the first Five-Year Plan in 1929 coincided with the adoption of a policy designed to reshape Russian history and culture in line with Stalin’s concept of Marxist priorities. Starting with Moscow, the implementing of the reassessment was delegated to Politburo members Lazar Kaganovich and Nikita Khrushchev whom Stalin humorously dubbed “the city fathers.” The lead executive role was played by Kaganovich, who from 1930 to 1935 was first secretary of the Moscow party committee, in charge of what was termed “The General Plan for

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Reconstruction of the Capital.” He began his “reconstruction” by demolishing the splendid Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the most hallowed shrine of Russian Orthodox faith and second largest church in Christendom after St. Peter’s in Rome. It had taken almost a century to build, as a memorial of Russia’s victory over Napoleon in 1812. Russians of all levels, from the peasants to the aristocracy, had contributed their rubles and kopeks. The story is told of how a train on the St. Petersburg–Moscow run, with a cargo of gold bullion, was stopped by robbers. When they learned the gold was destined for construction of the cathedral, they returned the loot and added to it. Construction was extremely difficult. The foundation was laid on a sandy bend of the Moskva River and tended to sideslip. Many builders paid with their lives, until at last it stood fore square, and the glitter of its gilded domes was the first sign of Moscow the approaching traveler described. After the Cathedral was razed, the site was to be used to erect a huge Palace of the Soviets, crowned by a towering statue of Lenin, so tall that he would spend winter with his head in the clouds. Repeated efforts to secure the foundation failed because of the sandy terrain. Twice a steel frame was erected but had to be dismantled when the foundation sideslipped. Finally, in World War II, the steel was smelted down for military needs. After the war, the yawning excavation became Moscow’s largest outdoor, year-round swimming pool, heated in winter. When, as occasionally happened, a bather drowned, religious babushkas said it was God’s wrath. The longtime Moscow correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, Alfred Cholerton, quipped that the best definition of a “reactionary” was someone who could not distinguish the Palace of the Soviets from a hole in the ground. Kaganovich’s “reconstruction” included the destruction of more than four hundred historic landmarks, among them the Strastnoi, Sretensky, Nikitsky, and Krestovo medieval monasteries and the Sukharev Tower, where Peter the Great was crowned. He also razed most of the medieval wall around the old city and uprooted the tall trees and lush greenery in what is wistfully called “Sadovoye Koltso” (Garden Circle), which once ringed the Moscow city limits. His aim was to command an unobstructed field of vision and free passage for armored tanks in case of war. The early seventeenth century Kazan Cathedral at the north entrance to Red Square had been completely renovated by 1930. Kaganovich demolished it two years later. And the site was used for a wooden monument to the Third International. When that disintegrated, it was replaced by a public toilet.

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Only a last minute reprieve kept Kaganovich from demolishing that incomparable gem of Russian architecture, the Church of Basil the Blessed. Kaganovich had marked this crowning jewel of Red Square for removal as an obstruction to traffic, but when Piotr Baranovsky, a distinguished architect and restorer, was ordered to dismantle the church, he flatly refused, saying he would rather be shot. Kaganovich had him arrested. But Baranovsky’s wife’s plea on her husband’s behalf reached Stalin, who for once put his foot down. He ordered Baranovsky freed and the demolition cancelled. Kaganovich’s orgy of demolition was also aimed at secular objects, such as private residences, administrative edifices, and commercial ensembles, carefully designed and built by noted architects, after the fire that swept through much of Moscow in 1812 during the French occupation. The main thrust of his efforts seemed aimed against everything that was traditionally Russian and part of Moscow’s environment, including deletion of scores of historic names of streets and localities associated with classic Russian literature. Kaganovich’s primary practical achievement while Moscow party secretary was construction of the first line of the Moscow Metro (underground) by the open-cut method. Hundreds of tons of excavated earth were dumped in the churchyard of the Danilov Monastery, where many leading scholars and writers were buried, including the famed author Nikolai Gogol. In 1957, Kaganovich would be ousted by Nikita Khrushchev, together with Vyacheslav Molotov, Georgy Malenkov, and others who had served under Stalin.6 • • •

Communist International By the end of 1920, most countries in the world had a Communist Party, and the Comintern was founded in 1919 as the central office and party apparatus of the worldwide Communist movement.7 According to Ulam, the global headquarters was to be a “cohesive, ideologically monolithic, and militant organization.”

6. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 21–22, 33–39. 7. Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe, International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–1943, 1.

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An Accidental Journalist The Russian example was to serve as the obligatory model for foreign Communists both before and after the conquest of power in their own lands. . . . The Comintern was to be strongly centralized, the resolutions and directives of the Comintern’s congresses and of the Executive Committee of the Third International being binding on all individual parties. It was clear even in those early days that this centralization, combined with the fact that the seat of the Comintern was in Moscow, would lead to the domination of the international Communist movement by the Soviet government, though nobody in Lenin’s era could suspect how absolute this domination would become in Stalin’s.8

Stevens arrived in Moscow with the specific intention of landing a job at the Publishing Cooperative for Foreign Workers, a division within the Comintern, and he was immediately successful. • • • Having registered at the Metropol with the help of my guide, I headed for what was officially termed the “Publishing Cooperative for Foreign Workers.” It was actually the publishing bureau of the Comintern, whose headquarters was within a few blocks. I was challenged through a guichet by a surly receptionist demanding my identification. I fumbled for a letter from Earl Browder, then head of the American Communist Party, sewn inside the lining of my jacket. The publishing house was in the old city. It was only a short walk from the Metropol. The old city was known as “Kitaigorod” (Chinatown). It was here that the shops of tradesmen and artisans were once located, just off Red Square. Lodged in a former convent, the offices and hallways of the publishing house felt and smelt as if they had never been properly cleaned and aired since the revolution. Body odor and tobacco smoke seemed to blend with the faint traces of incense in the fetid atmosphere. On the other side of October 25th Street (formerly Nikolskaya), which led into Red Square, was GUM (State Universal Shop), Moscow’s largest department store, which stretched the full length of Red Square across from the Kremlin. One of our puns was, if you want your money’s worth, eschew GUM. I presented my letter of introduction to the chief of the English language section, an American in his early forties named Talmy, who had a Bronx accent. Most of the staff was Jewish, save for the Chinese. Like Talmy, three secretary-typists also were from the Bronx. The senior editors, brothers Joe and Bram Feinberg, had come from England a decade 8. Ulam, History of Soviet Russia, 53–54.

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earlier. They mainly concentrated their literary talents on translating Lenin’s works. All the staff had surrendered their passports and taken Soviet citizenship. After being interviewed on my background and qualifications, I was given a form to fill out and hired as an editor for a monthly salary of three hundred rubles. Like almost everything in the Soviet-planned economy, the publishing house had a plan to fulfill so many pages and so many titles, each with a deadline. More than half of the material was ideological and heavy-going like Stalin’s Problems of Leninism. There were also belles lettres, with proper political slant, and sundry guidebooks. As I did not have a working command of Russian, I was relegated to translating from Italian and French into English. My initial assignment was to translate A Barber’s Memoirs from Italian. Next I translated the French novel Antoine Bloye by Paul Nizan, the close friend of Jean-Paul Sartre who maintained that Nizan was the better writer. Soon after, Nizan fell in disfavor, and the book was accordingly withdrawn. But my translation was republished in New York in the midseventies and well reviewed. I also helped the Feinbergs edit the English translation of Lenin’s selected works. Soon after I had been hired, I moved from the Metropol to a room in a new house with a private family. It was on Gogolevsky Boulevard in central Moscow, only two blocks from our present house, and as I pass it several times a day now, I wonder who may be looking out of the window from which I looked more than half a century ago.9 • • •

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936 and continued until 1939, drew international brigades from Britain, Canada, and the U.S. along with volunteers from Communist groups throughout Europe and Russia who fought for the Loyalists. The Fascists and Nazis lined up to help the Nationalists. In July 1936, the Comintern urged support for the Loyalists, fearing that Russia would be more vulnerable to Nazi invasion if the Nationalists won. At the same time, though, Stalin hesitated to provide direct military aid. Eventually, Russia provided arms, money, aircraft, and military supplies. 9. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 22–24.

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• • • Prior to the purge, the attitude toward foreigners was fairly relaxed. Russians are by temperament gregarious. And I formed friendships that were to last, with interruptions, to this day. There were virtually no travel restrictions on foreigners. One simply bought a rail ticket to where one wished to go, save for a comparatively few restricted areas. My closest friend at that time was an Italian who also worked in the Comintern. I simply knew him as Leo. Having served time in Fascist prisons, he remained conspiratorial, and I never learned his true last name. About five years my senior, Leo volunteered to fight in Spain, and I never again heard from him. Frankly, I assume he died on some Spanish battlefield. Another friend, who probably shared his fate, was a young Englishman, Harry Scott, also a member of the English section staff in those early years. Not many of those who went to help the Spanish Republic were to survive unscathed. Most tragic was the fate of brilliant journalist Mikhail Koltsov. He covered the Spanish Civil War for Pravda. After his return in 1938, he was first honored by being elected to the RSFSR Supreme Soviet and made associate member of the Academy of Sciences. But soon thereafter, according to the Soviet literary encyclopedia, Koltsov was “unjustly oppressed.” It gave no further details. In the jargon of the purge, he was “repressed”—not shot, but sent to a Gulag penal colony. According to rumor, he was charged with spying for Lord Beaverbrook. The big Soviet encyclopedia states that Koltsov died in Kiev in April of 1942, without giving any details of how he died or why he was in Kiev, which was then under Nazi occupation. Whatever happened, as a Jew, his chances of survival would have been virtually nil. After Stalin’s death, Koltsov was posthumously rehabilitated, without any additional word as to his fate. Stalin’s attitude toward the Spanish Civil War was strangely schizoid. His dilemma was that the Republicans, to whom Moscow had pledged support, consisted of a loose leftist coalition, which included the POUM Trotskyites, whom Stalin at that time hated more than the Nazis. Anyone who had collaborated or rubbed elbows with Trotskyites even for the common cause, Stalin deemed tainted and suspect. This was especially so once the purge and the treason trials got under way. The purge, responsive to Stalin’s obsession with Spain, went witch-hunting. Another prominent writer who came close to sharing Koltsov’s fate was Ilya Ehrenburg. Like Koltsov, he had been actively involved in covering the Spanish Civil War. Many years afterward when I asked him how he

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had managed to survive, for an answer he produced a creased paper that he unfolded. It was a handwritten letter to “Dear Comrade Ehrenburg.” It expressed the writer’s warm appreciation for a book of Ehrenburg’s and was signed by Stalin. Ehrenburg always kept that letter in his pocket and produced it in crucial moments. It always worked wonders. Summer came with its long days, and I rated a month’s holiday. I made two trips by train, first to Leningrad, under the spell of the white nights in the company of Harry Scott, who knew the city well, for he worked in the Leningrad branch of the publishing house. Besides seeing museums, we were invited to the publishing house and were royally entertained. Unlike Moscow, the editorial staff consisted almost entirely of urbane intellectuals born when Leningrad was St. Petersburg. In the early thirties the old Tsarist capital retained much of its majesty, just slightly tarnished. The hereditary nobility and middle-class strata of urbanites, including intellectuals, jealously guarded their cultural heritage and civic pride. Little did they suspect what awaited them a few months later, when the assassination of Leningrad party chief, Sergei Kirov, was to trigger Stalin’s blood purge—with the streets of Leningrad the first to run red. Following Leningrad, I visited Sochi, the Black Sea Riviera resort, together with Leo. We stayed in the rambling prerevolutionary “Primorskaya” (Seaside) Hotel. Like at the Astoria in Leningrad, the personnel retained much of their traditional, old-world manners and courtesy. In those days the beach and the water were neither crowded nor polluted. Much as now the holiday makers mostly sunned themselves on the pebbly beach or clustered under umbrellas playing proferance, a Russian relative to whist, for high stakes. They were always watching for militia because gambling was strictly taboo. There were other restrictions as I discovered when I ventured out of the hotel in shorts. A militiaman threatened to arrest me for indecent exposure. He backed down when he found out I was a foreigner, but warned me against repeating such a flagrant breach of modesty. There was a bit of a scare when some cholera cases were reported, and we decided to cut short our stay. Back in Moscow, I resumed my work at the publishing house. I had given up my room at Gogolevsky Boulevard when my landlords tried to raise the rent and for a time moved in with Leo, who shared a flat with two German secretaries from the Comintern. Because of my recent travels, my next assignment was to work on a Moscow guide book, which

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required much research and consultation. In its day, it was widely circulated. I was also assigned to editing an English grammar and reader for Russian students. One sentence in the text included the question, “Who was Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army during the Spanish Civil War?” The answer of course was “Trotsky.” When I failed either to delete or to denounce this act of sedition, this was cited as proof that underground Trotskyites had wormed their way into our organization. And I was responsible. My defense was that I saw no reason to cavil over a well-known historical fact. Fortunately, it occurred before the purge struck us.10 • • •

Meeting Nina • • • That fall I enrolled in a Moscow University extension class. The curriculum covered grammar, history, and politics, all well laced with Marxism-Leninism. In the class was my future wife, Nina Andreyevna Bondarenko. Just twenty-two years old, she already had a colorful biography. She was born on the Asian side of the Urals, in a village where her father, who was of Ukrainian-Cossack ancestry, was schoolmaster. Later the family moved to Orenberg. During the Spanish Civil War, when the city kept changing hands, her father narrowly escaped being shot when the Reds mistook his teacher’s uniform for that of a Tsarist officer. Nina had fine-spun blonde hair, blue-green eyes, rosy cheeks, and clear skin, with just a suggestion of Tatar in her cheekbones. Fresh out of secondary school at sweet seventeen, she was sent to run the school in a Cossack village near Orenburg. She soon won the villagers’ respect. During the compulsory collectivization drive, she helped the women set up vegetable gardens and earn some cash. After her father’s death in 1930, she became the head of the family consisting of her mother and three younger brothers. She studied first in Leningrad University and then in Moscow University, specializing in exact sciences and learning to read grammar. She even passed the exams for entry into a military academy but decided not to apply. She then got a job at the Comintern headquarters, but security was so tight that one could not 10. Ibid., 25–29.

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go to the bathroom unescorted. She was soon transferred to the publishing house and served as a secretary to its deputy director Ivar Lassy. At our evening classroom sessions she would get into heated arguments with the party-line instructor over the widespread rural disarray and suffering caused by collectivization, including the famine that killed millions, which officials sought to conceal. And I took her side. The trade union committee had given Nina a “social assignment,” the chore of entertaining a rather loose and aloof young American. For this worthy cause the committee provided her with movie tickets and, occasionally, theater seats. I first proposed to Nina in December 1934, but there were many hurdles. In a planned society, our marriage hardly stood in accordance with any plan. It certainly was not the plan of the university council, even though they had provided the movie tickets. Too late would they summon Nina to tell her that she was overdoing her assignment. There was also Nina’s family to consider. How would her marrying a foreigner affect the future of her three brothers? The eldest, Evgeny, was doing his two-year military service. And it would soon be the turn of the second one, Pyotr. The youngest, Alyosha, was still in school. All three had their careers at stake. A foreign family connection could prove a serious handicap. Nina’s mother, Anastasia Ivanovna, had a fairly good seasonal job as attendant of the cloakroom at Moscow University. She proudly recalled the occasions when she had served Krupskaya, Lenin’s widow, who even thanked her by name. It was Nina who brought the family from Orenburg to Moscow and wangled them a place to live. Like the vast majority of Moscow residents at that time, the five of them had a single room in a communal flat so small that two of her brothers had to sleep under the dining table. They had to share all facilities, kitchen, plumbing, telephone, and electricity, with five other families.11 • • • In her unpublished memoirs, Nina recorded her initial impression of her future husband: He surprised me, by being the opposite of what most Russians expected an American to be. He played no baseball, could not dance or ski or skate, and was equally bored by ballet and opera. But once we got over the language barrier, I became fascinated by how well he knew ancient and modern history and by his command of languages—Italian, French, Latin, 11. Ibid., 30–32.

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An Accidental Journalist and Greek. He had traveled to much in Europe and had lived in Italy. He promised that he would one day show me Rome, himself.12

Over time, as she struggled to support her family financially and maintain decent housing against increasing difficulties, Nina faced the inevitable reality of being involved with an American: My relationship with Ed was beginning to disturb me: I saw no future in it. We had different passports. He could never make a living in Russia. He had only a BA degree from Columbia and no professional skill. As for me, they would never let me leave Russia. I thought I should stop seeing him. Our next rendezvous was to be on one evening at Kusnetsky Most. I didn’t go; instead, I went to a nearby factory and accepted a job there as an apprentice, and started work the next day. I got used to getting up at 6 a.m., returning home exhausted and after supper going straight to bed. From chiseling metal parts, my hands were ruined by the tailings. Black dust got under my nails and would not come off even after hard scrubbing. I neglected my friends, and didn’t go to the movies or theatre. But I was determined to succeed in the job, to be an “Udarnitza,” i.e. one of the best. With such a recommendation, I figured I would stand a chance of being sent to the college, to get a degree with a grant from the factory. I worked really hard, without lunches, and refused to smoke in the lavatory. The other women helped me at first, but later were annoyed that I kept apart, and called me “vidvijenka,” a snob. Gradually, I got used to my new way of life, but one evening at supper time, I got a visitor at our apartment. “A man is asking to see you, Nina.” The man was Ed, in his short leather jacket and boots laced to the knee. From other rooms curious neighbors peered out, trying to make sense of his appearance. Hastily, I grabbed my coat and we went out. His visit to my apartment frightened me. During those times, visits from a foreigner could easily lead to one’s arrest. No one knew my address, even to this day I have no idea how he got it. Also, to this day, Ed has not forgiven me for keeping him waiting for an hour on a subzero windy day on Kusnetsky Most. I don’t recall how he convinced me that the factory was not the solution, but one thing I understood was that he would not leave me alone.13

12. Nina Stevens, memoirs, 74. 13. Ibid., 74–75.

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It is not possible to know exactly what Edmund Stevens wanted from Russia when he entered the country in 1934. Adventure, certainly. Was he seeking an opportunity to learn yet another language and to get to know the Soviet culture in general and its political “superiority” over Western capitalism in particular? He entered Moscow unimpressed by its appearance but eager all the same to contribute to Lenin’s great social experiment within the editing services of the Communist International. His first two years in Russia produced the fruits of his idealism—the exploration of a culture he’d admired from a distance, love and marriage and a job that tapped into his passion for writing, travel, and foreign languages. Soon enough, however, Edmund Stevens’s idealism would melt under the weight of harsh reality, a painful development, but one that would place him on the path to journalistic achievements and a Pulitzer Prize.

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2 Kirov’s Death and the Purge

Ed and Nina Stevens experienced their early years of marriage and parenthood against the dramatic backdrop of a blood-soaked Kremlin as Stalin went about conducting his Great Purge. Both Ed and his wife worked at the publishing house, as editor and secretary respectively, at a time when Stalin deported thousands of former Trotsky supporters into Siberian Gulags and conducted the outright slaughter of thousands of others. By the end of the purge, Stalin had eliminated nearly 70 percent of the Communist Party Central Committee and thousands of other Communist Party members. He also had killed most of the general staff of the Red Army and about half of its officer corps. According to Russian historian Rodney Carlisle, “more than 3.5 million people had been arrested and convicted of ‘counterrevolutionary activity’ during this period, and almost 800,000 had been executed.”1 In addition, the Communist Party lost nearly one million members during this period, and membership in Communist organizations worldwide dropped as foreign observers watched in horror as Stalin’s iron fist pounded terror into the heart of his own country. • • • Such was our relatively tranquil existence until December 1, 1934, when a shot was fired in Leningrad that altered the course of history and deeply affected our personal future and immediate safety. It felled 1. Rodney Carlisle, with James H. Lide, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Communism (Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002), 110. 45

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Sergei Mironovich Kirov, the Leningrad party chief and member of the Politburo. Early in 1934, some delegates from Kirov’s native Urals, presumably without consulting him, sought to align support for a move at the forthcoming party congress to unseat Stalin as party chief and replace him with Kirov, who was far more popular. Stalin got wind of the plan to dismiss him and promptly foiled it. In the aftermath, the “plotters” paid with their lives. In due course most of the remaining congress delegates also were liquidated. The Kirov assassination was cunningly contrived and carried out in cold-blooded cynicism. A schizophrenic party member named Leonid Nikolayev, who fancied a grudge against Kirov, was provided with a gun and was coaxed into shooting him. At the agreed time Kirov’s bodyguards were duly called away. Thereafter, Nikolayev was “caught” and charged with the killing and, without due process, his lips were forever sealed. The actual circumstances of Kirov’s assassination were not even partially aired in Russia until November of 1962 when KGB chief Alexander Shelepin told the Politburo that Stalin and his confederates—especially Molotov, Malenkov, and Kaganovich—used Kirov’s assassination to eliminate their rivals, including virtually the entire top military command, marshals and generals, as well as prominent political figures and intellectuals. After Shelepin had made his disclosures, the congress voted unanimously to remove Stalin’s body from the Lenin Mausoleum. The curtain thereupon fell on the subject, though further disclosures might have focused on the actual motives, shedding light on a skein of treacherous scheming and intrigue worthy of Ivan the Terrible. After Shelepin’s partial disclosures, Nikita Khrushchev, speaking then as party general secretary, stated, “Great efforts are still needed to find out who was actually responsible for Kirov’s death. The more we study the materials, the more questions arise. A thorough inquiry is now being made into the circumstances of this involved case.” Despite Khrushchev’s promise, hardly any more details came from official sources, and when Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev in October of 1964, the question of who personally plotted Kirov’s death was swept under the carpet. The phony investigation ordered by Stalin, which led to waves of arrests, was actually a cover-up, which could be termed a “blood gate.” The first to be sacrificed were the citizens of Leningrad: bourgeois elements, intellectuals, even party members were lumped together as “enemies of the people.” When the war came many who survived the purge were evacuated. Others died of hunger during the wartime blockade.

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From Leningrad, the purge spread gradually, like a cancer, to Moscow and elsewhere. It did not begin to have serious impact on the Comintern and publishing house until late autumn of 1936.2 • • •

Marriage to Nina In her memoirs, Nina Stevens wrote about her developing courtship with Edmund: Ed and I continued to see each other despite our differences. One spring day, as we walked by the Moscow River, just opposite the Kremlin, Ed turned to me and, without much passion, said, “I love you, Nina, and I wish we could get married.” I agreed. A few days later we went to ZAGS— the Office of the Civil Marriages Registration. We entered the door marked “Marriages” and for three rubles, got our license. (The opposite door performed divorces for five rubles.) To celebrate the occasion Ed took me to the nearest coffee shop on Gorky Street, ordered a bottle of champagne and drank it all by himself. For the time being, his relatives as well as mine were kept ignorant of our marriage.3

• • • After brief sojourns in fleabag rooming houses, we finally sublet a three-room flat from a family named Zilberstein, who were going south for the summer. We needed the extra room as my mother was coming from the States. Her unspoken hope was to dissuade me from marrying and urge me to return with her to the U.S. Alas, she arrived late. We were already wed. Nina was pregnant, and I was determined to stay until I could take her and the future child to America. The summer of 1935 was still calm in Moscow and the sublet flat convenient. But when summer ended and the Zilbersteins returned, we had nowhere to live. They brought court action to evict us, but the court ruled in our favor and entitled us to keep one room. However, the enmity generated was such that we sought ways of moving elsewhere. Fortunately, the publishing house was taking possession of a small block of flats built for its employees, and in the fall of 1935, Nina and I moved into one room of a four-room 2. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 40–42. 3. Nina Stevens, memoirs, 76.

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flat. The other tenants included a young couple, an English language secretary, and Chinese transients. We all shared a tiny kitchen and an even smaller washroom and toilet. It all would greatly complicate caring for a newborn infant, especially as there was no bath, only a shower in the basement, which we shared with all the other tenants according to schedule. We were on the second floor. Our room was fourteen square meters plus a small balcony.4 • • • When compared to the letters he wrote to his mother, Florence Ballance Stevens, from 1935 through 1937,5 Stevens’s memoirs understate the tension, fear, and despondency he and Nina experienced through this period. Moscow 6 December 1935 Dear Mother, I have delayed writing till now because I wanted to wait till I knew everything for certain. After having made all our plans to leave, it now appears that they will not permit Nina to travel in the present stage of pregnancy. I have been very much upset about it as I had made ready for everything and even left my job. However, the doctors all assure me that it is much safer to travel with a very young baby than with a woman in the final stages. I know, darling, what a disappointment it will be for you. I myself feel the same way, as I am more than ready to go home, however, there is one consolation. Having the child here will avoid expensive doctors’ and hospital bills, and the treatment of confinement cases here is the best of any place in the world. . . . . . . No matter how you look at it, the prospect in a difficult one. We have no place much to stay here and shall have pretty much to camp out until we leave, however, Nina is well and it looks like the baby will be a healthy one.

In a December 20, 1935, letter to Florence, Stevens wrote, “I have been spending most of my time since you left fussing about with the matter of getting away. Once we hear from Washington, everything will be all set now.”

4. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 42–43. 5. Edmund Stevens to Florence Ballance, from Moscow, December 6, 1935.

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Stevens’s letter of January 13, 1936, to his mother was more revealing: Dearest Mother, Six weeks have passed since your last letter. With the exception of your cable in answer to mine, I have heard nothing from you since we were forced to postpone our departure. I can only infer that you are offended with me and have, therefore, ceased to answer my letters. Under the circumstances I feel compelled to do what I did not do before for the sake of discretion: explain in a letter why we had to postpone our departure. Nina applied for permission to leave the country on a Soviet passport shortly after you left. This would have enabled her to apply directly for a visa and leave without further ado. The decision was postponed and postponed. Meanwhile, I spent my time doing all I could to hurry it up, never doubting that we should succeed. I even left my job. On Dec. 3, shortly before I wrote you, we were informed that the application had been turned down. It struck like a bolt from the blue. I was jobless, and we were roomless and . . . Nina was getting heavier and heavier. I shan’t dwell on everything we went through getting things straightened out, but there were weeks when I didn’t sleep. (Silberstein tried to throw us out into the street, he actually did move our things out, but they were put back by the militia—you can’t put people out on the street in the Soviet Union.) While I got my job back, to get a place to live was like trying to climb Everest or swim the Channel. We finally got a tiny room in a dingy old hotel and here we have been camping out—tomorrow we move again into a decent room. Meanwhile as the passport had fallen through we had to find other ways of managing about Nina. She has to give up her Soviet citizenship we discovered, and this she can only do when she receives the emigration visa from the States. It is a fairly simple matter and the usual way in such cases. As soon as we receive the visa (the rest is taken care of) provided the kid is all right, we can leave. Please (if you are offended) get over it. I have been through so much in the past few months that I can’t have you peeved and making matters complicated too. Believe me darlingest, the delay is not our fault. Let me hear from you. Your devoted son, Edmund

• • • Our son was born on January 21, 1936. I had made arrangements for Nina’s confinement at a special maternity house reserved for foreigners. But her labor started suddenly, after midnight. It was bitter cold,

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and there was no way to order a cab. Her pain was so acute that the sole alternative was a hospital two blocks away. I bundled her up, took her there, and banged on the door to get inside. The next day I learned by phone that she had given birth to a boy, but it was two weeks before I saw her again. When time came to discharge her, I was called to the hospital, and we walked home. I carried the baby who screamed healthily the whole way. Right after our son’s birth, I went to the American embassy to register him and assure his American citizenship. I had not had any previous dealings with the embassy. I introduced myself to a consulate officer, Charles Thayer, and explained my purpose. When he asked me what we had named the child I was stumped because Nina and I were at odds on the matter. At the time Nina was still a loyal Komsomolka, and if the baby proved a boy, she wanted to name him Vladimir, after Lenin, all the more because he was born on the anniversary of Lenin’s death. I was dead against it. Thayer got out a dictionary list of names, but I failed to settle on any of his suggestions. As we could not register the child without a name, Thayer proposed calling him Edmund Junior. I agreed. The papers were made out and signed irrevocably. When Nina learned of this, she was furious. She ignored the official name, and insisted on calling the baby “Vova,” nickname for Vladimir. It has stuck to him ever since.6 • • • In fact, Nina wrote in her memoirs that she thought Edmund was joking when he told her he had named the baby Edmund Jr. and that she did not speak to her husband for several days. She wrote, “Why not Ghengis Khan for that matter? I won’t ever call him Edmund. One in the family is more than I can bear.”7 • • • Anyone seen entering a foreign embassy, especially the American embassy, was sure to be reported. As soon as I took off from the embassy compound, I was accosted by a flatfoot. He flashed his badge and asked my identity and the purpose of my visit. Despite my plausible answers, in the gradually thickening atmosphere, this must have provided an added cloud of suspicion. 8 • • • 6. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 44. 7. Nina Stevens, memoirs, 81. 8. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 45.

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In a February 9, 1936, letter to his mother, Stevens wrote, “I received the lawyer’s letter. The consulate has told me I must write to Riga as the papers will be sent from there. It seems a rather round-about way of doing it. You may be sure, however, that I shall do all that is necessary and as fast as I can. I shall let you know as soon as anything definite develops.” But when Stevens wrote again to his mother on February 27, he was still waiting to hear from the consulate: In a day or so I shall call at the consul here, to have the baby’s photo attached to my passport. I shall then make further inquiries. It may be I shall have to make a trip to Riga but if possible I should like to avoid it. . . . Once we have the entry visa there will be no further trouble, of that I can assure you, as I have looked in to the matter from all sides, however, I am at present engaged in an important piece of work which will keep me busy until the middle of April and I have been asked to see it through. The truth is that now the worst is over. I think it is best anyway to wait till it gets warmer and the baby is a bit sturdier, and we have the feeling that once we leave we shall be gone a long time.

• • • In the summer of 1936, we rented a room in a peasant’s house in Tsaritsino, a pleasant village outside Moscow, where the ruins of an unfinished palace intended for Catherine the Great provided a scenic background. Living in the country, we had fresh milk for Vova, plus plenty of vegetables and fresh fruit. Nearby there was a lake where we used to go swimming and fishing.9 • • •

The Purge Hits the Comintern • • • Toward the end of the summer, the mosquitoes that had always been a problem became so numerous and voracious that we packed up and returned to our quarters on the publishing house block on Kapelsky Lane. I resumed my editorial chores. But as time passed it seemed like doomsday was nearing and things began to happen. I attended several stormy sessions of the Comintern foreign staff when speaker after 9. Ibid.

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speaker would trade accusations, seeking to save their own skin by incriminating others. Some were led away as they stepped down from the podium. By January 1937 the contagion reached the publishing house. A three-man commission was installed in the personnel department to go through the files with a fine tooth comb. They must have begun at the top because the first heads to roll were those of Wendt, the German-born head of the entire publishing house, and Lassy and Talmy, who oversaw the English section. Wendt and Talmy were picked up soon afterward, Lassy from the Hotel Luxe, where many noted foreign Communists resided, among them in earlier days the Americans John Reed and Bill Haywood. Their ashes were sealed behind the Kremlin wall, an honor unshared by Lassy. He lived in the Luxe with Zina, his Karelian wife, and small daughter. Talmy vanished on his way home from work. He had lived with his wife and son in our Kapelsky block. Thereafter other members of our section started vanishing. Late one night we were awakened by loud pounding on the door of the flat right across the landing from ours, followed by screams. When I looked out to see what the trouble was, a guard curtly ordered me back. The flat was occupied by a German working in the publishing house and his wife and two children. They were only given time to dress before being hustled off. Soon afterward, our flat became a target. The door to our room was strategically situated between the entrance and the telephone on the hall wall. Whenever the doorbell rang around 2 a.m., I was the one to get up and admit the blue capped NKVD guards. They were young cadets, “Kursanti,” who promptly phoned for instructions. Their quarry in our flat was always the Chinese transients. They would take away one or several, who in due course would be replaced by another batch, who in turn would be carted off. I recall one occasion when the guards came for a young Chinese who had gone to spend the night with a girlfriend. The other tenants, a Russian Jewish couple who had nothing to do with the publishing house, and a Bronx secretary, Betty Pollack, were never bothered. But almost every day my mother-in-law, Anastasia Ivanovna, would phone to ask Nina whether I was still around. With every passing day (or night) there were more and more vacancies in the once crowded block. In the publishing house what social life there had been was centered around the lunch room, where in addition to the buffet there was a piano. Trade union meetings were held there. Besides shop talk, there was cautious trading of political news and rumors, mostly about the purge and the latest arrests. There were even feeble attempts at gayety.

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Members of what was left of the English section would gather around the piano and bravely intone: Banker and boss hate the red Soviet star. Gladly they’d build a new throne for the Tsar. But from the steppes to the dark British sea, Lenin’s red army brings victory.

One song that seemed most appropriate to me went, “Whirlwinds of danger are raging ‘round us. O’erwhelming forces assail. . .” Our two best pianists were Russian women from accounts, and they practiced together for hours. Their favorite theme was “The Internationale,” which at the time was also the official Soviet national anthem. Their apparent zeal to perfect their rendition seemed entirely praiseworthy and above suspicion, until one day some sharp-eared informer reported that they were engaged in composing an irreverent parody of the anthem. Such blasphemy was considered akin to treason, and we never saw the “culprits” again. After registering our son’s birth, I visited the embassy from time to time. Sensing an urgent need for protection as the purge intensified, I increased my diplomatic contacts even though after every visit, I was stopped and questioned by a flatfoot. I was especially anxious to press for permission for Nina and Vova to leave the country. So far, our efforts had been ineffective. Requests for Soviet foreign travel documents were repeatedly turned down, as were her applications for permission to renounce Soviet citizenship.10 • • • Stevens wrote to his mother a series of letters during this period describing his predicament: 1 September 1937 Dear Mother, I keep delaying writing because from day to day I keep expecting to hear something. It’s as though we were chasing the will-o’-the-wisp. I never imagined that matters would drag through the summer, yet here we are, on the threshold of another Moscow winter and still no word. It is the strangest position that I have ever been in. (As far as the baby. . . .) the uncertainty of our plans has so far affected him not at all. The person who is hardest hit is Nina, since she is neither 10. Ibid., 46–49.

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An Accidental Journalist working nor going to school and so feels completely cut off from the outer world. This feeling is especially unbearable in this country where everyone is doing something, developing and going ahead. In our present circumstances, however, it is impossible for her to start anything and she feels terribly out of things. I have not urged the matter of your coming over here, since I kept assuming that our papers would come through. Now, however, I see no harm in your applying for a visa. Even now I don’t suppose it will come through before our papers do, but there is nothing wrong in trying. 7 October 1937 Dearest Mother, I enclose the paper to be presented at the Soviet consulate in applying for an entrance visa. Nina’s matter appears to have reached a deadlock . . . and under the circumstances, I should like to have you come as soon as it can be arranged. 9 October 1937 Dearest Mother, Since writing the above we have received a rather sickening bit of news. Nina’s application to renounce Soviet citizenship, after pending for fourteen months, has been refused. Technically we can still appeal the decision . . . however, in order to get the reversal we must bring some new factors to bear. I have been promised help but I do not know whether it will be strong enough or insistent enough. If only Washington would try to work out some form of agreement in such cases. The only thing that you might do would be to enlist the president’s sympathy. He is most popular here, especially after the splendid Chicago speech.

• • • Our dilemma seemed aggravated, when one spring morning in 1937, while at work, I had a call from personnel, where the special three-man commission had been checking the records of every employee. For obvious reasons they distanced themselves by moving to another building. I was hardly surprised when the inquisitors asked what I was working on. After I told them, they ordered me to wrap it up and collect what was owed me. I was fired. We were almost kopekless, and my residence permit was only valid for one month.11 • • • 11. Ibid., 51.

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In her memoirs, Nina records her own anxiety about the loss of her husband’s job: After my maternity leave I returned to my job with Lassy in the publishing house. The baby had to be fed at lunch time. Taking two street cars I would hurry to and from the office, often getting on or jumping off a moving street car. Back home I would feel tired and nervous, worrying about the baby, who was beginning to lose weight. “You won’t have enough milk for him, better put him on the bottle,” my doctor said. I decided he was right. I hired a young peasant girl as a mother’s help, but I had to count my pennies. My salary was about 190–200 rubles at the most. The girl cost about 18 rubles, the room was the same, and then chicken, fruit, milk for the baby, not to mention Ed’s good appetite. Once I got home late and tired. My help was away for the weekend. “Is there anything to eat in the house?” I asked Ed. “I guess not. I ate what was left, which wasn’t much,” was his reply. “You could think of going out to get some groceries.” “How? I have no money.” My mother came and lent us a ruble for a loaf of bread and a pint of milk.12

• • • We must have had a guardian angel, in the likeness of Charlie Thayer. When I consulted him, he advised me to contact Spencer Williams, the representative of the American-Soviet Chamber of Commerce, an outfit sponsored with Soviet approval by the Chase Bank. Williams promptly hired me as his assistant, and our main assignment consisted of gathering information for a monthly report on the Soviet economy, which was mailed to firms and businessmen for a modest membership fee. I also was called on to entertain visitors. Williams was also accredited as correspondent for two British newspapers, the London Daily Herald and the Manchester Guardian. In order to provide me with a formal status, he arranged to transfer his Manchester Guardian accreditation to me, with the approval of the foreign affairs commissariat press department.13 • • •

12. Nina Stevens, memoirs, 81. 13. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 52.

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Reporting from Moscow What began for Stevens as an act of financial survival would place him in a unique cadre of international journalists of that era—reporters trying to articulate and contextualize the social and political realities inside mysterious Communist Russia, a country without any history of a free press. In 1904—a full thirty years before Stevens arrived in Moscow—Associated Press correspondent Melville Stone successfully negotiated what would be a very short-lived, open-access agreement with Czar Nicholas.14 That agreement died quickly as Russian unrest brought about subjugation of the national press and foreign correspondents alike. Controlling the media also proved to be an effective strategy when the Bolsheviks ousted the government in 1917. Russian cultural historian James von Geldern summarizes the Bolsheviks’ successful use of newspapers against the Czarist regime: The Bolsheviks were journalists long before they were state leaders, and they never forgot the impact of a well-aimed message. Newspapers were the lifeline of the underground party. Formative ideological and political debates were conducted in them; reporters and deliverers evolved into party cadres; and readers became rank-and-file supporters. Yet the revolutionaries knew that the same weapons could be used against them—by newspapermen, vaudevillians, and others. Lenin and Trotsky had been lampooned: horns were drawn sprouting from their heads and barbed tails from their rears, and they were accused of treason, a sting they never forgot. When they took power, they protected themselves by denying the opposition access to public opinion; printing presses, theatres, movie houses were all eventually confiscated and placed under state monopoly. The Bolsheviks considered these measures necessary and just. Soviet authorities were never ashamed of their monopoly on culture. They considered the policy progressive. Culture was a weapon of class struggle, available to acquaint people with the socialist program. Allowing the enemy access to mass media would have seemed criminally stupid, and neglecting propaganda a disservice to the people. To debate the ethics of censorship was a waste of time; the Bolsheviks’ concern was to mold popular values, and they needed a way to reach the masses, reflect the wishes of the state, and censure alien ideals.15 14. Emery, On the Front Lines, 30. 15. Von Geldern and Richard Stites, Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917–1953, i.

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Von Geldern contextualizes the very culture of media manipulation and censorship that defined Soviet Communism. He also, however, brings to light the greatest irony about Edmund Stevens’s professional life in Russia: the young idealist entered the country to work for the Publishing Cooperative of Foreign Workers—an organization designed specifically to produce the materials that the Bolsheviks used to reach the masses. When Stalin’s purge forced the closing of the publishing house and Stevens lost his job, he became an independent journalist, compelled to do battle with that same fierce system, which, according to von Geldern, “demanded that people not just say the necessary things, but also think them in private.”16 Journalism historian Michael Emery observed the specific challenges of foreign correspondents working in 1930s Stalinist Russia: To what extent did they manage to tell of the great collectivization of Russian farms, of the removal of Stalin’s final opponents in the wake of this massive social rearrangement, and of the near consolidation of power by the dictator? Did they focus on Stalin? Did they link collectivization with the growth of Stalin’s influence, or was this a separate story? Did they include details of struggle against religion and civil rights in general? And while telling of harshness in Russia, did they at the same time convey an understanding of the Russian citizen and of why all this was happening? Facts were needed, but so was interpretation. This was a strange situation for the writers. Some came and liked Moscow, and others could not wait to get back to Paris, London, or Vienna—anyplace but that dark, cold, and suspicious city.17

Emery defined the complex relationship between journalists in Russia and the harsh realities and often dangerous subjects they had to tackle. Stevens clearly fell within the first group—those who went to Moscow and were able to thrive—and his first professional reporting relationship was with the Manchester Guardian, which was known for its strongly interpretive journalistic style. His first major assignment was the third round of Stalin’s show trial, which was designed to eliminate men Stalin believed threatened his dictatorial powers. The most prominent defendants included Nikolai Bukharin, the former head of the Comintern and a member of the Politburo; Nikolai Krestinsky, the former secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee; and Alexei 16. Ibid., iii. 17. Emery, On the Front Lines, 33–34.

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Rykov, a former member of the Politburo and the man who headed the Soviet government after Lenin’s death.18

The Third Treason Trial • • • With this change in my status, I was able to attend the third of the famous treason trials, or the so-called Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites. The twenty-one accused included men who like Bukharin had been at the pinnacle of power. The trial lasted from March 2 to March 12, 1938, ten days that shook the Soviet Union, if not the world. The venue was the House of Unions, once the club of the nobility. The main auditorium is the palatial white marble hall of columns, used for festive occasions and state funerals. The treason trials were held in a hall that seated about six hundred and was located above the main auditorium. The twenty-one accused sat on a bench on the stage, facing the prosecutor in his separate box. At either corner behind the stage were passages through which the accused were led in and out. A small balcony on one side was curtained off so that anyone inside would not be visible. Some sharpeyed observers claimed they detected pipe smoke curling from the top, feeding the rumor that Stalin sometimes slipped in there through a secret passage. Accredited diplomats and correspondents were admitted to the building through a side entrance, after their credentials were checked. A broad stairway led to the trial hall entrance. Halfway up was a mezzanine lounge with a buffet and tables where one could deposit notebooks and typewriters and order drinks. The foreign observers were constantly engaged in arguments over the proceedings. The main issue was credibility, namely, how could the accused—men of considerable intellectual stature who were aware that they were doomed, regardless of what they did or did not admit—calmly confirm the far-fetched charges against them? We ventured different theories. It was almost like an academic seminar, instead of a matter of life and death. Hypnosis, drugs, brainwashing, and torture were not ruled out, but the main reason for their compliance probably was to shield their kin from retribution by plea-bargaining with the prosecutor. Food for reflection, if not bewilderment, was provided by Krestinsky, who on the opening day threw the court into confusion by denying the 18. Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes, 247.

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charges against him as trumped up and affirming his innocence and full loyalty to the party. He was thus the only accused to deny his guilt. But on the morrow, he revoked this claim and, rather mechanically, reaffirmed his guilt. There appeared no concrete evidence that any of the accused had been subject to some form of physical or mental coercion. Presumably the scripts had been composed and memorized in months of rehearsing. Eighteen of the accused were sentenced to be shot. The other three were given twenty-year prison sentences. Though they were long ago due for release, there has never been any word of their fate. The same holds true for the once-famous journalist Karl Radek, given ten years at the 1937 treason trial. The American ambassador, Joseph Davies, a brilliant corporation lawyer, but ignorant of the Byzantine side of Kremlin politics, bought the official version of the defendants’ guilt at face value. This was mirrored in his reports to Washington. His young aide and interpreter, and future ambassador to Moscow, Charles Bohlen, managed a more balanced assessment. Matching the trial were the 1937 proceedings against the top military brass, starting with Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but including other marshals, generals, and their subordinates—who were executed without any public hearing. The virtual decapitation of the Soviet high command, little more than three years before Hitler invaded, no doubt cost millions of Russian lives. Besides that, thousands of troops were needlessly sacrificed to military error in the winter of 1939–1940 against Finland. The purge targeted the upper echelons of Soviet society. The masses of workers and peasants were largely indifferent and unaware of its extent and significance. By midyear 1938, the purge had slackened off, and that summer I took an added job as an agent for Cunard White Star Lines. It mainly involved arranging ship passage to America via England for diplomats, state officials, and delegations, both Soviet and foreign. Tourists and private travelers were few and far between. There was a bulky, virtually dormant file of applications from people—like Nina—hoping to emigrate, mainly to the U.S., including letters from relatives and friends, guaranteeing money for their passage. Most letters were several years old. All this time, we had been living in the same small room in the communal flat on Kapelsky Lane. Then one day in the fall of 1938, the New York Herald Tribune correspondent Joe Barnes telephoned that he was being recalled and said that the house he and his family had been living in might become available. It actually consisted of a rambling, one-story log cabin, an urbanized version of a peasant izba that was divided into

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two parts, each with its separate entrance. Barnes said that he could get the owner, Nikolai Timofeyev, to transfer his lease to us, provided we agreed to buy some of the furniture and whatever else Timofeyev wished to discard. But the amount he wanted seemed to us far too exorbitant, and the deal fell through. Soon after the Barneses left Timofeyev telephoned and asked if we were still interested. He said he no longer wanted to lease but sell the title outright. We figured that after our cramped quarters, this would be almost Heaven, especially as there was a flower garden in front and a large apple orchard in back. After bargaining over the price and borrowing from affluent friends, we managed to scrape together a down payment. Following repeated rejections of our applications for exit visas, we were resigned to an indefinite stay and were determined to make the best of it. Accordingly we purchased the essentials and moved in. The district was known as “Za Moskvarechie,” a kind of Moskva River “Left Bank” that retained its historic color and allure. The name of our street, “Zatsepa,”—literally, hook onto—dated from the time when the government exacted customs duty on certain products brought into Moscow on wagons ostensibly loaded only with hay. Those suspected of smuggling were sidetracked to Zatsepa, where customs inspectors poked into the hay with hooked staves and pulled out the contraband. In the next block to our izba, a “sobering up” station did a lively business. Conveniently located next door was a beer hall, where many customers were in the habit of spiking their beer with vodka. Further down the street, across from a railway station, was an open-air free market, so-called not because anything was given away free, but because it was not controlled by the state and the produce was sold privately at higher prices and was of better quality than in the state shops. Peasants of all ages brought their sacks and bundles and displayed their vegetables, fruit, and meat in the stalls. In season the market was always a treat. After the lean winter came a sudden abundance of fruit and vegetables straight from the countryside, fresher and tastier than the aseptic produce on the shelves of American supermarkets. Generals’ wives arrived in chauffeur-driven cars, with baskets of strawberries from their dachas, and squatted or stood by the stalls in their diamonds, cheek by jowl with their peasant competition. The atmosphere was cheerful, and the bargaining, though lively, was seldom abusive. In total contrast to our country setting was our social life. We had become integrated in the foreign colony, which offered a continuous round of cocktail parties and dinners, but always with the same peo-

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ple. In that day the diplomatic, business, and press colonies were but a tiny fraction of what they are now. The purge was over, but social contacts between Russians and “bourgeois” foreigners were mainly limited to formal occasions, and this inhibited our contacts, even though Nina was still a Soviet citizen. American ambassador Joseph Davies and his charming wife, Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress of the Post Toasties and Birds Eye Frozen Foods millions, entertained lavishly in that otherwise dull period. Their home was the Spaso House, a palatial mansion that became the ambassador’s residence when the U.S. and Russia established diplomatic relations and William C. Bullitt arrived in Moscow in March 1934. Spaso House also became famous for its lavish parties, hilariously described by Charles Thayer of the embassy staff in his book Bears in the Caviar. In September 1938, Ambassador Davies was ordered transferred from the world’s largest country to one of the smallest, Belgium. He had shown an active interest in my efforts to get permission for my wife and son to emigrate and was aware of my many refusals. A farewell ball for the Davieses, hosted by people’s foreign commissar, Maxim Litvinov, was held in the glittering setting of the palatial Spiridonovka mansion, the former residence of Savva Mamontov, one of Russia’s outstanding patrons of the arts at the turn of the century. Nina and I were among the invited, who also included composer Sergei Prokofiev and writer Alexei Tolstoi, and many top Soviet diplomats, senior members of the diplomatic corps, ambassadors, military attachés in the resplendent dress uniforms of nations that, in less than a year, would be at war with one another. We enjoyed a sumptuous dinner with the caviar piled high and delicacies not seen since the Tsar’s receptions. Following the toasts, the tables were removed, the band tuned up, and couples swirled to the strains of waltzes and polkas. Ambassador Davies invited Nina to dance. When the music stopped, he took her arm and led her to Litvinov. He beckoned me over and before the entire assemblage audibly announced, “I have good news for you, Ed. The Commissar has promised me that he will arrange exit visas for you and your son.” Litvinov nodded assent, although his facial expression was as if he had bitten a rather sour lemon. However, he had the grace to invite Nina to dance. Thereafter, the party dissolved into rounds of toasts and congratulations for the two of us. After the Davieses left for Brussels, months passed without any follow-up. I telephoned Litvinov numerous times to remind him of his promise. He shrugged me off by telling

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me to get in touch with Weinberg, one of his aides, who was a dead end. The admirable American chargé, Alexander Kirk, prodded Litvinov on numerous occasions, but Litvinov was having his own problems. When Molotov replaced him as foreign commissar, we feared we would be stuck in Moscow indefinitely. Meanwhile Nina went about making our izba more habitable, also tending the garden. Spring came, the apple trees blossomed, and my mother was bringing us a car. The day she was to set sail, a friend of Nina’s—a woman married to an absent American—excitedly called to say she had been notified that her visa had been approved. I immediately phoned the visa department to ask about our application. The answer was, yes, it had been approved. But they had not yet managed to advise us because they only had our old address. I cabled my mother just in time. She managed to unpack and have the car off-loaded from the Queen Mary. Nina went to the American embassy, which duly provided her with an affidavit red seal and ribbon, stating she was wed to an American citizen and wished to emigrate together with her threeyear-old son. The Soviet visa office duly stapled Nina’s and Vova’s exit visas to the affidavit. Then three years old, Vova was already articulate, not just in Russian, but also in English, and could interpret for his mother, as he was destined to do when they reached America. He already showed an aptitude for drawing and peddled around the neighborhood in a kiddy car. He became the mascot for Russians who associated with the foreign colony. We immediately took steps to legally insure Anastasia Ivanovna’s (Nina’s mother) tenancy in the house. Ironically, the final documents for our house ownership were only signed a few days before our departure. I also had to wind up affairs with Cunard White Star. I booked air passage to Riga, because the American embassy in Moscow was not authorized to issue immigrant visas. That had to go through the embassy at Riga, capital of a still-independent Latvia. Mirabile dictum, we finally had made it. At customs we had nothing to declare, just Vova and a single suitcase, almost empty. Nina was naturally excited; not only was she leaving the USSR for the first time, but this was also her first airplane flight. Riga was then known as the Paris of the Baltic. There were many fine shops with a lavishness of consumer goods and edibles of every description, lilacs blooming in the parks, fine restaurants, and luxury hotels. To Nina it was something out of a fairy tale. We were welcomed at the Hotel Rome. During the war it served as staff headquarters for the Nazis when

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they occupied the country, and they blew it all up when they retreated in 1944. It took three days to complete the immigration formalities, during which we went on an eating and shopping spree. Next, we flew to London, which, to Nina, seemed cold and alien in comparison. In Riga practically everyone spoke Russian. Now for the first time she was surrounded by people who did not know her language. Next we went by train to Liverpool, and as I was still an employee of the Cunard White Star, we were given free passage to New York on the maiden voyage of the SS Mauritania. My final act as Cunard representative was to book passage for the Red Army Chorus to go to the 1939 World’s Fair at Lake Success on Long Island. But when they had flown as far as England, instead of embarking for New York, they waited in London for two weeks and were then ordered to return home because of the worsening world situation.19 • • • In a matter of months, Edmund Stevens transformed from a man virtually paralyzed with fear for his family’s survival to a working journalist covering one of Russia’s historic treason trials. In one scene, we find him out of food and money in his tiny, drafty, crowded flat having to borrow a ruble from his mother-in-law to buy bread and milk for the baby. In another, he and Nina are eating caviar in the U.S. ambassador’s palatial mansion and receiving from the ambassador himself the promise of an exit visa. Surviving hardship—the purge, the front lines of World War II—followed by dinner and adventure with the world’s most powerful—Davies, Haile Selassie, Winston Churchill: this pattern repeated itself throughout his career. Equally important, Stevens’s life reflected the nature of international events in the late 1930s—major political shifts were changing the world. His life was upended in Russia, and he and Nina brought their son to America to safety and stability. The lives of millions of citizens—especially in Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Russia, and Latvia—were upended as well, but, unlike Edmund Stevens, they could not retreat an ocean away in safety. Instead they became refugees, often on their own soil. But Stevens would not choose the safe domesticity of the United States. Soon he’d dedicate his work to chronicling the fall of the dominoes, the small, unprotected nations of Europe.

19. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 53–67.

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Part 2 Covering World War II

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3 Russia and Germany against the Baltics, Norway, and Finland

In June 1939, the Stevens family arrived in New York the city he had left just five years earlier to begin his work in Moscow. Edmund, Nina, and Vova moved in with Edmund’s mother and aunt, who had two apartments on a cross street between 7th and 8th avenues. By Russian standards, the Stevens family was now living in luxury. Each apartment had a living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. Nina wrote in her memoirs, “The smaller of the two apartments belonged to Aunt-Harriet, which she vacated for us. She moved in quite happily into the Fifth Avenue Hotel in nearby Washington Square, which was within her means. I liked the place: my window overlooked a corner which used to be called ‘Bohemian’ because many of the buildings resembled Parisian houses.”1 Ed Stevens’s papers included a photo of him and Nina at the World’s Fair in New York, July 10, 1939, but their time together as a family would be short-lived. In their separate memoirs, Edmund and Nina differ significantly regarding the possibility of his returning immediately to Europe. Edmund’s references—“intending to return to Moscow to settle my affairs” and “as I wanted to continue newspaper work”—seem understated considering he raced to the front lines as a working war correspondent at the first opportunity. Nina’s account seems closer to the truth: 1. Nina Stevens, memoirs, 91. 67

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An Accidental Journalist After only two weeks with the family, I felt that Ed was jittery. He was anxious to take off back to Europe. He went under the pretext that he had to close the British office of the “Cunard White Star Line” for which he had worked in Moscow. “Why don’t you first find some kind of job here?” I suggested, but Ed was reluctant and left having done nothing about his future. I was under the impression he would come right back, but I was to be proved too optimistic. He left before I had time to contemplate my rather awkward situation in the family, where I was tolerated principally because of my son, Vova, to whom both ladies had become very attached. Otherwise, I was completely dependent on them, until Ed reappeared.2

Nina and Vova would not see Edmund again for more than two years. In the meantime, Edmund prepared to play the unique role of international correspondent at a very significant point in the history of the world press, its relationship with world leaders, and its ability to aid the conditions of humanity throughout the globe. As a journalist and a historian Robert W. Desmond observes in Tides of War: Hope prevailed among millions following World War I that the conflict’s hard lessons might induce the peoples of the earth to cast their weight upon the side of reason, and so assure permanent peace and well-being for all generations to come. Added hope rested in the coincidental appearance of what seemed a mature press organization in many lands, supplemented by a new miracle of radio, to provide a public understanding of current events beyond anything previously possible. A growth of educational systems, allied with the media of information, further promised a potential end to illiteracy and poverty. These hopes and expectations of the early 1920s were to prove sadly naive, as history now makes clear. The fears and personal aspirations of some in positions of power undid the good purposes of others. Economic events and political ideologies also had so altered the complexion of the world by 1930 as to lead almost inevitably to conflicts, to measures thwarting constructive procedures, and to limiting the effectiveness of the media in presenting substantial information about matters of significance.3

Desmond describes “a maturing press,” one that is able to educate, to raise up the oppressed, and to help humanity find a better path for its 2. Ibid., 93. 3. Desmond, Tides of War, 3.

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own peaceful development. (It should be noted that these were also the characteristics that motivated Stevens, and many other 1920s-1930s intellectuals, to embrace Communism initially—and motivated him right into the Comintern’s employment.) But while Desmond draws the broader, philosophical ideal of journalism’s possible role in world events, the average war correspondent focused much more on the practical elements of getting as close to the battle as possible and observing as much as possible, surviving the environment, and filing the story quickly and ahead of military censors before scurrying into the next battle. And as the war clouds darkened over Europe, reporters found plenty to write about. The 1930s were a decade of turmoil worldwide. The United States struggled to climb out of the Great Depression. Japanese forces invaded Manchuria in 1931, in what historians identify as the unquestioned beginning of World War II. Italian Fascists invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia) in 1935. The Spanish Civil War began in 1936, and its brutality continued three years, providing a testing ground for the weapons that the Fascists, Nazis, and Communists would employ fully in World War II.

Stevens the War Correspondent Onto this remarkable stage stepped Edmund Stevens, possessed of wanderlust, fluent in four languages, resourceful enough to survive Stalin’s purge but totally untested as a war correspondent. In fact, he had never been employed as a permanent, full-time journalist for any newspaper or wire service, having worked only as a contributor for the Monitor out of Moscow. Yet he proved quickly that he possessed the best characteristics of a war reporter: he was able to get to the front, survive the environment, get the story, and get out ahead of enemy fire and incoming censors. • • • We had left Moscow in such a haste, that I had left my business affairs hanging, hoping to go back to wind things up. We still owned the house, and many of our personal belongings were still there. After two weeks in the U.S., I left Nina and our son with my mother and aunt in New York, intending to return to Moscow to settle my affairs. I made it as far as Liverpool on the Queen Mary to discuss matters with Cunard White Star. We were scheduled to provide passage for the Red Army Chorus to the World’s Fair at Lake Success on Long Island. I had completed the

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An Accidental Journalist

arrangements, and the thirty members of the chorus arrived in England, en route. But as the war clouds gathered, the Soviet authorities backed off, and after cooling their heels in England for two weeks, instead of embarking for New York, the chorus flew home. About then I was told that my return visa to the Soviet Union had been cancelled without any reason given. There I was stuck. But after consultation with Cunard White Star, it was decided that I should proceed to Riga to try to straighten things out with Moscow from there, where communications with Moscow were easier and where our main office for northeastern Europe was located. As I wanted to continue newspaper work, I called on Mallory Brown, then head of the London bureau of the Christian Science Monitor, who suggested that if I ran across anything newsworthy, I could airmail it to him.4 • • • Erwin Canham wrote, “So he [Stevens] knocked at The Monitor’s door to say he was soon to visit the Baltic States of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. He inquired if the paper could use some copy from these infrequently visited nations. Mallory Browne, then in charge in London, asked the blond, pink-cheeked young American to send in his copy.”5 Stevens arrived in the Baltics virtually at the same time as the Russian troops. In fact, his first article appeared October 4, 1939. Did Stevens head toward the Baltics with hopes to return to Moscow to finish up his business affairs? Did he sense that with the invasion of Poland, the Soviets would soon claim another soft target in the form of Latvia? Journalism historian Joseph Mathews observes that of the approximately one hundred neutral reporters who flooded Berlin during this period, few found real news to report. Instead, it was the traveling correspondents—like Stevens—who consistently produced more stories than did their army-accredited colleagues.6 Stevens got ahead of the fighting units on at least three occasions—in Finland, Greece, and Romania—ample evidence of his uncanny determination to claim a front-row, center seat for the unfolding drama. This leads one to believe that when he headed into the Baltics in September 1939, he was not disappointed when Russia refused to issue him a new visa to enter Moscow. 4. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 68–69. 5. Canham, Commitment to Freedom, 299. 6. Mathews, Reporting the Wars, 181.

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Given the events unfolding throughout Europe and Russia in the final months of 1939—events precipitated by the secret Nazi-Soviet pact to conquer and split the spoils of Eastern Europe—and Stevens’s determination to be in the center of the battle, he most certainly would run across something newsworthy. On August 23, 1939, Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) that would give the Soviets Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, and eastern Poland. As Desmond summarized, “Coming so unexpectedly and marking so complete a reversal of Nazi Germany’s anti-Soviet propaganda, the Communazi pacts, as some called them, were promptly recognized as providing assurance to both signators that they might proceed with their own military plans, each without interference by the other. Conclusion of the treaties was followed almost immediately by a reassertion of German demands upon Poland.”7 Within days, the intention of the pact—if not the literal words—were made clear as Germany and Russia invaded separate regions of Poland while Britain and France declared war on Hitler on September 1, 1939. Norway, Finland, the United States, and Switzerland declared their intentions to remain neutral. Stalin began almost immediate “negotiations” with Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the effects of which Edmund Stevens would witness firsthand. • • • On a sunny morning of September 1, I boarded a crowded plane at Croydon Airport. When the plane touched down in Amsterdam, we were told that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had declared war on Germany while we were aloft. Nevertheless, the plane took off and flew on to its destination, Copenhagen, without incident, though part of the way we must have flown through German airspace. From Copenhagen I took the train to Stockholm. On the train I met members of the Polish embassy staff from Berlin, including the ambassador. They didn’t know where they were headed as the Germans were already bombing Warsaw. From Stockholm I flew to Riga. The plane was full of Latvian passengers homeward bound. They kept saying, “Thank God, we’re safely out of it.” Little did they know what was in store for them. In Riga itself nothing seemed changed since June, the same sparkle, abundance of consumer goods, and delicious food. The nightclubs were 7. Desmond, Tides of War, 412.

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thronged, the bands played swing music, and the baritones sang “Thanks for the Memories” and “J’Attendrai.” But beneath the surface normality one could instinctively feel the tension. President Ulamis of the tiny country was under growing pressure from two sides: the Germans and the Soviets. Hitler had forced an agreement on him for the wholesale transfer to the Reich of the Baltic Germans. For centuries they had constituted a substantial and prosperous minority of the population. But now they were being evacuated shipload after shipload. Theoretically, it was voluntary, but in practice they were told it was wise to get out as the Russians would soon be taking over. This warning became more convincing when the Soviets forced the government to accept the stationing of a Soviet military garrison in Riga. All of this was quite newsworthy, and accordingly I started phoning and filing to the Monitor through Mallory Brown.8 • • •

Latvia and Lithuania Fall Stevens spent his first month as a correspondent traveling between Riga and Kaunas to chronicle the movements of the Russian troops into Latvia and Lithuania and the German evacuation of the region. Canham wrote, He watched the Russian garrisons enter the little nations along the Baltic’s eastern shore, and the Baltic Germans depart under Hitler’s orders. His Baltic States dispatches to the Monitor are full of spoken and unspoken pathos. They begin on October 4, 1939, when Moscow was still promising neutrality to its little neighbors. They end a few weeks later as the Russians use Estonia as one of their jumping-off places to attack Finland. He wrote other Baltic articles in 1940 when full Soviet absorption of these tragic nations took place.9

In his very first dispatches, Stevens demonstrated his ability to articulate the greater meaning behind the unfolding events and to describe them with precision for a world audience. His first article, “Baltic States Electrified by Russia’s Strategic Plays,” was published October 4, 1939, from Riga: 8. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 69–70. 9. Canham, Commitment to Freedom, 300.

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Threat of Russian expansion once again faces the Baltic States— Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The balance of power which had obtained in Europe since the Versailles Treaty is shattered and with it is destroyed the narrow margin of security of these little nations reconstituted from the old Russian Empire and perched precariously between the Baltic Sea, the Soviet Union, and Germany. A recent cartoon in Krokidil, Soviet humorous weekly, shows a Red soldier buttoning his leather coat with a large button labeled Poland; on the ground are strewn three other smaller buttons marked Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. When asked why he does not sew on the other buttons, the soldier replies, “Just wait a bit, and they’ll sew themselves on.”10

One week later, in a story titled, “Baltic Epic Written by Exodus of Germans,” he wrote, The exodus of Germans from Latvia and Estonia is proceeding with fantastic speed, the evacuees accelerating their departure because of wild rumors that all left behind will be manhandled by the incoming Bolsheviks. . . . The evacuation machinery has been working with conveyor efficiency. It is believed that about 90 percent of the total German population (estimated at 60,000 German in Latvia and 15,000 in Estonia) will be leaving within the next three weeks.11

• • • From Riga I made several trips to Lithuania, which was under similar pressure, thinly disguised by the Soviets presenting to them the occupied Polish province of Wilno. I accompanied the Lithuanian army into the city. There appeared to be more commissary and mess equipment in their ranks than guns and armor, which seemed appropriate. The Russians had made a gesture of withdrawal and the city was crowded with refugees. The Lithuanians had always claimed Wilno as their historic capital. Actually, the prewar population was almost 80 percent Jewish. The mess units were dishing out soup to the refugees over a wire fence, and there was a constant babble in many tongues. I was accompanied by Edmund de Maitre, a correspondent for the French newspaper Petit Parisienne. Years later, he became a commentator for the Voice of America.12 10. Stevens, “Baltic States Electrified by Russia’s Strategic Plays,” CSM, October 4, 1939, 4. 11. Stevens, “Baltic Epic Written by Exodus of Germans,” CSM, October 11, 1939, 4. 12. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 70.

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• • • Stevens described the desperate situation inside Lithuania in an October 16 article, datelined Kaunas and titled, “Can Hitler and Reich Be Separated? Russia Restores Vilna to Lithuania”: Every available Lithuanian truck will rush flour, grain, potatoes, and other foodstuffs into the Vilna district tomorrow, when Lithuanian authorities begin taking over the territory acquired by the pact with Russia. The new Administration’s first task must be to relieve famine conditions as a result of supplying the hard-pressed Polish troops followed by spoliation by the Russian forces. As soon as the Vilna transfer was announced Soviet authorities began evacuating. They were reported to have taken away all rolling stock, all movable mechanical equipment, and to have dismantled factories, workshops, and even telephone exchanges. The priceless treasures of Vilna’s churches were also confiscated.13

• • • After Lithuania I went to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. It was a delightful medieval city with all the color of its past, plus modern conveniences. The Estonians were also having their problems with the Soviets who had demanded to station a garrison on Estonian territory. My attempts to get to Moscow from Riga remained at a dead end. The Soviets simply refused to renew my entry visa. Fortunately, my friend John Scott had moved into our Moscow house. He was still waiting for an exit visa for his Russian wife, Masha, whom he had married several years before while working in Soviet factories in the Urals. Meanwhile, he had taken over my journalistic obligations. My mother-in-law was also living with them.14 • • •

The Russo-Finnish War By October 10, 1939, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania signed treaties granting the Soviets the right to enter their borders and to station troops and aircraft there. The Finnish government, however, remained obsti13. Stevens, “Can Hitler and Reich Be Separated?” CSM, October 16, 1939, 4. 14. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 71.

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nate. As part of his arrangement with Finland, Stalin wanted control over the Gulf of Finland and the Karelian Isthmus in exchange for territory in the Soviet Union’s central frontier region—land with virtually no military significance. Negotiations stalled in mid-November 1939, and Stalin ordered his troops to strike Finland on November 29. Edmund Stevens proved himself as a correspondent covering what would become known as the Winter War, which continued through mid-March 1940. “Those who recall the journalistic coverage of the ‘Winter War’ of 1939–40 are familiar with the myth that the Finns were superhuman, fearless, deadly efficient defenders of Western civilization against a brutal, godless, blundering communist horde which outnumbered them fifty to one,” wrote historian Allen F. Chew. “The contemporary slogan ‘one Finnish soldier is worth ten Russians’ was but one manifestation of that emotional attitude. Like most myths, this one contains elements of both fact and fantasy.”15 Chew reveals the plight of the historian—evaluating war reporting that most certainly sounded exaggerated with its claims of overwhelming efficiency matched with bravery and military brilliance on the part of the Finns. Mathews expresses similar views regarding exaggerated coverage, and he also identifies problems with military censors in the Winter War: No less than one hundred foreign correspondents, representing Nazi, Fascist, Allied, and neutral countries, made their way to Helsinki. The group included such veteran war reporters as Edward W. Beatty, Leland Stowe, and Webb Miller, and some of the ablest women reporters of the era—Barbro Avling, Martha Huysmans, and Virginia Cowles. Certainly there was no lack of talent on the Finnish side to offset the Soviet refusal to permit correspondents to accompany the Red invasion. But a combination of intense cold and official Finnish reluctance to admit reporters to the areas of active fighting largely nullified the availability of talent. “On the Western Front,” Leland Stowe declared, “They have war without combat. On the Finnish Front we have war without correspondents.” The censorship in Helsinki, according to Edward Beatty, “was undoubtedly the most unreasonable, pig-headed, hide-bound affair which any warring country ever set up.” Sympathy for the Finnish cause, however, beguiled most of the writers into an optimism regarding Finland’s prospects that was entirely unwarranted. Like the Polish campaign that 15. Chew, The White Death: The Epic of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War, ix.

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An Accidental Journalist preceded it, the Finnish War was hardly a forward move toward the “best reported war in history.” There was only occasional first-rate reporting.16

Mathews recounts the successful interference of military censors, the correspondents’ inability to access the front lines, and the exaggerated reporting of Finland’s prospects for victory. Ironically, Stevens’s memoirs do not include any of these points, and his own articles out of Finland are the exception to Mathews’s claims. The datelines of his stories and his firsthand accounts of the battles prove he had access to the front lines. Stevens reported on the brilliant tactical moves and remarkable courage demonstrated by the Finns but never went so far as to predict their victory. It is not surprising, then, that Mathews describes Stevens as part of a “handful of courageous correspondents” in covering the fall of Norway, which happened a few weeks later.17 But one peril facing journalists was not recorded by Mathews or Desmond. Stevens’s friend and fellow Pulitzer Prize winner Leland Stowe wrote in his memoirs, No Other Road to Freedom, about the effect the frigid Arctic environment had on journalists trying to cover the war. “It was March 15 now, but Irmelin Fagerstrom was still on duty in the emergency dressing station in the Hotel Kamp,” he wrote. “She had cared for two correspondents who had collapsed with serious heart attacks; she had sat up many nights with the little Swiss journalist who had tuberculosis, and had nursed fifteen or twenty newspapermen through the vicious influenza which had laid almost everyone low at one time or another.”18 While the Winter War received far less international coverage than the fall of Paris or the London Blitz, it was a pivotal battle in the European theater. Stevens played a significant role in sorting fact from fantasy, and he did it directly in the middle of the action. While other reporters waded ashore at Iwo Jima, dug into trenches with the U.S. Marines on Guadalcanal, or marched with Russian troops into Berlin, Stevens skied into enemy territory with Finnish ski patrols in temperatures averaging thirty degrees below zero, witnessed the first modern war fought within the Arctic Circle, and recorded the devastation the war brought to Russian soldiers and their families. By early November, Stevens began recording the impending Soviet takeover of Finland and the ongoing “peace negotiations” between the two nations. In a 16. Mathews, Reporting the Wars, 181–82. 17. Ibid., 184. 18. Stowe, No Other Road to Freedom, 81.

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November 4, 1939, article, he reported that talks had stalled over Russia’s demand for a naval base strategically located in the northern part of the Gulf of Finland. “This base would completely control Finland’s trade and could cut off Finland from Sweden at a moment’s notice,” he wrote.19 Five days later he returned to Finland, where he spent the next two weeks reporting the on-again, off-again negotiations between the David-Finland and Goliath-Russia. He offered compelling foreshadowing in his November 15 dispatch, “Finns Prefer No Pact to Poor Pact”: “Neither the threats nor the false reports of internal discontent and possible economic ruin depicted in the Soviet press are expected to break the resistance of the resolute Finns. Finland’s patience is well stated in the newspaper Uusi Suomi, conservative organ, which says: ‘Even this nontreaty stage is better than a poor treaty.’”20 In mid-November Stevens toured the Karelian Isthmus. • • • I had the honor of meeting Marshal Carl Mannerheim at the Karelian mansion of the noble family where the marshal had his headquarters and was taken on an extensive tour of the so-called Mannerheim Line. It made maximum use of the extremely rugged terrain, a combination of lakes, rocky slopes, and heavily wooded hollows. The few roads were easily targeted from well-placed artillery positions. Mannerheim impressed me as a typical officer of the Imperial Tsarist Army. He seemed more Russian than Finnish in his manners and education.21 • • • Stevens produced a profile of Mannerheim that was more flattering than compelling—describing him, in an article published December 30, 1939, as “a man of wide interests and accomplishments—scholar, soldier, statesman, social reformer and sportsman; but, unlike so many of his class, there is nothing of the dilettante about him.”22 On November 27, he reported that deadlocked negotiations in Finland worsened when the Soviet press accused the Finns of firing into Russian territory. “Whether this new Soviet action is merely an attempt to coerce Finland into concessions by menacing means or an indication that Russia is about to initiate military counter-measures remains to be seen.”23 19. Stevens, “Russia Demands Finnish Base,” CSM, November 4, 1939, 3. 20. Stevens, “Finns Prefer No Pact to Poor Pact,” CSM, November 15, 1939, 1. 21. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 72. 22. Stevens, “Mannerheim, the Military Leader,” CSM, December 30, 1939, 8. 23. Stevens, “Soviets, Finns Deadlocked,” CSM, November 27, 1939, 4.

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Stalin officially unleashed his troops on November 29, and on December 4, 1939, Stevens reported from Tallinn, Estonia, the first of the Finnish victories against the Soviets: “The new 24,000-ton battleship Kirov, pride of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, limped into port here yesterday as a result of two direct hits by the Finnish Coast Artillery.”24 Two days later, Finland prepared for heavy bombardment after the Soviet radio threat to “raze Helsingfors to the ground” but got a reprieve from an unlikely ally. Stevens reported on December 9, “Finland’s staunch and only active ally, General Weather, has again foiled the Russian plans. Fog and snow have deprived the Russians of their air supremacy and saved Finnish cities from further destruction, while hindering the Russian movement on land.”25 • • • Within a week the Finnish crisis was swiftly coming to a head, so I took the train to Tallinn intending to fly from there to Helsinki. But when I reached the airport, I was told the flight had been cancelled as the Russians were bombing the Helsinki Airport. As travel by air was obviously out of the question, I boarded a small Estonian ship bound for Stockholm. In the Grand Hotel in Stockholm I encountered Leland Stowe of the Chicago News and Warren Irvin of NBC. Lee had just joined the staff at the Chicago News after breaking with the Herald Tribune. The editor-inchief, Wilbur Forest, known to the staff as Petrified Forest, told Lee that at the age of forty he was too old to cover a war. Lee was determined to prove otherwise. Warren had just come from Berlin. All three of us wanted to get to Finland somehow. We managed to board a Swedish boat, the Christina. The accommodations were most luxurious, and every meal was a delicious smorgasbord. The trip to Turku on the Finnish side would normally have taken a few hours, but instead of going directly, we circled around the Gulf of Bothnia, hugging the coast. Two nights later, we finally arrived. We had to feel our way in a complete blackout, and there were passengers eager to board the ship, even before we disembarked. The three of us were bundled into the back of a truck with plenty of blankets. It was December, and the temperature must have been -10 degrees centigrade. We drove through the blackout to Helsinki and were delivered to the Hotel Kemp, which was also the press headquarters. 24. Stevens, “Finns Victorious,” CSM, December 4, 1939, 4. 25. Stevens, “Weather Foils Russians,” CSM, December 9, 1939, 4.

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The next morning we experienced our first air raid. They didn’t hit the city but bombed the airport again. The press office was most cooperative, and we had ample opportunities to visit the front. My first trip was to the isthmus, back to the same outpost I had visited a month earlier before the hostilities. The soldiers were in fine fettle. We were told that the Russians had crossed into Finland with bands playing, expecting a friendly reception from the local population, the reason being the Soviets had declared the establishment of a Finnish republic headed by the longtime Communist leader Otto Kuusinen. But as soon as the Russians approached the first town, booby traps began going off, and in that first onslaught, they perished by the hundreds. The artillery proved most effective. Evidently, the Soviet strategists had completely misjudged the military situation.26 • • • As Canham observed, “Ed Stevens’s mastery of Russian was extremely useful on the Finnish front. He talked with many Soviet prisoners, establishing that some of them were hastily conscripted farmers—mere cannon fodder, ill-equipped, ill-clad, ill-armed—while others were well-trained soldiers.”27 The Russo-Finnish War was the northernmost conflict fought in history with nearly half of the thousand-mile front line lying above the Arctic Circle. Red troops that advanced against Finland from the north faced temperatures of 25 degrees below zero and were found wearing thin, ragged clothing. Most Soviet troops didn’t even have gloves, according to Stevens. One of Stevens’s first articles written from the front focused on the tragic impact of war on the lives of Russian soldiers and their families back home. Stevens’s article included four letters a Russian woman named Marusya wrote to her husband, Sima. As Stevens noted, the final letter, titled “They Took Out the Rubles,” reveals the financial and emotional desperation experienced by countless families inside Russia. From Inside Russia, a Human Document By Edmund Stevens Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Helsingfors, Finland, Jan 4—The human side of war is not greatly different whether in Russia, Finland, or elsewhere. 26. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 72–73. 27. Canham, Commitment to Freedom, 300.

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An Accidental Journalist Its story has been disclosed in a bundle of letters that will not be answered. They were found wrapped in an old newspaper, beside a Russian solder who fell in the snow-covered forests of Aggiajuervi. Perhaps their greatest value is what they show of the tragic and pitiably inefficient methods of the new Kremlin, both in the war with Finland and in the “peace” at home. The letters were written to Ehm Pavlovitch by his wife Marusya, who calls him Sima, and translated into English by this correspondent. The letters begin in October, when Moscow held troops ready presumably to invade Estonia if the latter had refused to accept the Soviet terms. “They took out the rubles” Nov. 24 Dear Sima, I sent my last letter by registered mail. If it isn’t returned that means you received it. If it is returned that means I shall have no idea where you are. I cry and cry because I have got no more word from you. Yesterday I went and inquired about you and was curtly told you weren’t permitted to write, as you were on a secret duty but I just cannot believe they should be so heartless and cruel. The registered letter I sent you to Ostrov, enclosing Lyonya’s picture and 10 rubles has just be returned, but they took out the 10 rubles. I am so lonely, and unhappy. A letter would cheer me, for if anything happened I should have your letter as a last keepsake. I got my first month’s wage yesterday: 101 rubles was all I earned on account of lack of electric current. I don’t know when I will get your allowance money, but I wouldn’t care about the money if only you yourself would come home. I cannot get over the feeling I had when I saw you off at the Moscow Station that I would never see you again. Marusya28

In a January 6, 1940, article, Stevens interviewed Russian soldiers captured by Finns. These were Soviet forces who had carried off the Polish invasion in September and who were then thrown into Finland without explanation of where they were going or the nature of their mission. With a dateline of eastern Finland, Stevens used a question-and-answer format for part of the story: “‘Didn’t they say that Finland threatened Leningrad or that Finns had attacked the Soviet Union?’ I asked. ‘We heard something of the sort over the radio, but we didn’t believe it,’ replied the soldier. ‘We have lived on friendly terms with Finland for years. 28. Stevens, “From Inside Russia, a Human Document,” CSM, January 3, 1940, 4.

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Anyway, everyone knows there are only 3,500,000 Finns.’”29 On January 12, he submitted an article reporting that twenty-five Fiat pursuit airplanes donated by Italy had arrived in Helsingfors. This was the start of his chronicling Finland’s struggle for support from its allies. • • • During my previous visit to Helsinki, I stayed in the Torni where several Italian correspondents were booked. When I returned to Helsinki after the outbreak of the war, they were still there, including Indro Montanelli, today Italy’s most famous journalist. From then on we covered the war together. We went to Rovaniemi, which was virtually on the Arctic Circle and in peacetime was a tourist ski resort. That part of Finland was known as the Wasp Waist because it was the narrowest segment between the Soviet border and the coastline. The Soviet strategy was to cut Finland in half through this narrow waist. One division of about ten thousand men set out from Soviet Karelia headed for the coast so they thought. They were soon cut off in the rear by Finnish ski patrols and pinned down. We were taken to view them, and I will never forget the sight. It was as if the Soviet force was part of a wax-works exhibition. All the men and equipment were clearly visible. The only thing wrong was that they were frozen fast by the thousands.30 • • • Stevens documented the Finns’ early stunning victories to maintain their borders, and he reported the Soviets’ lack of military experience on skis. With the dateline “The Suomussalmi Front, Finland,” he sent a January 16, 1940, transmission that read, in part, “The booty captured by the Finns in their victory last week included thousands of pairs of brand new skis that had never been used, and thousands of manuals on skiing that still smelled of printer’s ink.” Stevens skied with Finnish troops and penetrated well into the Russian side to observe the Finnish method of attacking the enemy: “What undermined Russian morale more than anything else, it appeared, was the manner in which the Finns, invisible in their snow capes and silent on their skis, passed through the Soviet lines each night blowing up bridges in the rear of the enemy and tossing hand grenades into dugouts.”31

29. Stevens, “Russian Prisoners Report Hardships,” CSM, January 6, 1940, 1. 30. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 74. 31. Stevens, “Reds Trapped Still Learning to Ski,” CSM, January 16, 1940, 1.

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The following day he wrote, “Finnish salvage crews have been working day and night for a week cataloguing and removing the captured equipment whose value runs into several hundred million marks.”32 He also reported that many of the arms had never been fired and then included the translation of a Russian artillery lieutenant’s unfinished letter, a note he found in one of the tanks: “In this wilderness of lakes and forests the enemy seems everywhere and nowhere. Our information service is insufficient. Consequently though we have good guns and plenty of ammunition, we don’t know where to shoot. Then when the Finns start pounding us we can’t come out above ground.”33 In an article written January 22, he reported the arrival of volunteers from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Two days later, from the Salla front, his story began, “For the first time in history a modern war, with all the accessories like tanks, flame throwers, machine guns, and airplanes, is being waged above the Arctic Circle. On the Salla front in Finnish Lapland, for eight weeks, small Finnish forces have been holding back an avalanche of Russian troops variously estimated at between two and three divisions.”34

A War of Attrition In early February, Stevens toured the Finnish industrial center of Tammerfors, reported on the dwindling food supplies through the country, and documented Finland’s growing problem of lack of support from neighboring countries. In a February 2 article, he wrote, The difficulty is that the nations which are so quick to talk of the greatness of the Finnish cause are not reaching for their pocketbooks. Despite its record as the only European country to meet its financial obligations punctiliously, when Finland first approached the United States Government for financial aid it asked for a $60,000,000 loan. This was then regarded as the final minimum and its request would not appear unreasonable in view of the fact that Finland has regularly met payments on its debt.

32. Stevens, “Finns Get Reds’ New Guns and Tanks,” CSM, January 17, 1940, 1. 33. Ibid. 34. Stevens, “Volunteer Aid Gives Finland New Strength,” CSM, January 22, 1940, 1.

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However, it now appears that Finland will not receive more than a total of $30,000,000 from the United States even if the new loan proposals succeed. Aside from the inadequacy of this amount it is lent on condition that it cannot be used for purchasing armaments. So far as Finland is concerned this is like giving money to a starving man with the proviso that he cannot buy food with it.35

On Valentine’s Day he issued his strongest report to date on what was becoming known as Stalin’s “No-Limit War”—the determination to penetrate Finland at any cost. Written from Helsingfors, the story began, “The great Soviet offensive against the Mannerheim Line, which has been termed the Finnish Verdun, now in it 13th day continues unabated. No apparent limit has been set up to the number of men or the amount of equipment the Soviets are prepared to sacrifice in this supreme, desperate effort to smash Finland’s defenses.”36 Just three days later, Stevens wrote his first analysis piece, examining claims that Finnish victories were exaggerated by both the media and Finland’s military leaders: Claims that Finnish sources have been exaggerating the size of battles and the number of Russian casualties seem absurd to anyone who has visited the front of this Soviet-Finnish War. Those who have visited the battlefields of Tolvajaervi and Aflajaervi, north of Lake Ladoga, Suomussalmi, on the “waistline” and other scenes of big Finnish victories, and compared what they saw with the Finnish communiqués and reports, were convinced that the Finns, far from overemphasizing or exaggerating, were playing down the scale of operations and the extent of the enemy losses.37

On February 23, he reported that Sweden affirmed its neutrality and refused to aid Finland with men and arms. Four days later, he witnessed a major advance by Russian troops against the Mannerheim Line and began his article, “The story of how the Finns withdrew from the fortified island of Koivisto shows all the efficiency and daring which have

35. Stevens, “Credit Red Tape Handicaps Finns; Loan Hope Fades,” CSM, February 2, 1940, 1. 36. Stevens, “Reds Press Finns in No-Limit War; U.S. Loan Waited,” CSM, February 14, 1940, 1. 37. Stevens, “Finns Found Understating Resistance to Russians,” CSM, February 17, 1940, 1.

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marked all the Finnish military operations so far.”38 On February 28, he recorded the Soviet attack against Finnish civilians with the damning lead, “The present Soviet attack on Finland is the first instance in history of a total war against the civil population conducted on a large scale.” He continued, “Not even in Spain, which had heretofore served as the example, were so many planes used daily. On several days the number of Soviet aircraft flying over Finland simultaneously has passed the thousand mark, and day after day cities, towns, and village in all parts of Finland from the southern coast to above the Arctic Circle are subject to systematic bombing.”39 • • • The war dragged on and became in time a war of attrition because there were only four million Finns to a Soviet population of two hundred million. At tremendous cost of material and manpower, they managed to crack the Mannerheim Line across the Karelian Isthmus and by mid-March forced back the Finns. I remember how a tree was felled across the road to mark the point of the new frontier, which was deep into what had been Finnish territory. In the meantime, Warren Irvin had returned to his Berlin assignment, and he left me to cover for NBC. One way the Russians benefited from the Finnish experience at such heavy cost was to learn to ski. This was to stand their troops in good stead in the coming war against Nazi Germany.40 • • • In early March, Stevens wrote about rumors of peace negotiations, the growing number of Russian victories near Viborg and the Gulf of Finland, and growing pressure that Finland prepare to surrender. By the middle of the month, there was little hope left. Stevens wrote on March 14 from Helsingfors in his story that carried the headline “How Finland Fell; A Final Tragic Day,” Sometimes weeks and months of history are crowded into 24 hours. Such was the day when “peace” came to Finland. The Finnish people arose in the morning thinking that they were at war. Stenographers went to work with gas masks across their shoulders. 38. Stevens, “Allied Warships off Arctic Russia; Sweden’s Action Cuts Tie to Finland,” CSM, February 23, 1940, 1. 39. Stevens, “World Is Invited by U.S. to Join in Postwar Plans,” CSM, February 28, 1940, 1. 40. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 75.

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They had been told that there was peace in the air, but no one had paid much attention to it. Then came the morning papers. Along with the usual war communiqué there was a headline that peace had been established with Russia, according to foreign radio reports, and that the treaty had been signed in Moscow, but no confirmation could be had for the Government here. Then at 12 o’clock came the radiocast of the tragic speech by the Foreign Minister, Vacino Tanner, in which he said that Finland had been forced to accept peace on the Soviet terms. He placed the burden of Finland’s capitulation on the shoulders of Norway and Sweden for refusing permission of Allied troops to cross their territory, a refusal which strangled Finland.41

After Finland, Stevens looked for the next domino likely to fall. He noted simply in his memoirs, “Lee Stowe, Indro Montanelli, and I took off for Stockholm where the Swedes were jittery, not quite knowing which way to turn.”42 He filed stories on April 4 and 5, 1940, from Stockholm, explaining Sweden’s increasing tension and its transformation from “essentially pacifist people into a military-minded nation” with firearm training for civil guard members and munitions plants working overtime.43 In his April 4 article, he also wrote of Sweden’s most valuable resource: The factor which draws the Great Powers toward Scandinavia like a magnet is iron. The iron ore from the open cut mine at Kiruna in Northern Sweden is one of the richest in the world and in this age of mechanization iron, even more than blood, is the prime ingredient of warfare. Germany and Britain have long been rivals for the Swedish ore. Now the new railway connecting the Murmansk line at Kandalaksha with the Finnish railway at Kemijearyi will be like a red arrow pointed straight from Soviet Russia at the Kiruna mine. For a little country like Sweden it is a dangerous thing to have such valuable and coveted property. While the Kiruna mines have meant wealth to Sweden, they continue to cause Swedish statesmen plenty of worries.44

41. Stevens, “How Finland Fell; A Final Tragic Day,” CSM, March 14, 1940, 1. 42. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 75. 43. Stevens, “Sweden Is Apprehensive at Hunt for New Front,” CSM, April 4, 1940, 2. 44. Ibid.

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Norway Falls to Germany Stevens, Montanelli, and Stowe learned that the Norwegians and the British were struggling over a naval blockade planned by the Brits to prevent Norway from selling iron ore to the Germans. The men decided to go to Oslo to write about the impending blockade and arrived just ahead of the invading Nazi forces. Norway fell swiftly because “its army divisions were under-strength, poorly equipped and weakened by decades of neglect and inactivity,” according to historian Flora Lewis.45 In the early hours of April 9, the Germans invaded simultaneously at Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, and Stavanger, the key naval ports. Oslo fell just hours later. “The Norwegian army command moved out of the capital, and shortly afterward King Haakon, the government, and members of parliament fled inland by train,” Lewis wrote. “A fleet of twenty-three trucks followed them, carrying the Bank of Norway’s stock of gold and sensitive government papers.”46 Joseph Mathews argued that the Nazis’ surprise invasion of Norway advanced so swiftly that few Western journalists were able to cover it, a fact that makes Stevens’s reporting even more valuable. “The Nazi invasion in April-June 1940 initiated by the invasion of Denmark and Norway and climaxed by the blitzkrieg through the Low Countries and France, produced news of a kind that could come only from a war of rapid movement and unpredictable results,” wrote Mathews. “The flow of information to areas outside the active theaters was erratic and much of it misleading, but there were examples of individual brilliance and organizational ingenuity to temper the unsatisfactory features.”47 Mathews credited Stevens as one who “disposed of the myth of Norwegian valor against overwhelming odds and displayed the Trojan horse.”48 Robert Desmond summarized part of Stevens’s achievements in Norway in Tides of War: Leland Stowe of the Chicago Daily News had gone to Stockholm after the conclusion of the Russo-Finnish War in March. There he and Edmund Stevens, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, decided that an important story might develop in Norway relative to a British naval blockade 45. Lewis, Europe: Road to Unity, 224. 46. Ibid., 224. 47. Mathews, Reporting the Wars, 182. 48. Ibid.

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to prevent shipment of Swedish iron ore to Germany by way of the Norwegian port of Narvik, far to the north. They arrived in Oslo on April 8 to follow up this concept, and were present when the German invasion began early the following morning. This gave them a new subject and both filed cables at noon. . . . Details of the Norwegian invasion were rounded up during the next few days by neutral correspondents remaining in the country. Stowe and Irvin of NBC got across the border at the end of the week to Gothenburg and Stockholm, where Stowe was able to dispatch the first comprehensive account of the German surprise move into Norway for use by the Chicago Daily News. . . . Edmund Stevens, who remained in Norway for another week, was able to add further details on the occupation when he also reached Sweden.49

Desmond identified the elements that defined Stevens’s instincts and skills as a war correspondent—characteristics that would win Stevens a Pulitzer Prize a decade later: 1) an almost uncanny ability to guess where the next big story will break; 2) effectively allying himself with worldclass journalists (in this case, Montanelli and Stowe); and 3) knowing how to survive in an occupied zone, circumvent censors, and get out when he had to. • • • My intuition was that the Germans might soon end the “phony war” in the west and take offensive. At my suggestion the three of us headed for the Norwegian capital, Oslo. I remember how when we got off the train in the Oslo railway station we encountered New York Times correspondent Otto Tolishus. He was about to take the train back to Stockholm. He laughed at us saying, “What are you guys doing here? There’s no story.” That was on the 6th of April.50 • • • Stevens’s first article with an Oslo dateline covered, as he expected, Norway’s protest against the French and the British governments for placing mines in the sea-lanes of three ports. Norway also sought the withdrawal of Allied warships patrolling the mined areas. As Stevens summarized in his April 8 article, “The news that Allied warships had entered Norwegian territorial waters and laid the mines burst on Oslo like a bombshell this morning. Scenes around news bulletin boards and newsstands were comparable to those in the European capitals on the 49. Desmond, Tides of War, 115–16. 50. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 75.

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first day of the declaration of war last September.”51 Leland Stowe noted simply in his own memoirs, “Lucky we hadn’t taken the Narvik route. We were the only foreign correspondents in Oslo at that moment and Oslo was seething with excitement and anxiety.”52 • • • We checked into the Grand Hotel and contacted various newspaper offices and the American legation. Contrasting with Stockholm, the prevailing atmosphere was quite relaxed. The bookshops displayed war maps in which Norway was not even included. On the evening of April 8, Lee Stowe and I were invited to dinner by the American minister, Mrs. Florence Jaffray Harriman. The table talk was far from reassuring. Two days previously, heads of diplomatic missions had been invited by the German minister to attend a film performance. They were requested to wear dinner jackets and decorations. The film was entitled Baptism by Fire. It graphically displayed the storming of Warsaw by the Wehrmacht. This was interpreted as an object lesson designed to intimidate. The radio also reported that a German ship, laden with horses and light cannon suitable for maneuvers in the mountains, had been torpedoed by a British submarine off the Norwegian coast. We went back to the hotel with forebodings, but we were tired and went to our rooms. I soon fell asleep, only to be wakened periodically by strange sounds in the night like sirens and shooting in the distance. At seven on the morning of April 9, there was a knock on my door. I staggered out of bed and opened the door. In walked the Finnish ambassador, Urho Toivola, who had been chief of the press office during the winter war. “A fine reporter you are,” he chided. And then he gave me the news. During the night, German paratroopers had landed at Fornebo, Oslo’s airport, and had already occupied the city. The king, royal family, and cabinet had already taken off by road to Andelsness, north of Oslo, along with most of the diplomatic corps. I opened the window and there in the brilliant sunshine were German paratroopers calmly directing traffic in the square in front of the hotel while a military band played “Roll Out the Barrel.” I quickly dressed and woke Lee and Indro.53 51. Stevens, “Norway Protests Mines of Allies and Navy Patrol,” CSM, April 8, 1940, 1. 52. Stowe, No Other Road to Freedom, 85. 53. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 75–77.

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• • • In his own memoirs, Stowe wrote of what happened the morning after the German invasion: Then came the familiar roar of big bombers, but louder and nearer than I’d ever heard them in Finland. It was seven forty-five a.m. I leaped to the window just as Steve [Stowe’s nickname for Stevens] ran in crying: “Here they are. Here they come. My God, look at them.” They were five huge tri-motored planes with engines wide open, slicing down within five hundred feet of the rooftops across the park—straight toward our hotel. They roared like hungry lions. We could see the German crosses beneath their wings. “God help us if they let the bombs go now,” I said. We twisted our necks and looked straight up, helplessly. A split second—no, we were safe. No bombs this time, but of course they’d be back. In a few minutes they were; still swooping low, still roaring, still holding thousands of persons speechless and paralysed on the streets or at their windows. Next time they circled high and machine-guns began to crackle. The Nazi bombers swung steadily and disdainfully over the heart of the city and came in low once more, roaring over the Storting building and our hotel.54

Stowe’s account of the event—an overwhelming, terrifying, but virtually bloodless, takeover—was confirmed by Stevens, who filed in rapid order dispatches of the Nazi invasion, beginning with this story on April 9: Nazis Seize Danish and Norse Capitals; Blitzkrieg in North Stuns Neutrals; Allies Speeding Armed Aid to Norway; Strategists surprised by Britain’s failure to halt German ships—What will Russia and Sweden do are vital questions now confronting Britain and France. Is It Another Poland? Battle Reported Oslo Regime Falls OSLO, Norway, April 9—Norway fights as Oslo falls. Today this peaceful nation has become the newest victim of Nazi aggression. This once neutral capital is at war with Germany. And today Scandinavia and the Baltic have become embroiled in the sudden “Blitzkrieg” which has again shifted the war in Europe to a Northern Front.

54. Stowe, No Other Road to Freedom, 87–88.

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An Accidental Journalist This single question was on everyone’s lips today: “How did the British navy let the German landing parties slip past them to occupy key points on Norway’s shores?” The lightning German surprise attack during the night overwhelmed the Norwegian coastal defenses. The fortifications at the entrance to Oslofjord were forced soon after 11 o’clock last night. After violent fighting, occupation of the capital itself was only a matter of hours. [Associated Press dispatches from Stockholm reported that the city of Oslo had surrendered to the German forces at 4 p.m.] Land at Several Points Elsewhere on the coast the Germans have landed. They are reported at Kristiansand, at Stavanger, at Bergen, and at Trondheim. There even are reports that they have landed at the strategic port of Narvik—key to the rail line that taps Sweden’s vital iron mines.55

The next day he filed this remarkable summary: British Navy Blasts Way into Skagerrak; How Oslo Yielded: Troops from the Skies; Blitzkrieg strikes from air—Planes seize airports and land troops—Army functions so smoothly even trolley service is not disturbed—Norwegians are passive. Smooth Moving Army Most Dramatic Day OSLO, Norway, April 10—The streets of Oslo today echo to the tread of German hobnailed boots. Two battalions of German soldiers, approximately 1,400 men, landed from planes yesterday afternoon and took over Norway’s capital. From the standpoint of execution it was one of the most remarkable feats in military history. The Germans first bombed and captured all airports and then proceeded to land troops by air. Like the occupation of Prague, everything went with clocklike precision. The Germans encountered no resistance. No shots were fired, despite the Norwegian Government’s previous announcement that the country was at war. The first German troops to enter the city were three or four platoons on trucks armed with grimly efficient submachine guns and machine guns. Ten minutes later a thin gray infantry column marched down Carl Johans Gate, Oslo’s Main Street. They marched three abreast, helmeted, wearing smart green coats, and with one machine gun to every nine men. 55. Stevens, “Nazis Seize Danish and Norse Capitals,” CSM, April 9, 1940, 1.

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Behind them followed requisitioned trucks and busses carrying their arms and personal effects.56

In the following days he alluded to a fifth column inside Norway with its “unexpected capitulation” and described the Nazis’ swift overpowering of the country: Germans Tighten Grip upon Oslo OSLO, Norway, April 11—German troops continue to pour into Oslo today, both by sea and by air. At the same time there are reports of continued fighting at the mouth of Oslo fjord, where Norwegian forces still hold the forts. But the situation in Oslo itself provides an unusual paradox both of resistance and of unexpected capitulation.57 Nazi Ships Pouring Troops into Norway; Major Action in North Shifts to Air; U.S.-Allies Nearing Economic Accord; Germans elude British, landing artillery and full camp equipment for big army OSLO, Norway, April 12—Eluding British submarines and destroyers, the Germans have brought some 30 additional ships into Oslo fjord. Today, as Oslo begins to feel the weight of totalitarian control, it is clearly apparent that the Nazis have greatly swelled the number of troops which they have succeeded in placing on Norwegian soil. Some estimates here even go so far in speculating that the Germans may have raised the total of their invading force to 120,000. Unloading of men, horses, light artillery, camp kitchens, and wagons began with the arrival of the reserve forces yesterday. It continued throughout the night until this morning. There are reports that additional troops are on the way.58

• • • We had previously met a charming American girl married to a Norwegian named Stjarnhorst. She soon turned up at the hotel and offered, “If you boys need any help, you can call on me, I have my car.” We got in touch with her. Lee was in a hurry to get out of Norway and file the story from Sweden, as he expected there would be strict German 56. Stevens, “British Navy Blasts Way into Skagerrak,” CSM, April 10, 1940, 1. 57. Stevens, “Germans Tighten Grip upon Oslo,” CSM, April 11, 1940, 1. 58. Stevens, “Nazi Ships Pouring Troops into Norway,” CSM, April 12, 1940, 1.

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censorship. He accordingly asked the girl to drive him to the Swedish border. Indro and I elected to stay. Lee’s comment was “I’ve got the story, you can have the girl.” That wasn’t how it turned out. The very next day we learned that during the night of April 8–9, the German battleship Blucher, with the main occupation force for Oslo, had been sunk on its way up the Oslo fjord. It was struck by shots fired point blank by Oscarsborg’s two cannons nicknamed Adam and Moses. They had been acquired from Krupp at the turn of the century and had never before been fired in anger. The main damage had been caused by a shell from Moses, which apparently hit the compartment where ammunition was stored, and the vessel literally blew up. Only a handful of those aboard survived by swimming ashore. In the meantime, the German minister and delegation staff were waiting at the Oslo waterfront, expecting to welcome the Blucher.59 As soon as we had the exclusive story of the Blucher, which we couldn’t send through the censorship, Indro and I decided it was time for us to leave. Armed with a pass obtained from the German legation, we asked Mrs. Stjarnhorst to drive us to the Swedish border. We drove there without incident and stopped at the head of the bridge over the Sgjenfjord, which served here as the frontier with Sweden. After kissing our charmed driver a fond farewell, we walked across the bridge with our luggage. On the Swedish side we boarded a bus that took us to the Stromstad railway station where I promptly ordered phone calls and transmitted the story to the Monitor in Boston and the Express in London. Indro transmitted his story to the Corriere Della Sera in Milan. Ironically, though Britain and Germany were at war, one could still telephone from Sweden via Germany to England. After that we took the train to Stockholm.60 • • • From mid-April until the end of May, Stevens was based in Stockholm reporting the events unfolding as Germany strengthened its grip around Norway. On April 18, Stevens filed his first news analysis, which he followed with rapid-fire dispatches chronicling Nazi victories: In one highly significant sense, Germany’s invasion of Norway has already failed. 59. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 77. 60. Ibid., 78.

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For it is increasingly apparent, as the details of the German invasion are reviewed at first hand, that the focus of the Nazi effort was to obtain the immediate, and “total” capitulation of Norway. Instead, Germany is fighting a war on a northern front—a campaign which is endangering rather than safeguarding an important flank. The Reich, in effect, is itself faced with an “unexpected war.” In a previous dispatch I told how sure the Germans were of occupying the country completely without resistance just as they did in Denmark. Readers of The Christian Science Monitor already know how one unexpected shot upset the Nazi plans by delaying the capture of Oslo and enabling King Haakon and his Government to escape and organize the center of resistance. If, as scheduled, the German troops had already been in Oslo when the German minister presented his ultimatum demanding that Norway place itself under German military protection to the Government, the latter would have been forced to accept and all Norway would have been in German hands before Britain realized what had happened. British intervention in Norway would have been far more difficult, not to say impossible, and Germany would have been free to start a diversion elsewhere. As it is, Germany must now fight a war on two fronts in Norway— pouring in new men and equipment and burning up more airplane gasoline while English mines, submarines, and warships take a constant toll. Already Narvik, the key position to the ore supply, is slipping from Germany’s grasp, and the presence on Norwegian soil of even a few English troops is a powerful stimulant to latent Norwegian resistance. What was planned as the end of Germany’s Scandinavian adventure is only its beginning.61 British Bomb German Bases; Gain in Troop Race to Norway STOCKHOLM, April 24—The Allies appear to be closing in on Trondheim from three sides on land, while the Allied warships control Trondheimfjord. The capture of this port would greatly broaden the Allied base of operations, enabling the Allies to land troops more rapidly. It would further consolidate their control of all of northern Norway.

61. Stevens, “German Aim for Speedy and Total Control of Norway Ran into a Surprise Snag,” CSM, April 18, 1940, 1.

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An Accidental Journalist Already the ration of forces is steadily changing in the Allies favor. The only port with which Germans can still maintain sea communications is Oslo, and even there mines and submarines are exacting a heavy toll.62 Nazi Blitzkrieg Gains in Norway; Planes Clear Path, Germans Intensify Drive to Reach Trondheim, Break Allies STOCKHOLM, April 25—The ability of the German command to move with a lightning rapidity that for the moment stuns their more deliberate opponents was again evidenced in today’s moves. Two mechanized German Divisions, in a sudden thrust along the railway up the Oesterdale Valley and parallel with the Swedish frontier, completely overwhelmed the Norwegian defenders and in one day advanced more than 69 miles from Koppang to Roeros. This move brings the German column, which captured Elverun last week, nearly three fourths of the way from Oslo to Trondheim, their final goal. Nazi Strategy If they succeed in reaching Trondheim, they will break the Allies’ encirclement of that port. They will control the Oslo-Trondheim railway and completely cut off the Allied-Norwegian forces in Central Norway from the Swedish frontier.63 April 26, 1940 Nazis Push Drive from Oslo North to Rail Junction; Allies holding well on the Narvik front but are forced out of two main valleys STOCKHOLM, April 26—The spectacular German advances that marked the campaign in Norway yesterday have brought the German northward push from Oslo to within 30 miles of the all-important railway junction of Dombas. In the last three days the Allied troops have been forced out of the two main valleys of Central Norway, the Gudbrandsdale and Osterdale. In the Osterdale, three German armored cars actually reached Roeros yesterday afternoon, but were apparently ahead of the main forces and turned back.64

62. Stevens, “Gain in Troop Race to Norway,” CSM, April 24, 1940, 1. 63. Stevens, “Nazi Blitzkrieg Gains in Norway,” CSM, April 25, 1940, 1. 64. Stevens, “Nazis Push Drive from Oslo North to Rail Junction,” CSM, April 26, 1940, 1.

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Hitler Declares War on Norway; What of Sweden? STOCKHOLM, April 27—What of Sweden? Standing like an isolated sentinel amid the reverberations of embattled Scandinavia, the Swedish people today are surveying the poignant alternatives that arise out of Germany’s invasion of Norway.65

• • • Expecting to be invaded, the Swedes were more jittery than ever. Each night they would roll huge cable spools onto the runway at Stockholm’s Kastrup Airport to block the airstrips. British and French troops put ashore at Namsos on the Norwegian coast. The British also landed at Narvik in northern Norway. But these forces proved no match for the Germans who had the advantage of land communication as the Swedes has conceded them transit rights through their territory while the Allies had to cross through submarine-infested waters. The expedition that Chamberlain said to be the main show turned out to be no show.66 • • • The Germans routed the Allies from central Norway, and it proved the breaking point. Stevens recorded in a May 1 dispatch, “After that the Germans would become the virtual masters of all southern Norway, where nine-tenths of the country’s population is concentrated. All that would remain would be mopping-up operations against the Allied groups and isolated units that still hold a few points along the BergenOslo Railway and elsewhere in the interior.”67 And from there he chronicled the evacuation of Namsos, analyzed the Germans’ new methods of aerial attack that succeeded against Norway, and described the growing anxiety in nearby Sweden, which sought “protection” in a tripartite pact with Finland and Russia. In a May 16 article dispatched from Stockholm, “Sweden Clings to Neutrality But Watches for Parachutes,” Stevens wrote, “Both press and Government studiously avoid doing or saying anything that might offer a pretext for dragging the country into 65. Stevens, “Hitler Declares War on Norway; What of Sweden?” CSM, April 27, 1940, 1. 66. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 80. 67. Stevens, “Steady Influx of Nazi Troops Holds Allies Back in Norway,” CSM, May 1, 1940, 4.

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the maelstrom. Even though there is little doubt where most people’s sympathies lie, newspaper comment on events on the Western Front is extremely guarded and an impartial tone is maintained.”68 In many regards, Edmund Stevens’s achievements for the Monitor in 1939 and 1940 are harder to believe and explain than his family’s survival of Stalin’s purge. Millions of Russians, Chinese, and Communist sympathizers were killed between 1934 and 1938, including many of Stevens’s own colleagues within the publishing house of the Comintern. But Stevens’s American passport and the direct intervention of Ambassador Davies ensured his survival and his family’s safe passage out. These points can be identified and explained. However, Stevens’s ability to enter a war zone with his uncanny sense of timing (from returning to Europe in August 1939 just days before the war started to getting himself ahead of the Germans as they entered Norway) and to produce effective, accurate, analytical dispatches without benefit of extensive previous reporting experience is the far greater mystery, the more compelling element from the perspective of a journalism historian and something much harder to explain than his survival of the purge. Scholars are compelled to examine, theorize, ruminate, and then theorize some more. Without question, Edmund Stevens is a unique model for working journalists and journalism educators. He’s an unbeatable argument in favor of liberal arts education, world travel, extensive knowledge of world history, and the establishment of high standards for analyzing the unfolding events a journalist observes and reports. But in considering Stevens’s earliest achievement as a war correspondent in Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, and Norway, readers might want to pause and set aside the temptation to theorize about how he managed such great reporting and instead simply raise a stein to a man who entered Riga in September 1939 with very little reporting experience and then, five months later, emerged from the tundra of Finland a proven war correspondent.

68. Stevens, “Sweden Clings to Neutrality But Watches for Parachutes,” CSM, May 16, 1940, 1.

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4 Italo-Greek War

One of Stevens’s most significant professional contributions was his account of the atrocities in Romania, while that country and its people were divided by marauding neighbors. The story of Romania’s devastation in mid-June 1940 was not easy to dispatch for the relatively few journalists who witnessed it. That same week Germany claimed Paris, Norway surrendered to the Nazis, Italy declared war on Britain and France, and Stalin began occupation of the Baltic states. As news agencies and correspondents scrambled to cover what were clearly considered stories of greater value, Romania fell hard and suffered in relative global silence as Stalin acted on the part of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which read, “With regard to South-Eastern Europe, attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares it complete political disinterestedness in these areas.”1 A city taken by Russia under Peter the Great in the early nineteenth century and returned to Romania in the early twentieth century, Bessarabia was the first claim Stalin made against King Carol, who, in turn, desperately sought help from the Germans, unaware that the nonaggression pact already had sealed his fate. According to Romanian historian Emil Ciurea, “In dealing with Rumania, the Kremlin intervened diplomatically with hostile intent, employed threatening troop

1. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, August 23, 1939, Secret Additional Protocol Article 3. 97

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movements, and seized territory by ultimatum.”2 Hitler’s “disinterestedness” extended only to the city of Bessarabia itself, and he handed that region over to Stalin with an eye on what he considered more valuable Romanian resources—its young men of fighting age and its central government. Both fell into his hands as Russia, Hungary, and Bulgaria each claimed a segment of the country. In early May 1940, Stevens rushed to Bucharest to record the fall of Romania. His role as an international correspondent became increasingly important in recounting the actual events of battle because as Stalin and Hitler gripped the throats of their smaller, neighboring countries, they silenced a free press in the Baltics and Eastern Europe as well. Desmond accurately summarizes the broader context: As full-scale war began in Europe in September 1939, there was a mutual withdrawal by correspondents of the belligerent countries, leaving only neutral reporters, these including U.S. media representatives. The year 1940 was not far advanced when the German move into Norway, Denmark, and Holland brought further withdrawals. The French surrender in June removed even the neutral correspondents from Paris by German demand. Some moved to Vichy, the new capital of unoccupied France. Other withdrawals proceeded in the south of Europe through 1940. The last moves came in 1941, first in response to the German turn against Soviet Russia in June and then in response to the Japanese attacks in Asia and the Pacific in December.3

Desmond describes an uprooted and silenced media, a situation Stevens faced in Romania in particular. The country had a strong free press before the emergence of King Carol II’s dictatorship in early 1938. According to Romanian historian Romulus Boila, before King Carol’s reign, “the press flourished and attained a standing comparable with that in most countries of the West. In every field, whether purely informative, political, economic, educational, or scientific, Romania’s newspapers, periodicals, and other publications enjoyed the services of writers of adequate professional qualifications.”4 Stevens arrived in Romania at one of the most important points in that country’s history. But the trip 2. Captive Rumania: A Decade of Soviet Rule, ed. Romulus Boila (New York: Praeger, 1956), 14. 3. Desmond, Tides of War, 418. 4. Boila, ed., Captive Rumania, 256.

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into Romania wasn’t exactly an easy or straightforward journey. In his memoirs, Stevens noted the struggles he faced in crossing borders: • • • The only way to leave Sweden was via Germany or through the Soviet Union. My application for a transit visa through Germany was turned down. I applied for a Soviet transit visa, which was approved in due course. I flew to Moscow, and though I wasn’t supposed to break my journey, I managed to reach the house to see the Scotts who were still living there as well as my mother-in-law. I then took a train southward, heading for Romania. When we got close to the frontier, all of the railway yards were clogged with freight. The Soviet passenger train went as far as Tiraspol, which was then the border. From there one transferred to a little Romanian shuttle that took one across the Dniester River into Bessarabia, then still a part of Romania. But when I was about to board the shuttle, a guard touched my shoulder and said the commandant wanted to see me. He proved to be a colonel of the border guards. He told me my passport was not in order. My visa had never been signed, and sure enough, the signature was missing. He said I could not leave until it had been clarified. I was put up in a room on the second floor of the railway station, and they took all of my personal correspondence, which included photos I had taken during the Finnish War that aroused the colonel’s great interest. There were personal letters in English, French, and Italian that I was asked to translate. Fortunately, they proved innocuous. On the second day of my detention, the military attaché of the Bulgarian embassy, whom I knew personally, arrived on the shuttle from the Romanian side. I asked him to contact the American embassy when he got to Moscow to tell them I had been delayed on the border. I was not allowed to leave the station and look around the town, so I passed the time playing billiards with the border guards. On the third day, I was interrupted while playing and told to hurry up and get my luggage, as the train for Romania would be pulling out shortly. I took my suitcase and got aboard. I was never so glad in my life.5 • • • One reason for Stevens’s frustration at the delay is that he wanted to publish analyses of what he’d seen in Moscow in his short time there. While his memoirs recount only a brief stay, his June 1, 1940, dispatch, 5. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 79–80.

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written while he was crossing the Romanian border, indicates that in the few months he’d been away, significant changes had occurred in Moscow. He described Russia’s attitude about the war in this way: Russians continue to regard Nazi Germany as their chief enemy and to exert every effort for the inevitable day of reckoning. . . . Two severe ideological setbacks were administered to Soviet thought in the last nine months. The first was the pact with Germany, the second the Finnish War. . . . After an entire generation has been imbued with the idea that Nazis and Fascists are their bitter and most irreconcilable enemies, the sudden reversal made by the Kremlin caused tremendous confusion in the minds of the masses. Much harder to explain away and more detrimental to the Soviet ideology was the Finnish War whose flimsy provocation and crude pretext scarcely deceived anyone, even the most rockbound Communist.6

Stevens’s capacity for analyzing the Soviet condition through the eyes of commoners was a consistent thread in his dispatches. He ended this piece by describing a decline in the appearance and spirit of Moscow itself, comparing it to the city he first saw in 1934: The fault lies not so much with Soviet economy but with wartime conditions in Europe as a whole. The constant mobilizations, the military operations entailed by the occupation of Eastern Poland and then by the Finnish War involved great effort and dislocation which, for the time being, has destroyed for the civil population any benefits from the previous years of industrial progress and has flung the country back to 1933 as regards both consumers’ goods and living standards. But there is a certain ideological difference between conditions now and those in 1933 when this correspondent first saw the Soviet Union. Then Soviet hopes were riding high on the wave of enthusiasm that brought more to completion in the first five-year plan. People supported their burdens and privations cheerfully in the firm conviction that they were striving for and building a brighter future. But now those enthusiastic builders of the early thirties are a decade older. They have acquired families and children to take care of and the grind of cramped living quarters and meager budgets, the struggle for

6. Stevens, “Russians Look on Nazis as Foes Despite Pact,” CSM, June 1, 1940, 4.

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necessities and the pinch of penury have repressed their noble age and dulled their enthusiasm.7

While the life and perspective of the average Russian almost always served as Stevens’s first focus in his analyses, he consistently followed through with observations about Kremlin leaders themselves. American newspapers blasted Stalin for aligning with Hitler in a nonaggression treaty, but Stevens saw the pact in another light. In a June 4, 1940, analysis, he observed, The Kremlin leaders apparently made an agreement with the Nazis last fall because they knew they were in no position to fight Germany. At the time this caused surprise, both at home and abroad, where the real reason behind the agreement was not realized. For years people had said that though Russian economy as a whole was only hitting on three cylinders, everything was being sacrificed to defense and the Red Army was above reproach. Not even the purge, which swept away three-fourths of the Red Army’s staff of officers, could destroy this illusion. It was only shattered finally by the practical demonstration of the Finnish War, which proved that the condition of the Red Army, its leadership, organization and standard of efficiency, was neither better nor worse than that of the Soviet Union as a whole. The Kremlin leaders, to give them credit, were aware of this last August when they signed up with the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and dismissed the Allied delegation. They also apparently knew more than the Allies about the true fighting strength of the German Army.8

Edmund Stevens looked for opportunities to analyze Soviet thought and culture even while literally heading into a war front of another country. Despite Stevens’s frustration with the delays, he confided to one colleague a humorous exchange that occurred on the train into Romania. Monitor historian Edwin Canham wrote of Stevens’s travels, In those tense spring days of 1940, he made his way from Moscow to Bucharest on a slow postal train stopping at every station. The troops were moving. All express trains were canceled. His fellow passengers were 7. Ibid. 8. Stevens, “Russia on Guard against Nazi Hold,” CSM, June 4, 1940, 5.

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tremendously excited to hear that Ed had covered the Finnish war, about which they had been permitted to learn very little. An artillery colonel asked him, “What did the Finns think of our forces?” Ed replied in the words of Finnish General Wallenius, “The Russian soldiers are brave, the underofficers excellent, the commanding staff mediocre, and the generals rotten.” The colonel’s smiling commentary was, “Very neatly put.”9

This simple account by Canham reveals Stevens’s dedication to the common soldier and peasant of Russia, a characteristic that defined much of his World War II reporting. Stevens’s determination to put himself in the center of an unfolding revolution, his strong knowledge of world history, and his coverage of lesser-known battles also define his work in Romania. He wrote in his memoirs that he got to work the minute he entered Bucharest: • • • As soon as the shuttle reached the Romanian side, I was besieged by Romanian officials who plied me with eager questions. They asked me if I had seen anything suspicious on the other side of the border. I answered nothing in particular, save that there were many freight cars being shunted about. They said that they were very concerned and feared the worst. I went on to Bucharest and registered at the Hotel Attene Palace. The situation there was still fairly normal. King Carol was still in power. But people were waiting for something to happen. They didn’t have to wait long.10 • • • Neither did Stevens. He began filing stories immediately, assessing and analyzing the change coming over Romania. In a June 11, 1940, dispatch from Bucharest, Stevens wrote, Immediate strengthening of defense along the Yugoslav and Russian frontiers and calling of a special Crown Council meeting today supposedly to reaffirm neutral intentions are but Rumania’s surface reactions to the spreading of war to the Mediterranean. Beneath these visible signs that Rumania recognizes the increased possibility of conflict in the Balkans with Italy’s declaration of war, is a less apparent though deeper reaction. It is the heightened awareness among Rumanians that one

9. Canham, Commitment to Freedom, 301. 10. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 80.

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epoch in their history has closed and that another—still unknown— already has begun.

He concluded prophetically, “Eyed covetously by neighbors from three sides and with no friends to help it, Rumania must rely on the skill of its statesmen and the skill of its own arms to pilot the present heightened crisis.”11 On the heels of the Soviets’ demands came Hungary’s claim for Transylvania and Bulgaria’s determination to take southern Dobrudja. Within weeks, Romania lost one-third of all her lands and one-third of her citizens—nearly 2.5 million people who were scattered as far as the Soviet Union to the east and Germany to the west. The summer of 1940 brought to Romania a tragic series of events that Edmund Stevens covered as they unfolded. In his memoirs, however, Stevens recorded some of the lighter elements of his life as a war correspondent. • • • In June I had purchased a German DKW convertible, which I nicknamed “Deutch Kinderwagen.” It was a jaunty cream color with a twocylinder engine adapted from a motorcycle, and ran on a mixture of gasoline and oil, with front-wheel drive and surprisingly peppy. In it I virtually covered the map of Romania from Jassy in Moldavia in the North to Turnu-Severin in the South where Romanian-Hungarian negotiations concerning the fate of Transylvania were being held. My friends Lee Stowe and Indro Montanelli had both turned up in Bucharest in June, although Indro was recalled to Milan when Italy entered the war on the German side. He faced an uncertain future because of his outspoken sympathy with the British and critical attitude toward fascism. Russell Hill of the Herald Tribune had also come to Bucharest from Berlin. Cyrus Sulzberger of the New York Times popped in and out of Bucharest periodically, accompanied by his faithful dog. The Balkans were Cy’s territory, and he seemed to prefer Belgrade until it was overrun by the Germans. In the midst of the surrounding political and military turmoil, Bucharest in 1940 was something of a social oasis. Food was plentiful, and there was considerable fraternization between enemies. As German influence increased, the most powerful figure in Bucharest became Germany’s special economic envoy and former mayor of Vienna, Hans Neubacher. He and his attractive wife and 11. Stevens, “Carol Cancels Festivities as Rumania Speeds Defense,” CSM, June 11, 1940, 5.

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daughter entertained lavishly, and through them I became friends with Ernst Stinnes, the son of one of the wealthiest German families, who had been educated in America. We flew to Sophia and Athens in his private plane. Ironically, the day Paris fell to the Germans, I was lunching at the Yacht Club on Lake Snagov outside Bucharest where a large and seemingly carefree group of Frenchmen were picnicking.12 • • • But Stevens’s relaxation was short-lived, and starting the third week of June 1940, he began filing—in rapid fire—a series of reports regarding the fall of Romania. On June 22, 1940, he summarized the impending transition in the Romanian government and King Carol’s desperate, failing attempts to retain power and prevent a land grab from neighboring countries: Sweeping changes may be expected in Rumania’s national life following King Carol’s move yesterday to reorganize his government in a manner acceptable to the German Reich. The inclusion in the new “Party of the Nation” of the pro-Nazi Iron Guard is taken to mean that the King is prepared to put through a full Nazi Program. It is obvious that troubled waters lay ahead for this hard-pressed nation. The vast increase of Rumania’s territory through the Allied victory in 1918 is bound to mean that at every European peace conference where revisionism triumphs, the voice of certain of Rumania’s neighbors— especially Hungary—is more than likely to be raised against it. The degree of territorial and political integrity which Rumania retains, therefore, depends on how successful the Rumanians are at present in convincing the Reich that their survival accords with its interests.13

But King Carol received no assurances from Hitler, and Stevens’s dispatch of June 28, 1940, includes classic elements of war reporting: Again by the will of a dictator the tears of new thousands have been added to the river of sorrow that flows through Europe. As in Finland, Holland, and Belgium whole peoples are forced to migrate and to leave their homes all because the voice of the ruthless and strong for the moment prevails over the small. 12. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 81–82. 13. Stevens, “Rumania’s Pro-Nazi Shift Follows Berlin’s Pressure,” CSM, June 23, 1940, 2.

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Lacking all external support from the sources on which it had hoped to rely, Rumania has been forced to concede to the maximum Russian demands. The Russians are to occupy all of the Province of Bessarabia and North Bucovina in the course of four days. During this time the Rumanians must complete their evacuation. They are allowed to take out personal property, but machinery, as well as all fixtures in the houses, must remain behind.14

Stevens’s articles throughout this period stand up to historic scrutiny, and—consistent with his nature—Stevens’s most descriptive work once again focuses on the common man: Despite the bombshell development, shattering the quiet which appeared to have settled down on Rumania, there are no signs of panic. Last night the people demonstrated before the Palace their loyalty to the King upon whom they look in this hour of trial to pilot them through. The Royal Palace lights blazed far into the night as the King and His Councilors and Cabinet Ministers sought a way out of the dilemma in which the Soviet Union’s sudden demarche had placed the country. On the Palace Square little knots of citizens conversed in low tones, their eyes riveted on the lighted windows as though for clarity.15

Stevens provided his readers with a glimpse inside the palace with those “knots of citizens.” In early July, he reported the withdrawal of Romanian troops from Bessarabia and northern Bucovina, the advancement of Russian infantry all the way to the Prut River, and King Carol’s decision to gut his own administration in a desperate attempt to win Hitler’s assistance against Hungary’s demands for Transylvania. On July 5, 1940, Stevens sent the following dispatch: Not since the Germans conquered Bucharest in 1916 has any Rumanian Government faced more serious problems of national existence than the new pro-Nazi Cabinet which King Carol swore in yesterday. Composed almost entirely of people known chiefly for their German sympathies and affiliations, the new Government officially declared its intentions to give “sincere integration with the system created by the Rome-Berlin axis.” 14. Stevens, “Rumanians Join Refugees; Reds Order Quick Move,” CSM, June 28, 1940, 1. 15. Ibid.

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But the question of how and whether Rumania is to be admitted to the Axis family remains at issue.16

In a July 12 article, Stevens noted Hitler’s “Olympian silence,”17 and as the month of July progressed, Stevens reported the inevitable dissection of Romania and its populace, the likelihood of a German-Russian fight over Bulgaria and the handing over of the Romanian oil industry to the German war machine. He dedicated virtually all of August to the details of the Hungarian-Bulgarian-Russian land grabs against Romania. In some of the best writing of his memoirs, Stevens records his impressions of the final days of Romania’s devastation. Especially compelling is his account of what Hitler gained in his proclaimed “disinterest” in Bessarabia: ten of thousands of young Romanian men of German descent who would become, according to Stevens, little more than cannon fodder for the Nazi war machine. • • • One of my last trips in Romania was to the banks of the Prut River, which marked the new Soviet-Romanian boundary. Germans in field gray and blue-capped Soviet border guards glared at each other from opposite ends of a flimsy pontoon bridge. A few yards downstream the water swirled and eddied through a jumbled mass of concrete blocks and twisted steel girders, like a cubist painting of a railway bridge. It was three months since the Russians, at gunpoint, had forced the Romanians to hand over Bessarabia. The last Romanians to withdraw blew up the bridge behind them to make sure the Russians would not “forget” where the boundary was and keep right on going. From the Romanian side, I watched a straggling procession of little covered wagons crawling down the opposite bank toward the makeshift crossing. A Soviet guard was seated under a table in the shade of a tree checking a list as each vehicle stopped alongside until he motioned the driver on. Then, as each wagon in turn attained the middle of the bridge, its passengers bellowed a lusty “Heil Hitler!” and giddyapped to the Romanian side where they were received by the men in the field gray uniforms with the black insignia of the formidable S.S. All this because after the Soviets took possession of Bessarabia, Hitler decided to call “home to the Reich” Volkdeutsche farmers whose ancestors had trekked 16. Stevens, “Rumanian Pro-Nazi Rule Viewed as Trial Balloon,” CSM, July 5, 1940, 5. 17. Stevens, “Rumania Bids for Axis Favor; Hitler Silent,” CSM, July 12, 1940, 1.

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to this area from Saxony and Swabia two centuries ago. Now, in covered wagons, such as their forefathers had used, they were headed toward Germany. Like their cousins, the Baltic Germans, whom the Führer had transplanted the previous year, these Bessarabian Germans were to be settled on farms in western Poland, to till the soil, live in the houses, sleep in the beds, even eat off the dishes of the Polish farmers who had been either killed or driven from their homes. Small wonder some of those whom I talked with were aghast at the prospect. “It’s like taking something that doesn’t belong to you,” one of them told me in Russian, “suppose the owners come back one day, then what will become of us?” But it was too late for them to turn back to their own homesteads. For them the narrow pontoon bridge was a one-way street. Moreover, had they not chosen the road to exile by their own free will? According to the rules of the Nazi deal with the Soviets for evacuating the Germans from Bessarabia, everything was to be conducted on a voluntary basis. There could be no effort at suasion or coercion, no propaganda. Notices were simply to be posted in the German districts, informing the inhabitants that those who wished could immigrate to Germany, nothing more. To arrange the technical details, the Nazis were allowed to send in four hundred members of a “commission.” Their duty was to compile lists of prospective immigrants, getting them to sign on the dotted line, itemize and appraise their property—they could take along only a minimum of luggage. Together with the land and houses, the bulk of their possessions must remain behind. But each immigrant was promised an exact equivalent of what he had abandoned, once he reached his new place of settlement. Such apparent generosity would cost the Reich nothing as it was property taken away from the Poles. There was another even more important angle to the deal. The immigrants would include thirty thousand able-bodied males of military age— a valuable adjunct to an army that was being prepared for the attack on Russia, which was already in the cards. Born and raised in Bessarabia, they knew every inch of the frontier zone, and most of them spoke Russian in addition to German and Romanian. As each group of newcomers reached Romanian soil, the S.S. men deftly sorted out the prospective cannon fodder and marched them off separately to the bewildered eyes of their families. It was all done with assembly-line precision. Within the hour they were assigned to special barracks and were in a field drilling with broomsticks—the first stage in a process that was to turn them into cogs in the Nazi war machine, and after Hitler launched his invasion, many

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of them probably were to see their native farms and villages as parachute troopers or scouts with the advancing infantry columns. The S.S. men who had been sent to Bessarabia to bring out the German farmers had done a thorough job. It was reported that 99 percent of the colonists were leaving. Entire villages where most of the inhabitants had never been more than ten miles from home, packed up overnight and trundled off into the unknown. Again I was amazed at that German instinct, which I had previously watched in the Baltic states. At a word of command, hard-working, decent, intelligent people were transformed into a flock of unthinking sheep that would follow their leader into any precipice or any slaughter.18 • • • Within this excerpt from his memoirs, Stevens again steadies his journalistic gaze toward the common man—German, Soviet, Romanian, and Polish—while recording his impressions of a world consumed by war and political revolution. But Edmund Stevens had just begun his work as a war correspondent, and his next assignment took him into an even more dangerous line of fire—and pushed his bylines consistently onto page 1 of the Christian Science Monitor.

Greece In late August 1940, Stevens spent three weeks in Athens chronicling Greece’s hope to remain neutral while quietly mustering its forces in light of growing tension with Italy, which was amassing its troops in nearby Albania. Greek officials had suspended all foreign language newspapers and instead issued propagandist statements of its neutrality. “However, despite neutrality and rigid press control, there can be no doubt where the real sentiments of the overwhelming majority lies,” Stevens wrote in a September 4 dispatch.19 More than one hundred thousand dockworkers in the two main ports of Piraeus and Salonika (formerly Thessalonika) were idle in the disruption of commerce, and the lucrative tourist industry hit a standstill. “At the very time when the defeat of France and the cessation of military operations on the Continent removed war from the vicinity of other European countries, 18. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 82–86. 19. Stevens, “Greeks Watch and Arm to Defend,” CSM, September 4, 1940, 4.

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Italy’s entry brought the war to Greece’s very doorstep,” wrote Stevens.20 Historians generally agree that Mussolini saw Greece as an easy target offering little resistance. But, in fact, the Greeks defeated the Italian forces and, at one point, even claimed one quarter of Albania. Hitler eventually rescued his ally, and in the spring of 1941, Greece fell to Germany—not Italy. Many of these events Edmund Stevens reported for the Christian Science Monitor, covering more death—and coming closer to his own death—than he did in any of his previous ventures as a war correspondent. Stevens filed one of the most compelling analyses of the Italo-Greek conflict on November 13, 1940. He not only summarized the nature of the overwhelming flow of aggression against smaller nations but also addressed Greece’s tragedy in particular: What of Small States In ‘New Order’ of Axis? The Christian Science Monitor correspondent in the Balkans, from his long and intimate acquaintance of Russia, including actual presence in the Finnish fighting, and the Baltic States when they received Russia’s demands for naval bases, takes a broad view of the situation in Europe as it is developing today in two articles, of which this is the first. By Edmund Stevens Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Behind the record of battles and events there is a revolution of greater extent and purport than the world has ever known. In the red glow of burning cities, political and economic systems are melted down and cast into a new mold. Every corner of the globe is affected. All problems and issues of the modern world have been stirred up simultaneously. In the ensuing turmoil all concepts and canons which hitherto governed the relations between States have broken down. Treaties and international law have lost their meaning. All security has disappeared. The dividing line between the belligerent and the neutral has been swept away. Attacks on unoffending neutrals have characterized every phase of this war, which is a war of aggression in the fullest sense. Twelve Nations Involved To date Greece is the twelfth European State to be confronted with the alternative of fighting or surrendering its liberty without a struggle. 20. Ibid.

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Even those few States which still cling to the shred of neutrality are forced to agree to such un-neutral acts as the passage of belligerent troops through their territory. In the case of nine European powers, so far not directly involved in hostilities, it is impossible to speak of strict neutrality. On the Continent totalitarian dictators are busy expanding their sway at the expense of their fallen neighbors. Signor Mussolini, crowded out of his previous spheres of influence by his more powerful ally, starts his own war of aggression against Greece. This policy—the extension of totalitarian tyranny to the whole continent by the sword and “fifth column” tactics—is signified by the phrase, “the establishment of a new order in Europe.”21

Stevens distinguishes between the philosophy of neutrality and the reality facing smaller countries, especially those betrayed from within by “fifth column” tactics. At the very moment other European leaders were watching Greece’s dictator to see if he would “pull a Quisling,” Stevens answers the question with a direct analysis of General John Metaxas. In a September 18, 1940, dispatch from Athens, Stevens summarized Greece’s similarity to Norway as a significant strategic location for both Axis and Allied forces. He also recorded one striking difference in the Greek dictator’s determination not to emulate Quisling’s betrayal of Norway. According to Stevens, General John Metaxas “lacks the theatrical attributes and stage tricks of a dictator—he is neither a skillful orator nor an imposing figure—he increased his political stature considerably as a result of his firm stand during the recent crisis. Previously most of his countrymen had considered him pro-Axis and his actual behavior came as a pleasant surprise.”22 The following day Stevens reported that Germany was failing in its efforts to mobilize its “fifth column” because the resident German population within Greece was a mere three hundred. “The Germans are forced to operate through business connections and disgruntled local politicians whose loyalty to the Nazi cause is not always superior to their personal financial interest and ambition.”23 After a month back in Bucharest covering the German takeover of Romania and the repatriation of 150,000 German peasants from Russian-occupied Bessarabia, Stevens learned on October 28, 1940, 21. Stevens, “What of Small States in ‘New Order,’” CSM, November 13, 1940, 4. 22. Stevens, “Alert Greece Depending on British Navy,” CSM, September 18, 1940, 1. 23. Stevens, “‘Columnists’ Lack Strength in Greece,” CSM, September 19, 1940, 4.

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that Italy had attacked Greece, and he left to cover the battle. In his memoirs, he described the dangerous trip. • • • As soon as the Italian move was announced, Lee Stowe, Russell Hill, and I took off for Greece in the DKW. The going was fairly rough. The roads across Bulgaria were mostly dirt, and at one point we had to ford a sizable stream. The waters had been swollen by torrential rains and halfway across, the car stalled. Everything we had was thoroughly soaked, including our bags and the engine. It was pitch dark, but in the distance lights flickered. Leaving Russell to guard the half-submerged DKW, Lee and I took off in the direction of the lights. We came to a farm house and managed to explain our plight. Fortunately, it proved to be a family that had lived in California before repatriating, and they understood English. They promptly produced two strong oxen with the aid of which we managed to pull the vehicle from the torrent. But getting it to start was another problem. Our rescuers told us there was a sort of inn on a nearby hillside where we could spend the night and telephone for help to the nearest garage in the morning. We accordingly climbed the hill to discover that our accommodation consisted of straw matting on which a number of guests were already sprawled. We had no other choice but to follow their example without removing our wet clothes. Fortunately, the fall weather was still fairly mild. The only food available was some sour tasting cheese called brinza. In the morning we phoned the garage, and in due course, a mechanic arrived on a motorcycle. After tinkering with the engine, draining the water from the fuel tank, and replacing it with some oil-and-gasoline mixture he had providentially brought with him, we managed to get going. But our trip was hit with further mishaps. When we reached the Greek border, it was late afternoon, and darkness descended by the time we cleared customs. It was not just darkness but a total blackout, and we weren’t even allowed to use the car’s headlights. To make things worse, the road was crowded with traffic, not just cars and trucks, but also horse-drawn wagons and carts. As we were creeping along there was a sudden jolt, and when we got out, we discovered that we had crashed into a long stave sticking out from a peasant cart. It had pierced our radiator. We were stuck, especially as Greek to us was really Greek. At last a military car stopped with some officers who spoke French, and we managed to explain what happened. They asked us to come with them to the next town where corps headquarters was located and where

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we could organize some help. Again we left Russ to guard our things and took off. The general in command at corps headquarters was most obliging. He organized a car for us with a mechanic and driver and back we started. Again the blackout betrayed us. We were making good time, too good in fact, for suddenly out of the darkness the parking lights revealed a herd of horses. It was too late to brake, and the driver veered sharply off the road into a deep ditch. The car turned over, and for an instant we were totally stunned. Lee and I were in the backseat, and a few minutes later I heard him say, “Ed, are you alive?” I felt myself for broken bones but found none.24 • • • Stevens’s friend and colleague, Leland Stowe, wrote about their ordeal in No Other Road to Freedom. He described the end of their journey this way: The chauffeur had a nasty cut on the head and the officer an injured shoulder. We had to take them to the hospital in Serres and were relieved to learn that they would be able to go home in the morning. A garage mechanic worked all that day trying to put the cough back into the Agnes [Stowe’s nickname for Stevens’s car], but we couldn’t leave Serres until the following dawn. Then we had a continuous battle trying to keep a crawling spark of life in Agnes, and at last we reached Salonika at noon on November 3, having covered the seventy-five miles from the Bulgarian border in exactly eighty-four hours. The Italians had already bombed the centre of Salonika several times and there was plenty of wreckage and broken glass about; but we hadn’t been in the city two hours when the bombs were falling again.25

Stevens’s initial dispatch, printed November 8, 1940, summarized the drama of his own travels and the danger waiting in the major Aegean seaport city. More significantly, he successfully analyzed Bulgaria’s attempt to remain neutral in Italy’s determination to take Greece: SALONIKA, Greece (By Cable Delayed)—Arriving in Salonika after a long and arduous motor trip across the Balkans, two facts of immediate importance stand out. 24. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 87–89. 25. Stowe, No Other Road to Freedom, 223–24.

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The first is that the air raids on this city, which is the key to the Aegean, have been reasonably serious. The second is a diplomatic development. It is possible to report that Bulgaria is still definitely endeavoring to preserve its “neutrality.” Bulgaria is leaning toward the Axis. There is no doubt of the pressure which Germany is in a position to employ. But the little kingdom of King Boris remembers the poignant lessons of the last war and for this reason will not too swiftly again cast its lots with the Reich. Saw Raid On Salonika Thus, for the moment, talk of the use of Bulgaria as a “German corridor” to support the Italian invasion of Greece can be discounted. No one these days can read the future in terms of more than moments. One can only report the diplomatic position in Bulgaria as of today. I arrived in Salonika just in time for the day’s first air raid. The motor trip across a difficult Balkan country was made in company with Leland Stowe of the Chicago Daily News and Russell Hill of the New York Tribune. Bombs Land Near Hotel When we reached Salonika we were able to view the destruction caused by the bombing which started two days before. At Salonika’s best hotel, the Mediteranee, on the quayside, the concierge told us that all the guests left after one bomb struck the hotel. Three bombs landed just outside, shattering all the windows. The American Consul told us, “You had better get out of the city as the sky is clearing.” It was blue and the low hanging clouds had parted and Greece’s habitual blue sky was peering through. In the streets we saw people scurrying from town in all directions. We soon knew why. Mr. Stowe and I were in the only surviving restaurant ordering food when the sirens started. Soon we heard the boom of antiaircraft and then the approaching roar of airplane engines. Series of Explosions We stayed above ground watching until bombs began falling nearer. Then a series of explosions that rocked the building sent us scurrying cellarward. Later we found that a whole batch of bombs had landed 50 yards away. Soon we heard a commotion a block away. The policeman whose job was normally to keep people in shelters ran down the street shouting and gesticulating. We ran in the same direction and found the pavement close to the side of the building lay the blazing wreckage of an Italian plane. People unmindful that the danger from the skies was not yet over, were cheering wildly. Two additional planes, we learned, had fallen in the bay—three out of a total of six raiders was the score of the Greek anti-aircraft gunners for that raid.

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Many Convenient Targets There were two more alarms during the afternoon. The Italian Air Force with its Albanian bases only a half-hour’s flight away finds Salonika a teeming city of a half million a convenient target. The climate offers almost constant ideal flying conditions. Planes circle at a high altitude over the heart of the city before releasing their bombs. Yesterday, however, several bombs landed in a poor quarter. As we drove in we found the road crowded with people on foot, including many mothers with babies in their arms. These are the people who, even more than active soldiers, pay for the war on civilians. Despite the Italians’ overwhelming numerical superiority, the Greeks do not fear them, but despise them, especially as fighters, and are confident that they can cope with them. Whole Picture Changed Our motor trip to Salonika gave us the opportunity to observe the transformation from peace to war, changing the whole routine of living even in remote Macedonian villages. The once crowded cafe tables are empty, and everywhere the roads are filled with men and horses mobilized to repel the invader. And everywhere one is struck with admiration for the courageous determination of the Greeks to defend their liberty and soil in this war not of their own choosing.26

Stevens’s admiration for the Greeks is a constant theme throughout his dispatches, especially the soldiers, whom he seemed to admire even more than the Finnish troops he had encountered a year earlier. After filing this story, he got the car overhauled and took off for Athens. In the second week of hostilities, as Italian forces struggled unsuccessfully against the rocky terrain and their foe’s determination, Stevens compared the Italo-Greek conflict to what he witnessed in the Russo-Finnish War just eleven months earlier. In a November 9, 1940, report from Athens, he wrote, “For, as the Italians are doing at the moment, the Russians too stressed the problems of geography and climate. And both failed to understand the unexpectedly heroic, effective resistance by their intended victims.”27 Stevens reported that both Russia and Italy were misled by diplomatic reports that Finland and Greece, respectively, would capitulate. He described both the Finnish and Greek 26. Stevens, “Bulgaria Aloof on Axis-Greek Clash; Salonika, Old Roman Goal, Again Periled,” CSM, November 8, 1940, 1. 27. Stevens, “Italy Admits Difficulties in War on Greece,” CSM, November 9, 1940, 1.

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armies as steady, efficient, and willing to fight alone and to the last man standing. In the same dispatch, he also noted one significant contrast: The chief difference seems to be that whereas the habitually quiet and stoical Finns in wartime grew quieter, the Greeks retain their good humor and gaiety. Noticing our foreign license plate and general decidedly unGreek appearance, self-appointed sentries halted us at nearly every crossroads until our military pass became worn and thumbmarked. After convincing them that we were Americans and not spies or “fifth columnists,” their initial suspicion melted into friendliness and it was surprising how many Greek soldiers proved to have uncles or brothers in Detroit or Cincinnati.28

In a November 12, 1940, dispatch from Athens, he chronicled the victories of Greek forces over their invaders, starting with successes on two important fronts—the Pindus range to the north of the country and the Epirus region on the seacoast. He wrote, Judging by the report of Italian casualties and of prisoners and trophies captured by the Greeks, the Italian losses on the central front must have been catastrophic—one crack division of Alpini together with the supporting cavalry, artillery, and mechanized units. . . . Many were caught in a crossfire of Greek machine guns, and many others, including cavalry, perished in the swift waters of the Aoos River, which they attempted to swim. Several thousand prisoners were taken.29

By mid-November the Greeks had forced Italian troops back into Albania. In his November 15, 1940, report, Stevens noted, “Virginio Gayda’s indefatigable Giornale d’Italia attributes the failure of this first invasion to Italy’s insufficient preparations. This, even if true, would be a poor excuse from a military standpoint. . . . The conclusion which the world at large is likely to draw from the first episode of the Italian campaign against Greece is that Italy is far weaker militarily than anyone suspected.”30 Three days later, his Monitor dispatch from Athens began, “The most severe fighting of any that has taken place since Italy invaded 28. Ibid. 29. Stevens, “Greeks Repel Foe on Two Fronts; Raid by British,” CSM, November 12, 1940, 1. 30. Stevens, “Greeks Invade Albania—British Naval Coup Believed Severe Blow to Fascist Power,” CSM, November 15, 1940, 1.

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Greece has been in progress for the past 48 hours on almost every sector of the Albanian front.”31 The Greeks held the initiative, but their counteroffensive hit resistance as the Italians fell back to their own bases in Albania. On November 19, 1940, Stevens noted Greece’s plea for planes from its allies following a brutal attack for several hours by more than four hundred Italian planes against Greek troops as they advanced on Koritsa, a key city in southeastern Albania. Six days later, Stevens reported from Athens, “A squadron of Royal Air Force fighters, roaring out of the clouds at Koritsa, surprised the Italians in what may prove to be one of the critical air engagements in the Greek war.” He summarized, “Only 27 days after they started their joyride toward Athens, Benito Mussolini’s legions are back where they started from in Albania. They are traveling light after leaving behind guns, transports, and artillery for the Greeks who declare they have captured more war material from the Italians than they themselves possessed at the outbreak of hostilities.”32 He also recounted the attack in his memoirs. • • • In the weeks that followed, Mussolini’s blitzkrieg was hopelessly bogged down, and before the month was out, the Greeks had taken the offensive. Under the counterattacks, the Italian army retreated in confusion. The Greeks crossed into Albania, partly in tanks captured from the Italians. The capture of the important town of Koritsa yielded them quantities of Italian equipment including large artillery pieces, 20 tanks, 250 automobiles, 1,500 motorcycles, and large stores of ammunition, food, and clothing. Even the pro-Axis press reported that the Italian strategic withdrawal had degenerated into flight, comparable to the Italian defeat at Caporitto during World War I. The Italians ran so fast that the pursuing foe sometimes lost contact with them. Lee and I had joined the Greek advance in my DKW. After the capture of Koritsa, we even got ahead of the Greek vanguard and at one point had to shelter behind a house while Italian machine guns kicked up dust alongside.33 • • •

31. Stevens, “Il Duce Orders Greek Crushed; Italians Retreat,” CSM, November 18, 1940, 1. 32. Stevens, “Rumania in Axis; R.A.F. Turns Tide by Aid to Greeks,” CSM, November 23, 1940, 1. 33. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 89–90.

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In fact, Stevens and Stowe began traveling with the Greek forces on the Epirus front in early December, and they were observing a very successful strategy the Greeks employed against the Italians: “But under cover of darkness the Greek artillery comes into operation shelling Italian strongholds with great accuracy. Then, still under cover of darkness, the Greek infantry attacks with bayonet and hand grenade. This combination is almost invariably successful as Italian soldiers show little fight at close quarters and night action has largely overcome the handicap imposed on the Greeks by Italian air superiority.”34 Under the dateline “WITH THE GREEK FORCES IN ALBANIA,” Stevens’s December 4, 1940, dispatch described the steady stream of determined Greek soldiers pouring into Albania: “Day and night they choke the Italian military roads. Traveling through the war zone, one gets the impression that everything on wheels in all Greece, from busses to the last peasant cart, is rolling toward Albania.”35 On December 7, 1940, he reported the Greek capture of Santi Quaranta, a move that destroyed Italian supply and communication lines and gave the Greeks a significant slice of southern and eastern Albania. He described it as “a military disaster of first magnitude for the Italians. . . . As a result of the progress of those operations, Italy’s eventual complete loss of Albania, which seemed fantastic a few weeks ago, now becomes a serious possibility.”36 Throughout his coverage, he acknowledged the efforts of the Royal Air Force. On December 10, he summarized, No proper understanding of the Greek campaign is possible without some idea of what the British Royal Air Force pilots are accomplishing as day after day their bomber squadrons slash away at Italian airdromes fuel and munitions dump, and docks and harbor installations in Southern Italy and Albania. In the first stage of activity, extending roughly from the end of the first to the end of the third week in November, the RAF directed its attacks mainly against the ports of embarkation and debarkation in Italy and Albania, in order to disorganize Italian communications and hamper sending of supplies and reinforcements while giving the Greeks time fully to mobilize.37

34. Stevens, “Italian Fliers Bomb Undefended Greek City,” CSM, December 2, 1940, 5. 35. Stevens, “Greeks Pour into Albania in Rising Tide,” CSM, December 4, 1940, 1. 36. Stevens, “Greek Capture of Bases Major Rome Disaster; Italy Shifts Commands,” CSM, December 7, 1940, 1. 37. Stevens, “A Saga of the Skies: R.A.F. Aid to Greece,” CSM, December 10, 1940, 1.

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After this salute to the RAF, Stevens’s dispatches again focused on the bravery of the Greek foot soldiers and the destruction wrought by the Italian bombing raids. • • • We drove to Argyrokastron in southern Albania. The Greeks had entered the town without a fight on the heels of the retreating Italians. The town was intact until the Italian air force, as though to make up for lost time and ground, started pounding it. I recall the first air raid. Lee and I were sharing a room in the town’s one hotel, and he was at the typewriter in the main dining room doing a story while I went out with my camera to absorb local color. Suddenly, four Caproni bombers loomed from the horizon. Not having been bombed before, no alarm was sounded even though the Capronis were on a course that was taking them over the center of town. Before we knew it, there was a swoosh of dropping bombs followed by their explosions, and the next thing I knew I was thrown flat on my face in a doorway, which proved for me a lucky strike, as only a few feet away mangled corpses were strewn about. Picking myself up, I headed for the hotel to find the front of it blown off, exposing the interior rooms including ours.38 • • • Stevens’s December 23, 1940, dispatch from Argyrokastron, Albania, included more details about the bombing: The dining room chairs, table, and crockery were all flung about. On a table in a far corner stood Mr. Stowe’s portable typewriter, the solo undamaged object in all this chaos, looking extremely cool and selfpossessed with its paper and carbon copies. But the story was broken off in the middle of a sentence, and there was nobody around. I discovered Mr. Stowe on the square 10 minutes later just as the bombers were returning for a second visit. We dived into a nearby cellar just as bombs again crashed all around.39

Later, in the same article, he wrote, “Since the events recorded above, I have been crouching for 10 hours in a wooded ravine, while 200 Italian shells whistled overhead. Several times I was showered with clumps of earth. Once I heard a buzzing like a circular saw and stepped aside just

38. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 90–91. 39. Stevens, “Bombing Destroys Albanian City,” CSM, December 23, 1940, 1.

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as a sizable shrapnel landed at my feet. It was one of the most violent artillery duels of the Greco-Italian War.”40 He wrote in his memoirs of survival tactics, death, and the continued heroics of the RAF. • • • Thereafter, we were more careful, and whenever planes were sighted heading in our direction, we ran for the high ground that surrounded the town, which was nestled in the valley. From Argyrokastron we headed for the Adriatic coast opposite of the island of Corfu, in peacetime, one of southern Europe’s favorite vacation spots. Leaving the car on the mainland, we boarded a small launch that took us to the island where we spent a sleepless night punctuated by the roar of airplane engines and the crash of bombs. In the morning we inspected the town of Corfu, which largely turned out to be a mass of rubble emanating the stench of death. Air-raid victims numbered in the hundreds. As Corfu had virtually no strategic importance, I asked why so many bombs were being wasted on it. The answer was that when the Capronis took off from Bari on Italy’s heel across the Adriatic, Corfu was the first landfall and rather than fly farther overland and risk being shot down by antiaircraft batteries or fighters, the crews preferred to just dump their bombs on Corfu, then turn around and head back. The most effective protection from the Italian air force was provided by the British Royal Air Force fighters. The first day they appeared on the scene, they shot down eight Italian bombers, and the repute of the British flyers among the Greek civilians was such that when they learned a RAF squadron was in the district, it was enough to restore confidence and bring hundreds of people back to their homes after having fled in terror from the initial Italian raids. When the Greeks were pressing the Italians on the Koritsa front, the RAF planes were sent to bomb a bridge in the path of these reinforcements. They dove through clouds to their target, down to 350 feet, before releasing their payloads. The Italians were taken by surprise. Direct hits were scored on the bridge just as a motorized column was crossing. The bridge was completely demolished, but only one of the three planes returned to base. Faced with the simultaneous task of conducting war on two African fronts and defending the Suez Canal, the British Middle East Command could share only a limited number of planes and pilots for Greece. Yet in spite of everything, the RAF losses were small in comparison to those inflicted upon the 40. Ibid.

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Fascists. This was primarily due to the superior skill and training of the pilots. I met with and talked to them at the front and at their bases. Despite extreme youth, many were already seasoned pilots who had clocked hundreds of combat hours. They could discuss with authority the relative merits and drawbacks of Fiats, Messerschmitts, Savoas, and Heinkels compared with their own Spitfires and Hurricanes.41 • • • The day after Christmas 1940, Stevens reported “a Greek victory of the first magnitude” in the capture of Chimara, an Albanian city “regarded as the cradle of the Greek liberation movement.”42 Throughout the next several days, he was able to interview Italians held as prisoners of war by the Greeks—just as he had done almost a year earlier with Russians held by Finns. His reporting reveals his long-standing interest in the fighting men bearing the brunt of the war’s hardships. However, his account this time was anything but impartial or sympathetic to the Italians. He wrote, “I have talked with prisoners in Athens and at the front just after they had been brought in, hoping to find reasons for Fascist Italy’s colossal failure.” He described them as men who compare badly to the Greek Army, where the same unshakable morale and attitude towards the war is shared by all. Italian privates are loud in their complaints about the weather and the lack of warm clothing and sufficient food. Many cite these grievances as the reason why they surrendered. They say nothing of the fact that the cold is just as hard on the Greek soldiers who also stand day and night in snow with only crusts of break to eat and even worse equipment, so far as warm clothing is concerned, than their adversaries. Yet these Greeks go on fighting bravely and cheerfully.43

Like he did with Russian prisoners in Finland one year earlier, Stevens examined the nature and psyche of the Italians captured by Greek forces. The Russians fared far better in his analysis—as those who bravely carried out orders or faced certain death from their own superior officers. But Stevens’s thinly veiled disgust with the Italian foot soldiers was trans41. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 91–92. 42. Stevens, “Greeks Push On as Nazis Mass Balkan Forces,” CSM, December 26, 1940, 1. 43. Stevens, “Morale Emerges as Weak Spot in Italian Armor in War,” CSM, December 28, 1940, 1.

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formed into even more praise for the Greeks. Throughout his war correspondence, Stevens wrote more endearingly about the Greek soldiers than he did about any other fighting forces he witnessed in battle. Sensing that the battle could not last long, Stevens prepared to sell his car and move on to the next assignment—possibly even North Africa. He wrote in his memoirs of a rest-and-relaxation visit to the Isle of Crete. • • • Of the many trips to and from the fighting fronts, my little DKW did yeoman’s service. On our first arrival in Athens, it was thoroughly serviced and overhauled at a German car agency. At that time, though at war with Hitler’s Italian armies, Greece still had relations with Germany. The mechanics found quantities of sand imbedded in the fuel tank and axles—sand left over from our dunking in the river on our way through Bulgaria. Shortly before I left Greece, in January 1941, I sold it for as much as I had paid for it, about eight hundred dollars. My final adventure before leaving Greece was a visit to Suda Bay in Crete. With Cy Sulzberger, I boarded a Sunderland flying boat, and for three days we were guests of the British Naval Command at Suda Bay. We took time to tour the island, visiting the fabulous ruins of Kanossos, and drank rather too much of the excellent Cretan wine at the officer’s mess.44 • • • Stevens wrote about his flight to the island in a January 15, 1941, dispatch for the Monitor that had a dateline of WITH THE BRITISH FORCES IN CRETE. He reported, “I have just flown over here from the Mainland. Our plane was a big bomber transport with a long, lanky fuselage and broad wings spread like a dragonfly. Inside it was as roomy as a bar, with seats lining the walls like a subway car and ample storage space in its tapering tail. . . . After lunching on bully beef at the officers’ mess my companion and I started down the coast by car.”45 Omitting reference to his heavy drinking, he wrote instead about the strategic significance of Crete as a military base of operations. Two days later, Stevens filed a dispatch from Suda Bay, where he learned that Germany officially had entered the Italo-Greek War, the move that would force Greece under Axis rule by March. He began his account in the most direct terms: “‘The Germans have taken a hand in this show.’ These words explain the preoccupied look of the lieutenant commander, who is senior officer in 44. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 92–93. 45. Stevens, “Crete: A British Army Outpost,” CSM, January 15, 1941, 6.

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command of the port at Suda Bay when we called at his office the other morning.”46 Stevens understood that with German intervention, Greece soon would fall. Instead of returning to Greece, however, he negotiated with his editors to travel back to Romania, where he proved an invaluable witness to an especially bizarre and complex travesty unfolding in Bucharest.

Romania’s Bloodbath A most compelling inconsistency surfaces when examining the difference between Edmund Stevens’s scant treatment in his memoirs of his time in Romania in early 1941 and the actual significance of his coverage out of Bucharest. As in his assignments in Greece, Stevens demonstrates a growing strength in his ability to analyze the unfolding drama and violent realities of war—and the events in January and February 1941 in Romania were very violent, dramatic, and surprising. Ironically, though, while Stevens usually demonstrates in his memoirs an understanding of the significance of his own contributions and experiences as a journalist, that is not the case here. By all accounts, he was one of only two English-speaking journalists who saw firsthand the wholesale slaughter of Iron Guardsmen—a virtual gutting of half the military and political power within the Axis machine running the country—and yet he treats it as almost an afterthought in his memoirs. His published Monitor analyses of the events as they unfolded were as perceptive and accurate as any of his work filed to date for the Monitor. In a perplexing twist, however, Stevens seemed to either not understand or not care about the incredible value of his testimony regarding exactly what happened in Romania when the Iron Guard crumbled. Instead, in his memoirs he simply wrote, “In mid-January of 1941, I left Greece intending to go back to Bucharest where General Antonescu, who had ruled Rumania since King Carol’s abdication, was engaged in suppressing an Iron Guard coup.”47 In fact, he placed more emphasis on his surprise meeting with “Wild” Bill Donovan, a meeting that, in the greater scheme of things, was virtually nothing compared to Stevens’s deadly venture back into 46. Stevens, “Nazi Plane Raids on Convoy, Put British Navy ‘On Its Toes,’” CSM, January 16, 1941, 1. 47. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 93.

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Romania. Stevens simply noted in his memoirs, “The following day [after interviewing Bill Donovan] I boarded a Luftansa plane from Sophia to Bucharest. Among the other passengers I spotted one who definitely looked American. He proved to be a colleague, George Weller of the Chicago News.”48 The greater truth is that Edmund Stevens provided coverage of what a majority of scholars consider one of the most significant events in twentieth-century Romanian history—a showdown between two groups claiming Hitler’s favor in ruling the country. On one side stood the country’s new dictator, the right-wing, nationalistic General Ion Antonescu, and on the other side stood the ruthless, capricious, antiSemitic political organization known as the Iron Guard. A firsthand witness to house-to-house assaults and the slaughter of guardsmen by German troops, Stevens wrote of the unfolding bloodbath with his characteristic style and under what were becoming normal circumstances. Once again his life was endangered, but his language remained precise, and his observations were confirmed by historians forty years after the bloodbath. The story of Ion Antonescu and the account of the events in Romania from September 6, 1940, to August 23, 1944, were largely suppressed after the dictator’s execution in 1946, a fact that adds to the value of Stevens’s work. Not until after the December 1989 revolution did historians begin addressing Antonescu’s complex role in Romanian history, and when they did, the precision and accuracy of Stevens’s reporting and analysis became clear. In the fall of 1940, King Carol II handed control of his country over to Antonescu, the former Romanian minister of national defense, a career military servant who openly and bitterly hated his country’s monarchy and ruler. Antonescu established a dictatorship that appeared outwardly sympathetic to Hitler. His primary agenda, however, was the preservation and survival of Romanian society. According to historian Keith Hitchins, Antonescue accepted support from the Germans and the major political parties without in the least modifying his own conception of what the future Rumania should be like. He was, and remained, a nationalist whose goal was the creation of a prosperous, strong ethnic state, a respected middle-sized power carrying out its international responsibilities at the regional level in harmony with the broader European state system. He was also an authoritarian who was convinced, given the level of 48. Ibid.

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Rumania’s political and economic development and the dangers that threatened from without, that he could achieve his ends only if he assumed absolute control of the nation’s destiny. . . . Antonescue, the authoritarian, had no intention of accepting political and economic vassalage to Germany. To begin with, he was not pro-German. He was proFrench and pro-English.49

Hitchins’s observations, written in 1994, mirror the analysis Stevens offered in his January 24, 1941, dispatch from the bloody streets of Bucharest: Friction between Horia Sima [head of the Iron Guard] and the General was inevitable from the start. The General is a straightforward soldier of the old school with little sympathy for the hooligan methods and assassinations practiced by the Guardists. A sincere patriot, he hates to see the country being ruined by incompetent person whose sole qualification was membership in the Iron Guard, while hooligans proclaimed immunity and broke in and pillaged private homes so that no one felt safe.50

Romanian history portrays Antonescu as the lesser of evils when compared to the dictatorship of King Carol or the Iron Guard, a fascistlike, anti-Semitic, “Christian” organization formed from across social class lines in 1930. According to Hitchins, “Between the elections of 1931 and 1937 the Iron Guard became a mass movement, rising from 1 to 15.58 percent of the popular vote. Its strongest constituency was young and urban, but it cut across class boundaries, appealing at the same time to peasants and rural clergy, elements of the urban working class and the bourgeoisie, and the periphery of society.”51 When he took power, Antonescu created an uneasy alliance with the Iron Guard, which in the autumn of 1940 took responsibility for establishing the totalitarian state. As Hitchins documented, “It sought to rally the mass of the population behind the ideals of the national regime. . . . It organized public ceremonies of all kinds, many of which took on a quasi-religious character, and it rapidly expanded the number of its publications in an effort inundate cities and villages with its message.”52 In short, the Iron Guard infiltrated all levels 49. Hitchins, Rumania, 1866–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 452–53. 50. Stevens, “Germans Crush Romanian Coup of Iron Guard,” CSM, January 24, 1941, 1. 51. Hitchins, Rumania, 1866–1947, 405. 52. Ibid.

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of Romanian life by making extensive political promises of a better life in Romania for every citizen. It carried this message into urban settings, universities, agricultural villages, factories, and even churches. But in the few months it held power, the Iron Guard lowered a ruthless fist at all economic levels—extortion from business owners and farmers, outright hatred of Jews, and boundless ambition for control of police and military groups. The greatest atrocity committed by the Iron Guard—and the event that resulted in their suppression—came on November 26–27, 1940, and is known as the Jilava massacre. Members of the Iron Guard led an assault against politicians, policemen, and officials of the former Carol government—most of whom were imprisoned in Jilava, near Bucharest. Sixty-five men were killed, and Romania saw that the Iron Guard was out of control. Events came to a head the third week of January 1941, and Stevens arrived in Bucharest the afternoon of January 22 just in time to witness the unleashing of Antonescu’s wrath against the Iron Guard. His first dispatch included this summary: “The meager information that had come out of Rumania up to that time was vague and conflicting. We knew there was trouble, but the first inkling of what really was afoot we received when the bus, bringing us into Bucharest from the airport, took a circuitous route through the side streets and we heard rifle, machine-gun, and artillery fire coming from many directions.”53 He noted in his memoirs the problems he faced immediately after arriving in the city. • • • Weller and I finally managed to board a bus that took us to the Rumanian airlines office in town. But from there we had to make our way on foot for half a mile to the Athene Palace, which was the hotel. It was quite an experience as there were plenty of stray bullets to dodge. We finally made it, and after checking in, we sallied forth into the darkness to cover the story as best we could. We reached a point at which an electric trolley bus stopped, and we promptly jumped aboard. We discovered the bus was controlled by Iron Guardsmen whose assignment was to collect their own wounded. After half an hour of interviewing and helping the crew, we hopped off and were soon stopped by a government patrol that wanted to know who we were and what we were doing. They suspected that we were with the 53. Stevens, “Germans Crush Romanian Coup of Iron Guard,” CSM, January 24, 1941, 1.

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Iron Guard and appeared to be debating whether or not to shoot us on the spot, but after we produced identification they only escorted us back to the hotel.54 • • • Remarkably, this is his total account of Bucharest in his memoirs— except for the concluding sentence: “The following day I flew back to Sofia and boarded the Orient Express bound for Istanbul.”55 Before he departed Bulgaria, however, he filed two stories about the stunning events he’d witnessed. The first focused on the details of the slaughter: Germans Crush Rumanian Coup of Iron Guard Nazi leaders intervene to aid Antonescu Government after three days of fighting By Edmund Stevens Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor SOFIA, Bulgaria, Jan. 24—I have just arrived here by plane from Bucharest, Rumania, which has been cut off from the outside world for the past two days, after witnessing one of the strangest revolutions in modern history. For 3½ days Rumanians—Iron Guard Legionnaires and the regular troops—fought each other under the eyes of the German Army of Occupation. Stormy demonstrations were dispersed by lethal machine-gun fire. Public buildings were stormed. House-to-house fighting went on, reviving the scenes of the Russian revolution. Then, yesterday, on the third day of the fighting, the German Army, which hitherto had remained aloof, took a hand. By that time the Rumanian Army, with mechanized and motorized units, rushed in from the provinces and with German aid successively reduced the Iron Guard strongholds, using antitank guns, trench mortars, and light artillery as well as machine guns. The last Iron Guard resistance crumpled in the evening when two Guardists, who had been manning machine guns, toppled from the window of their post above the restaurant opposite the Telephone Building. But sporadic shooting by lone snipers and hoodlums continued far into the night while Bucharest and the whole of Rumania took stock of the casu-

54. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 94–95. 55. Ibid., 95.

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alties. About 1,000 Guardists are believed to have been killed while the Army and Gendarmes together must have lost an equal number.56

Stevens ended his initial dispatch with this account: “All through the night soldiers kept pouring into the city bringing with them tanks and machine guns and gradually clearing the streets but without attacking Iron Guard strongholds. For that they waited until dawn and then proceeded to reduce them one by one.”57 His second report attempted to answer the pivotal question, “What was Hitler’s role in the coup?” He went straight to that point in his analysis: While both sides [Antonescu and the Iron Guard] claimed and sought German endorsement as the real pro-German party, the Germans themselves kept both side guessing for all the weeks preceding the storm. Was it their purpose thereby to encourage anarchy so that eventually a harried and distressed civil population would welcome a German out-andout protectorate, or was it an effort to demonstrate the genuineness of “Rumanian independence” to a skeptical world? Events of the next few days should furnish the answer.58

The accidental journalist of 1938 had blossomed into a first-rate war correspondent—who possessed strong survival skills and who was resourceful in gaining access to military leaders and common foot soldiers, in avoiding censures, and in sensing where there was another campaign unfolding. Most significantly, Edmund Stevens’s success as a war reporter flourished because of the remarkable marriage of mutual agendas between an internationally recognized newspaper insisting on analysis and a man whose ego, nature, education, and training were wrapped completely within an agenda of cultural, political, and historic interpretation.

56. Stevens, “Germans Crush Romanian Coup of Iron Guard,” 1. 57. Ibid. 58. Stevens, “What Role Did Reich Play in Ruman Coup?” CSM, January 25, 1941, 1.

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Edmund as a young teenager.

Edmund, Nina, and Edmund Jr. in the late 1930s.

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Edmund as a journalist assigned to the British Eighth Army in North Africa.

Edmund in the late 1940s.

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Edmund (center) with Greek soldiers during the Italo-Greek War, 1940–1941.

The Wingate-Selassie assignment through Ethiopia, ca. early 1941.

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Stevens took this photograph of Haile Selassie in early 1941, the day he interviewed Selassie in Ethiopia.

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General Neil Ritchie addressing the press corps in mid-June 1942. Edmund is standing in the center. The reporters shown here are wearing army uniforms, and because they were often on the front lines with the regular soldiers, they also found themselves facing similar dangers.

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En route to cover the Kharkov trial in late 1942, Edmund (right) talks to Alexei Tolstoy (on left, in bandanna).

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Nina (above) and Edmund and his daughter, Anastasia (below), speak with Nikita Khrushchev at a Kremlin reception, ca. late 1950s.

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Edmund and Nina, each in their final years.

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5 Ethiopia with Selassie and Wingate

Stevens’s coverage of Emperor Haile Selassie’s triumphal return to Addis Ababa in May 1941 to reclaim Ethiopia from its Italian aggressors was, perhaps, his most adventurous writing throughout the war years, and it marked a distinct departure from his typical analysis. The most significant element influencing both his memoirs and his dispatches from this assignment is that his role changed from journalist to combatant, producing a narrative interpretation that maintained a Eurocentric perspective but did not have the same analytical clarity of his previous work in Europe. Stevens was very close to the subjects of his dispatches, especially the British fighting men, and that fact is reflected in both his style and his content as he transformed from a man observing their military campaign to a man fighting beside them. In the first weeks of 1941, he left Romania and then proceeded—via the Orient Express—to Istanbul. From there he traveled to Syria and then into Egypt. Stevens headed to North Africa, originally to cover the British forces but soon found himself in East Africa and Ethiopia instead. His assignment was to document the battles over British-occupied Egypt and Italian-occupied Libya. In September 1940, Italy invaded Egypt to begin a three-month occupation. In December, the Brits responded by not only forcing the Italians out of Egypt but chasing them well inside Libya and laying siege to the strategically and logistically valuable port city of Tobruk. The action ended just before Steven’s arrival.

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• • • My instructions from the Monitor were to go to Cairo and become accredited to the British forces, which I did after brief stops in Beirut and Jerusalem. When I reached Cairo, there was a lull in the western desert warfare, and I received instructions from Boston to proceed to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, to try to make contact with the British forces that had recently penetrated into Ethiopia. The heat there was almost unbearable.1 • • • Stevens accepted the new assignment for the Monitor in March 1941 to travel into Egypt and the Sudan to locate the enigmatic, slightly built, larger-than-life Selassie, Ethiopia’s spiritual and political leader, who was preparing to reclaim his battered and embattled country. The environment was as dangerous and rugged as any Stevens had yet encountered. Other journalists had either ignored the story or refused to navigate the hard realities of an equatorial jungle, and Stevens claimed an extraordinary exclusive. In 1936, after the brief Italo-Ethiopian War, Benito Mussolini claimed Ethiopia (Abyssinia), one of the few independent nations in European-dominated Africa. Typically described by historians as one of the episodes that paved the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations, when its decisions did not receive the full endorsement of its leading members. The Italians claimed Addis Ababa on May 5, 1936, forcing Selassie’s exile, and Ethiopia remained in the hands of Italy for five years. When Haile Selassie stepped back onto Ethiopian soil on January 15, 1941, with full military support from Britain, the mission was defined as a war of liberation, and the story would be, if all went well, both the vindication of Ethiopia and an immediate symbol of hope for the twelve European countries that had fallen to German, Soviet, or Italian aggression in the previous fifteen months. Despite Britain’s own strained war resources, it backed Selassie for several reasons: (1) Italy’s military was distracted elsewhere and was not well supported within Ethiopia; (2) stabilizing Ethiopia could add to the stabilization of northern Africa and strengthen Britain’s military interests there; and (3) Selassie was considered an emperor worthy of support because he had no rivals for control of his country, and his subjects were extremely loyal.2 1. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 95. 2. Christopher Sykes, Orde Wingate: A Biography, 241.

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Yet victory was hardly a certainty. On March 7, 1941, Stevens filed his first story from Khartoum about the early success of British troops in reclaiming Ethiopia: “Already more than a third of the older colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland are lost for Italy. . . . A considerable area of Abyssinian territory already has been cleared from invaders, and Haile Selassie again rules a large area. Somewhere in Gojjam, in a bend of the Blue Nile—the exact location is a closely guarded secret—the Negus has establish his temporary capital.”3 By the time Stevens reached Selassie, British troops had forced the Italians to retreat from the stronghold of Burye in central Ethiopia, but Stevens recorded in his memoirs the hard reality of the situation and that the British commander in charge of Selassie’s mission—Lieutenant Colonel Orde Wingate— doubted the likelihood of success. • • • Despite the initial successes, ultimate victory still seemed remote. Greece’s successes against the Italians had been wiped out when the Germans moved in, and at the same time England was being blitzed by the Luftwaffe. The bulk of Western Europe as well as the Balkans were controlled by the Axis. The United States was still neutral as was the Soviet Union. For the time being, Great Britain stood virtually alone against the seemingly victorious Nazi-Fascist coalition. Wingate was frankly pessimistic. He soliloquized, “Why are we now concentrating on East Africa? If, as I fully expect, we are driven from North Africa, the main British defense positions on this continent will be down here in Abyssinia.”4 • • • In fact, Stevens’s experiences in Ethiopia were right out of an action film: the reporter typically able to distance himself from most subjects in order to produce effective analysis actually became a combatant himself with a group of exotic, virtually uncontrollable warriors commanded by an unorthodox team of about fifty middle officers—“fearless fighters whose supreme enjoyment was to carry out daredevil exploits.”5 This entire band was headed by a controversial commander pulled from his last campaign for his extreme, controversial, and passionate military and religious views. This mismatched group was on a mission to 3. Stevens, “British Riddle Italian Empire,” CSM, March 7, 1941, 1. 4. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 101–2. 5. Ibid., 98.

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reclaim an entire nation while transporting the exiled emperor, and they faced the very real possibility of failing. They endured extreme heat in the daytime and plunging temperatures at night. They traversed a jungle path strewn with rotting camel carcasses, and they battled deadly diseases, including malaria, which almost claimed Stevens—but not before he and the controversial commander outwitted their formidable enemy at a crucial point in the military campaign and faced down a brutal Ethiopian prince also vying for national power. Understanding the events unfolding around Stevens on this assignment, one can almost see the actors on the movie set as Indiana Jones battles the evil aggressors to protect a sacred object (the ark of the covenant, the cup of Christ) from being destroyed or falling into the wrong hands. The similarities between the Harrison Ford films and Selassie’s return to Addis Ababa are, in fact, significant because of the similar religious implications. For the Ethiopians, Haile Selassie was not only their political leader but also their spiritual leader, and many of Selassie’s subjects viewed Wingate exactly the way Steven Spielberg viewed his character Indy: as a man uniquely selected and placed at the center of the action by God to vanquish the aggressors and reclaim the sacred order.6 To best understand the adventure as it unfolded for Stevens, one needs an introduction to Selassie’s place in world history and his complex, uneven relationship with the international media, some background on Wingate’s role in the mission, and a description of the different bands of soldiers fighting on behalf of Ethiopia.

Haile Selassie In the larger portrait of twentieth century world history, Selassie remains a mystery. Most biographies about him are largely generous in describing his able leadership, farsightedness, and wisdom. However, relatively little work offers serious critical analysis. As historian Peter Schwab observed in 1979, There is almost no scholarly work of a biographical nature available. Despite the fact that Selassie ruled Ethiopia for 58 years, few writers have attempted to analyze his leadership. Certainly, in analyses of Ethiopia he 6. Sykes, Orde Wingate, 248.

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is discussed and often at length. But the forces that made him tick, the personal and emotional feelings that were part of him, the man rather than the image, the particular flow of his existence have hardly been touched. . . . The protective shell that he surrounded himself with to successfully create the aura of noblesse oblige has prevented successful biography. The lack of a free, open press also stymied the accumulation of data. The media in Ethiopia during the reign of Haile Selassie always reported his daily meetings with Ethiopian or diplomatic officials, but never were permitted to print anything of substance. . . . Haile Selassie brought upon himself the inadequately and often purely sycophantic literature dealing with his life.7

And while the media inside Ethiopia struggled to print news of substance, the media outside of the country struggled to reach Addis Ababa at all. James A. Mills was the first Associated Press journalist to penetrate Ethiopia. He did so in 1930 to report the coronation of Haile Selassie; immediately afterward, he transferred to India to cover Gandhi’s struggle for independence.8 However, one portion of Selassie’s life received far more documentation—the period from 1935 to 1941 when Mussolini invaded and claimed Ethiopia, and Selassie was forced into exile. And history best remembers Selassie as the dignified, tragic prophet standing before the League of Nations in June 1936, whose words were interpreted as a prediction of the fall of Europe. His speech included an assessment of what he considered to be the greatest problem facing the League: It is not merely a question of the settlement of Italian aggression. It is collective security: it is the very existence of the League of Nations. It is the confidence that each state is to place in international treaties. It is the value of promises made to small states that their integrity and their independence shall be respected and ensured. It is the principle of the equality of states on the one hand, or otherwise the obligation laid upon small powers to accept the bonds of vassalship. In a word, it is international morality that is at stake. . . . At a time when my people are threatened with extermination, when the support of the League may ward off the final blow, may I be allowed to speak with complete frankness, without reticence, in all directness such as is demanded by the rule of equality as 7. Schwab, Haile Selassie I: Ethiopia’s Lion of Judah (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979), 32. 8. Robert W. Desmond, Crisis and Conflict: World News Reporting between Two World Wars, 1920–1940, 232.

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between all states members of the League? Apart from the Kingdom of the Lord, there is not on this earth any nation that is superior to any other. Should it happen that a strong government finds it may with impunity destroy a weak people, then the hour strikes for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment.9

Despite his plea, Selassie gained no immediate assistance from the League in 1936, yet he remained dignified in the face of overwhelming aggression and stood firm when fighting without allies. Four years later, the British government offered Selassie support in reclaiming his throne, and in the spring of 1940, Britain distributed arms and ammunition to nine chieftains throughout Ethiopia. When Selassie arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, on June 25, 1940, the news spread throughout his homeland. Historian Christopher Sykes noted, “When news of the Emperor’s arrival became known to his subjects, refugee recruits flocked to Khartoum in such great numbers that they rapidly became a new major problem of the [British military] Administration. There were no large enough barracks or houses, no arms to spare for them, no instructors to train them.”10 All early indications were that the British would have plenty of volunteers from within Ethiopia. The greater problem would be controlling them, but their dedication to the emperor was clear. Selassie’s control over the Ethiopian press combined with his dignity before the League and his formality with Western journalists during his years of exile transformed him into an inspirational figure—an icon of hope—for the European countries fighting the Nazis, Fascists, and Communists. Stevens, whose work would contribute to the image of Selassie as the dignified prophet and courageous victim of aggression, met and interviewed him at a remarkable and historic point in the emperor’s life—and the life of his nation. Stevens was one of many journalists who documented this period between 1935 and 1941 in Selassie’s reign. It should be noted that Stevens’s reporting contributed nothing new to history’s understanding of Haile Selassie but rather confirmed what had been written elsewhere. Capturing a snapshot of the returning king, Stevens heaped flattering modifiers on Selassie and wrote sto9. Haile Selassie, Selected Speeches of His Imperial Majesty, 1918–1967 (Addis Ababa: Imperial Ethiopian Ministry of Information, Publications and Foreign Languages Press, 1967), 304–16. 10. Sykes, Orde Wingate, 243.

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ries from Ethiopia with the consistent theme of larger-than-life jungle adventures.

Orde Wingate Enter Orde Wingate, the military commander whose innovative battle strategies in the Middle East in the late 1930s helped establish the groundwork for the creation of the nation of Israel. Wingate had a taste for adventures in the jungle and deserts, and his major military achievements occurred in Palestine, Ethiopia, and Burma. The technique of hitand-run counterinsurgency—penetrating enemy territory, bluffing greater force, and harassing with strategic bombing—became his professional signature. • • • At that time Orde Wingate, later posthumously known for his exploits in Burma as a general, was only a lieutenant colonel with local rank and was in charge of operations against the Italians in the so-called patriot area, with Haile Selassie in tow. He was reputed a gifted strategist who had first made his mark in Palestine, where he organized and led special Jewish night squads. In Ethiopia, he retained his preference for night operations. Many a time he personally led forays against Italian encampments, inflicted casualties, and melted in the dark before the surprised defenders could rally. To assist him in the difficult task of bringing some sort of discipline into the unruly mass of Ethiopian guerrillas of the patriot forces, Wingate had only a handful of fifty Europeans under him, and it would be hard to imagine a more picturesque group than this little band of white men in the back of beyond.11 • • • While serving in Palestine in the mid-1930s, Wingate converted to Judaism and wrote often about his belief that God had placed him in the Middle East to claim absolute victory for the Jews. His attitude and actions eventually forced his superiors to recall him to England and to order him to stay out of Palestine. In fact, Wingate was the Stonewall Jackson of the British forces in the Middle East and North Africa during the war years, except he was a Zionist Jew instead of a fervent Christian. Like Jackson, he was undistinguished and unnoticed much 11. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 97–98.

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of his early years in the military, but he proved himself as a gifted military strategist in the field, totally collected in the face of incoming mortar rounds, and as a man with an iron will in controlling his troops in battle. Like Jackson at Manassas, Wingate was a man utterly convinced that the battles before him were preordained by God and that he himself was carrying out God’s will, and like Jackson, he died before his war ended. Wingate was killed in a plane crash in Burma in April 1944. In late 1940, Wingate was sent to Ethiopia to lead part of the military operations, to serve as liaison between the emperor and British authorities, and to control the often unruly Ethiopians. Wingate proved ambitious and determined, winning the emperor’s trust in his military command and in his ability to carry off the dangerous and logistically difficult task of reclaiming the country while navigating the harshest environments. In Ethiopia, the terrain itself was Italy’s greatest ally. As soon as he entered the northern region of the country, Stevens recorded in Monitor dispatches the impenetrable landscape and the difficulty of capturing Keren: The reason why this British force has been held up by the Italians before Keren in Eritrea for so long—approximately six weeks—is obvious to any observer on the spot. Here the Italians occupy ridges overlooking all approaches. The narrow cut through which the road passes has been blocked with earth and boulders and any attempt to clear it brings the attackers within direct range of concentrated enemy fire. The Italians who have nowhere to retreat are staking all on their present desperate stand at Keren. Over 40,000 troops are concentrated in Eritrea and deserters report that the entire civil white population of the Eritrean capital of Asmara, including the women, have been mobilized for defense work. The attacking British troops also realize that one decisive encounter lies ahead before they can become complete masters of Italy’s oldest colony.12

He went on to describe the remarkable terrain: “An advancing army in this part of the world must expend far more effort in overcoming natural obstacles than in fighting the enemy. Gen. Sir Archibald Wavell’s 12. Stevens, “Rugged Terrain Helps Italy to Hold British in Eritrea,” CSM, March 14, 1941, 1.

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army in Libya had the desert, the Greeks in Albania the mountains to contend with. The troops in Eritrea have both. Tropical heat is as formidable in its way as winter cold was in Albania.”13 Of the four hundred miles between Khartoum and Keren, Stevens wrote, “For the first 300 miles, as far as the Eritrean border, there’s no real road—only wheelcuts across the desert, where hard even surfaces alternate with stretches of soft, loose sand in which the wheels skid and engines overheat.”14 In his memoirs, Stevens also summarized his struggles to gain access to the emperor. • • • My main goal was to join up with Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, who had already entered Ethiopia through the backdoor as it were and was now camped in the former Italian stronghold of Burye, south of Lake Tana. Through inquiries I found that a column of twelve heavy-duty Ford Canadian trucks was scheduled to be taken through the bush to link up with and provide transportation for what was known as Gideon Force, commanded by Orde Wingate. Its purpose was to provide transportation and protection to the emperor. The escort consisted of a crack company of the Sudanese Camel Corps, commanded by a French Canadian, Bimbashi (Colonel) Louis LeBlanc. When I applied to join him, he asked me if I could drive. When I said I could, he accepted me. The members of the Sudanese Camel Corps company, who numbered about twenty-five, had been handpicked for their intelligence and physical fitness; their mere appearance inspired confidence. I soon became fast friends with them and spelled them at the wheel of one of the trucks as we drove south from Khartoum on good roads along the Blue Nile through the lush cotton country of Wad Medani and Sennar to Roseires, which was our final contact with civilization. The main establishment was a large general emporium, owned and operated, like many stores in the African bush, by a thrifty enterprising Greek. Many of his customers wore little more than loin cloths, and some had rings in their noses. Before taking off on our next lap, we extensively depleted his stocks.15 • • • 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 96–97.

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In an April 11 dispatch in the Monitor—entitled “An Epic in Ethiopia: Man against the Jungle”—Stevens included additional details about this part of his trek and explained that during this journey The only other white person on the trip besides myself was the official War Office photographer. We had with us about 40 Sudanese members of the Sudan defense force, including drivers, mechanics and two machine-gun units. . . . On land to coax our 12 motortrucks with their ammunition loads across 350 miles of roadless country took us 20 days during which we were completely cut off from the news of civilization. We crossed deserts, forded rivers, climbed mountains, cut our way through thick bamboo, experienced the extremes of heat and cold, drought and torrential rains. After leaving Rossaires, 350 miles southeast from Khartoum, we traveled for 200 miles through intensely hot semiarid lowland where sunscorched vegetation struggled to survive until the rains begin. We passed native villages abandoned because their wells had dried up. Yet the country supported abundant game. Daily we encountered gazelles, antelopes and warthogs. Frequently we saw tracks of giraffes and elephants. Sometimes we came to running rivers whose banks were crowded with lush tangled vegetation. Running shallows linked deep quiet pools where rhinoceroses and crocodiles splashed, and waterbucks, lions and leopards came to drink at early dawn. At night hyenas wailed plaintively just beyond the range of the campfire.16

This first-person travel guide is vastly different from the political analyses he produced throughout Europe. • • • From this point on we literally had to cut our way through the jungle. We followed a trail that had been used by convoys of camels. The camels, which thrived in the desert, were totally out of their element when it came to climbing the steep, rocky, thickly wooded terrain, infested with flies and mosquitoes, and other poisonous insects. The result was a high mortality rate. The route was virtually lined with dead camels in various stages of decomposition. When we camped for the night, the stench was often overpowering.17 • • • 16. Stevens, “An Epic in Ethiopia: Man against the Jungle,” CSM, April 19, 1941, 1. 17. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 96, 97.

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In this passage, Stevens is referring to thousands of dead camels along the route. According to Sykes, Before leaving Cairo, Wingate had obtained a million pounds credit for the Ethiopian rebellion. Strengthened thus he set about his new-broom task with violent innovation and energy, and his first business was to obtain transport in accordance with the terms of the Eden agreement with Haile Selassie. There was an irremediable scarcity of motor transport and there were too few horses and mules in the Sudan to solve the problem that way; but there was abundance of camels. So with characteristic logic and directness Wingate bought camels in the vast numbers that he needed for the transport of war equipment from Khartoum to the Ethiopian frontier. He was given authority to buy up to 25,000 camels and according to his transport officer, the eminent scholar, William Allen, he bought 18,000. Of these (according to official records) 15,000 were used in the campaign. Not one of the unfortunate beasts that went into Ethiopia survived more than six months.18

Stevens described the great final push to reach Wingate in his memoirs. • • • We inched our way up the three thousand–foot escarpment toward the central Ethiopian plateau. With the help of local natives’ labor, hired or dragooned, we pulled ropes hitched to each truck in turn. It was slow going and some days we barely made a hundred yards. It took us all of two weeks to finally make the plateau and its road network, constructed by the Italians. Thereafter, in short order, we linked up with Wingate at Burye and Gideon Force by mid-March.19 • • • In his April 14 Monitor dispatch, Stevens explained what he discovered in the next phase of his trip: The plateau country was more populous. We were now in the Amharic country and the Habashi or Abyssinian, though dark-skinned, is utterly unlike the purely Negroid races. His complexion instead of the uniform coal black as among his Gommos and Galla neighbors includes all shades up to light chocolate. His build is slighter, his carriage graceful and erect. His features are 18. Sykes, Orde Wingate, 246. 19. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 97.

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usually delicate and his lips thin, thus testifying to a strong Semitic and European strain. Wherever we camped people would come down from near-by villages and gaze in wonderment at our incredible contraptions. Several times I saw them edge up to a motortruck and then diffidently stretch out their fingers, touch the fender and quickly draw away again. They would also peddle their poultry, eggs, butter and onions—their only farm produce. We would bargain and pay them with shiny new Maria Theresa thalers minted in Bombay. But they preferred payment in kind to coin. They were especially eager for cloth and clothing or any type of vessel or container. Some of our provident Sudanese had brought along a few yards of bright calicoes which they sold handsomely. Empty gasoline cans and cans of any sort were at a premium. I exchanged a used razor blade for two fresh eggs.20

Stevens’s narrative voice is distinctly Eurocentric. Threads of colonialism, white superiority, the strangeness of dark skin, and the acceptance of slavery are visible in the fabric of both his memoirs and his published dispatches alike when describing both the citizens of Ethiopia and the troops serving Selassie and Wingate. It should be noted that slavery was an accepted practice in Ethiopia during this period. Through Stevens’s descriptions of the troops, the reader gets the image of British and colonial men as larger-than-life characters, while those from Africa are described as exotic tribesmen or groups that Stevens, Wingate, and perhaps even Selassie himself viewed as something less than fully human. The clearest explanation for these evaluations of the men’s worth seems to be Stevens’s own transformation from journalist to British combatant, and it is a role he took on almost from the moment he stepped foot onto African soil and made contact with the British pilots who were conducting bombing raids in northern Ethiopia. • • • After I had presented my correspondent credentials to the British, I was flown to join the British force advancing into the Italian colony of Eritrea on the Red Sea. In the course of a two-day visit, I flew twice in the cockpit of a small biplane over the city of Keren, which was the immediate British objective. On the second flight, we took along a

20. Stevens, “An Epic in Ethiopia,” 1.

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garbage can packed with explosives that we dropped into Keren’s main square.21 • • • Stevens’s account leaves the reader wondering if Stevens himself released the bombs. What is certain is that he clearly saw himself as a combatant throughout this campaign. It also becomes clear that Stevens related completely to the white British officers but saw the African-born soldiers in a different light. In his first article from Ethiopia, he compared the opposing forces battling over Ethiopia to the landscape itself: Between the sun-parched Eritrean Somali desert are the lofty mountains and wild gorges of Northwestern Abyssinia, along the Kenya border are dense tropical jungles. No less varied are the forces participating. In Eritrea regulars from England, Scotland, and Wales are fighting side by side with “FuzzyWuzzies” (Sudanese native soldiers), Indians, Cypriots, and Free French. West Africans, South Africans, and Indians are operating on the southern sector, while in the center and far interior behind the Italian lines Abyssinian patriots are rallying to their Emperor’s standard. Opposing them are native Eritrean Ascaris, officered by Italians, Fascists regulars, and conscript Abyssinians. Though the Ascaris are inferior to the Sudanese troops, they are better than the Italian regulars. The Abyssinian conscripts are the most unreliable from the Italian standpoint, showing constant tendency to desert and join the patriots.22

Before him stood a mix of humanity from as far north as Scotland and as far south as the lower tip of South Africa. He described Selassie’s army in flattering terms such as “patriots rallying to their emperor’s standard.” But he fell prey to stereotypes. In both his memoirs and his dispatches, Stevens judged the African-born troops by rating one group against another but described all of Selassie’s white-skinned fighters in flattering terms. One example is his description of the British officers with special training in western Africa campaigns—men Stevens referred to as the “New Colonel Lawrences”: They are eminently suited to their unique roles, combining expert military training with a thorough knowledge of the country and the peo21. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 95–96. 22. Stevens, “British Riddle Italian Empire,” 1.

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ple. They are among the few Europeans who possess a fluent command of Amharic, Ethiopia’s national language. Future generations will read of the extraordinary exploits of these heroes, who for the present remain unnamed. They have led expeditions far into the interior—almost to the very gates of Addis Ababa—to parley with native leaders and recruit new supporters for the war of liberation. They carry out daring acts of sabotage upon Italian outposts, destroying supply columns, collecting information, and striking terror into the Italians. Often at night they creep within a few hundred feet of Italian encampments and shoot off flares to light up a target for RAF bombing and machine-gunning. This harassing is far more important for its psychological effect than for the material damage inflicted. It keeps the Italians constantly on edge, wearing down their already shaky morale.23

Stevens’s disparaging attitude toward the Italian military remained the same in Africa as it had been in Greece, and his admiring view of British troops in general, and the RAF in particular, also remained steady throughout his reporting from Ethiopia. On March 11, 1941, in an article with the dateline “WITH THE ADVANCED ROYAL AIR FORCE IN ERITREA,” he began, From sunrise to sunset advance units of the Royal Air Force and South African Air Force, closely co-operating with land units, are hammering away at Italian resistance on the Keren front here. Their greatest achievement has been the virtual annihilation of the enemy air force. It has been two weeks since any Italian aircraft has been seen on this front. Even RAF pilots returning from raids far behind the enemy lines report no aircraft opposition. Although the moon is nearly full, expected Italian night raids so far have failed to materialize.24

Stevens’s love of the RAF became more clear throughout his Ethiopian dispatches, and in his memoirs, he recorded similar impressions of Wingate’s middle officers. • • • Like Wingate himself, they had volunteered for the job. Like him they belonged to that category of romantic Anglo-Saxon whose love of 23. Ibid. 24. Stevens, “RAF Drives Enemy Fliers from Air on Eritrean Front,” CSM, March 11, 1941, 1.

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adventure and the bizarre had rebelled against the conventional propriety of their race. They were fearless fighters whose supreme enjoyment was to carry out daredevil exploits. Some of the officers were from England, and others were colonials. There were several lieutenants from famous regiments such as Life Guard and Black Watch. The Ethiopian regulars, of which there were two battalions, were mainly commanded by men from Kenya and a score of two-fisted Australian sergeants who tried to make soldiers out of them. These sergeants were by far the most picturesque of the lot, big hulking men, hard as nails with luxuriant red and blonde beards and steely eyes under their slouched hats. Like their fellow countrymen with the Eighth Army in Egypt, these Australian sergeants had scant respect for rank or station. I recall one occasion when a new major arrived fresh from GHQ with the mail plane. After inspecting him with an appraising eye from the tip of his well-polished boots to his immaculate pith helmet, one sergeant commented, “By the time we get through with him, he’ll be one little ball of muscle.”25 • • • By contrast to the British and colonial commanders, in his memoirs Stevens described the Ethiopian soldiers in far more exotic and foreign terms, with his greatest praise going to the Sudanese. • • • The regular field forces at Wingate’s disposal were also incredibly small. One Sudan Defense Force battalion was the core of his little army. For loyalty, courage, and intelligence, they were the finest of all African troops. Besides the so-called regulars, there were the irregular bands of Degach Mangasha and Degach Nagash, two young Ethiopian nobles who had raised the standard of revolt against the Italian conquerors and had been fighting them ever since in the backcountry. Then came various groups of warriors under tribal chieftains and finally the “Shufta,” a fluctuating armed riffraff who no one really trusted though they terrified the Italians as they had a reputation for using scrotums as tobacco pouches.26 • • • In Stevens’s account, the African soldiers range from merely unruly to something distinctly subhuman. In an April 16, 1941, dispatch titled “Selassie’s Fighters: Brave But Primitive,” he summarized, 25. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 98–99. 26. Ibid.

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A motley, never-ending stream of wildly picturesque humanity flows along the Italian motor highway leading here from Burye. Men of every age and hue from light brown to ebony travel by horseback, mule, donkey or on foot, depending on their wealth and station. Contingents of from 50 to 100 surround their chief, who is easily recognizable because he’s better mounted than the others and usually wears a battered European felt hat and carries a parasol while a boy follows him carrying two rifles. The majority of the men have rifles, which include every known make and vintage. An Abyssinian prizes his rifle above all other possessions, not only as a weapon but as a mark of social standing, and the news that Springfield rifles were being issued to those who agreed to serve the Emperor proved the greatest stimulus to recruiting. Those less fortunate who arrived with only their aboriginal spears were especially eager to join the Negus’ forces.27

Stevens saved his harshest words for the Abyssinians, and he offers a view supported by both Wingate and Selassie: The average Abyssinian warrior, although quite fearless, hasn’t the remotest conception of organization or discipline. He fights when he feels like and goes where he chooses, being a complete individualist. The only authority he respects at all is his own local chief. But the latter, too, is accustomed to acting independently. Fights among groups aren’t infrequent and even normally there’s an excessive amount of “joy shooting” around any Abyssinian camp. For Abyssinians, loot traditionally has been a major item in warfare and anything they can’t use they destroy. This has resulted in the wanton loss of valuable materials left behind by the Italians, including, fuel, food supplies and machinery. To check anarchy and develop a disciplined regular army from such raw material is the hardest task confronting the patriot movement. It is largely an educational process which requires much time and painstaking effort.28

Stevens elaborated in his memoirs another problem with one particularly unruly group of Abyssinians. 27. Stevens, “Selassie’s Fighters: Brave But Primitive,” CSM, April 16, 1941, 1. 28. Ibid.

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• • • Even after we had linked up with the Gideon Force at Burye, our personnel kept control of the twelve trucks, and otherwise we retained our separate identity. We arranged the trucks in a circular position, radiators pointing outward, and bivouacked in the center with our tents, sleeping bags, galley, and provisions and other gear. “Going to the toilet” was something of a problem as it involved venturing outside our tight little compound to a convenient bush. Bullets from joy shooting by the Shuftas, especially after dark, pinged uncomfortably close. When I complained to Wingate of this hazard he answered without hedging, “Haven’t you some sten guns?” I answered in the affirmative, adding that we also had a machine gun. He advised, “Anytime that they bother you just fire a packet in their direction.” Luckily, we had no occasion for this, somewhat to the disappointment of our Sudanese, who had no love for the “Habashi” [Arab for Ethiopians]. The concentrated clots of humanity in the area generated immense amounts of sewage and garbage, which nobody took the trouble to dispose of. When the wind blew in the wrong direction the resulting stench was as overpowering as that from the dead camels on the way up the escarpment. Because of this the various groups kept moving their camps and thereby polluting additional areas.29 • • • While Stevens characterized the Ethiopians as subhuman, the RAF pilots he encountered before meeting up with Wingate were brave and daring in their “virtual annihilation of the enemy air force.” Stevens saved his greatest praise for the moody and often dark-spirited Wingate, who clearly valued Stevens’s company in the Ethiopian campaign. When writing about Orde Wingate in his memoirs, Stevens focused on his own role as the commander’s confidante, translator, and willing coconspirator against the Italians and on Wingate’s personal quirks. • • • I soon became close friends with Wingate, partly because of my Italian background, which practically made me his personal confidante. He bestowed on me the “assimilated rank” of captain, and I soon got to know the idiosyncracies of his original and somewhat eccentric personality. Though punctilious with regard to discipline and the personal appearance of his aides and the troops under his direct command (they 29. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 99–100.

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had to pass inspection every morning), he was less exacting of himself. His own appearance was often disheveled with bristle on his chin. A sloppy shirt often protruded from under a weather beaten bush jacket and his pith helmet had seen better days. Oddest of all was his timepiece. He wore no wrist watch or pocket watch. Instead he carried around a large, tinny alarm clock and, when seated, placed it on the table in front of him where it ticked away loudly. Its alarm had a way of going off suddenly. It reminded me of the alarm clock swallowed by the alligator in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. He was extremely fond of crouching on his haunches and rocking back and forth while singing Hebrew ballads. Wingate was extremely set in his ideas, especially when it came to military strategy and his almost fanatical devotion to the Jewish cause in Palestine. This had brought him into open conflict with Sir Archibald Wavell, at that time the British commander in the Middle East, who had banned Wingate from Palestine. It was shortly thereafter that, at Wavell’s initiative, planning began for operations against the Italians in Ethiopia. By the time Bimbashi LeBlanc and our trucks reached the central plateau, Gideon Force had its initial successes by forcing the Italians to retreat from Burye. It was there that I first met Wingate and soon afterward the emperor.30 • • • It must be noted that Stevens does not write about the darker side of Wingate that other men observed during this military campaign— which stemmed from his long-standing anger over being ordered out of the Palestine campaign by his superiors. As Sykes wrote, during this period, Wingate’s “impatience and embitterment sometimes came near to destroying him.” He summarized, during the whole of this Ethiopian chapter of his life, he became like a caricature of himself. The reason seems clear. Though he never said so in plain words, the evidence is strong that the order against his revisiting Palestine inflicted so deep a wound that during many months after his sentence of exile (for it was that) he lived in a state of utterly selfinjurious embitterment. His many attractive qualities went into eclipse, only appearing fitfully, while at the same time the harshness, the impatience, the angry intolerance and the play-acting became emphasized as never before or after. . . . He is only understood at this time if it is remembered that he was passing through a dark period of the mind and spirit, 30. Ibid., 100–101.

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and it tells much about his authentic strength that his suddenly prominent faults of character never seriously threatened his enterprise.31

But Stevens noted none of the darker gremlins within Wingate’s personality, and, in fact, the British commander clearly came to rely on Stevens’s skill as a translator and problem-solver. In his memoirs, Stevens also sided with Wingate in the commander’s ongoing battle with his superior officer, D. A. Sandford. • • • I soon discovered that there was incredible infighting and intrigue within the leadership of Gideon Force, small as it was. The main conflict of authority was between Wingate and Daniel Sandford who was British consul in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, in 1914 and adviser to the government before the Italian occupation in 1936. Sir Archibald Wavell had appointed him as political adviser with the rank of brigadier general, and thereby he outranked Wingate. When I asked him about the division of responsibilities between them, he answered, “Orde makes decisions and I approve them.” He displayed his character one day when we were traveling on our trucks in convoy from Burye to Dambacha, a fort just vacated by the Italians. Sandford rode in the head truck, which was kicking up an enormous cloud of dust in its wake. I was in the second truck driving the emperor who objected to the dust and asked that we move to the front of the column. When I signaled a stop and conveyed the emperor’s wishes to Sandford, the latter haughtily answered, “Tell his majesty that I am personally responsible for his safety and I cannot let him head the column lest the road be mined.”32 • • • Historians typically described the well-known fight between Sandford and Wingate as a fairly even grudge match between two well-established officers: Wingate was appointed with the rank of lieutenant-colonel and his function was “commander of the British and Ethiopian forces serving with the Emperor in the field”; Sandford was appointed political and military adviser to the Emperor with Chapman Andrews as his assistant. Wingate was to consult the Emperor through Sandford and obtain the adviser’s agreement on all military projects. It was a most unfortunate arrangement 31. Sykes, Orde Wingate, 249. 32. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 102.

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such as could hardly have worked even with born committee-men. It never began to work with these two. Inevitably they encroached on one another’s functions from the beginning to the end.33

Interviewing Selassie Shortly after connecting with Gideon Force and Wingate, Stevens interviewed Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. • • • Soon after my arrival I interviewed Emperor Selassie whose camp was in a pleasant ravine on the banks of a winding brook. Tall acacia trees offered shelter alike from the burning equatorial sun and the prying eyes of enemy planes. Near the royal tents were those of his suite and confidants. Beyond the intimate circle were the nobles and chieftains whose distance from the emperor’s tent was in inverse proportion to their importance. After considerable wandering, I found the emperor’s tent, and he received me immediately. He was seated at a small table with a red velvet cover devoid of any object on it save his majesty’s exquisitely shaped hands. The fingers beat a light inaudible tattoo as the owner recalled events of the recent past. Though he spoke fluent French and adequate English, Haile Selassie, for purposes of interview, preferred his native Amharic. An American college-educated Ethiopian translated. He recalled his resistance to Italian aggression and his subsequent years of exile and voiced the guarded hope that foreign capital would aid in developing his country’s vast natural resources. He even talked about instituting some sort of constitutional government. Little did he then foresee the sad fate that awaited him when he would be violently overthrown and hounded to his death. After the interview ended on a hopeful note, I picked my way back to my own camp on a horse lent by his majesty and escorted by members of the imperial bodyguard in the gathering dusk.34 • • • Stevens elaborated on his interview with Selassie in his April 14, 1941, dispatch for the Monitor: 33. Sykes, Orde Wingate, 262. 34. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 102.

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The Italian conquest of Abyssinia, said the Emperor, was the first move in a long series of aggressive acts by dictator powers against weaker nations whose main product was the present calamitous situation in Europe. Foresaw Italy in War He recalled his own statements made at Geneva after his country’s conquest warning other countries that they would be victims. He mentioned briefly his own sad years of exile when he clung to his faith in his country’s resurrection. From the outset of the present war, the Emperor stated, he had been sure that Italy would be involved. Accordingly, he submitted to the British Foreign Office a plan of action and asked for assistance when the time came. When the American Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles visited England in the autumn of 1939, the Emperor wrote him a personal letter asking him not to forget Ethiopia’s plight. As soon as Italy entered the war the Emperor left on a homeward trip via Egypt and Khartoum. The Emperor disclosed that he was delayed at Khartoum by preparations until the middle of January. Then was flown to Omidlo on the Abyssianian border. From there after a five-year absence he reentered Abyssinian territory in a commercial truck. The journey was slow and arduous through a roadless territory. Often the Emperor got out and dug and pushed together with the escort. After 10 days he reached Belaia at the foot of the escarpment leading to the interior of the Abyssinian plateau. By this time the Italians were looking for him and almost daily their planes tried to bomb him. When Burye was captured the Emperor’s camp moved there, he walked most of the 70-odd miles. By then he and his patriot movement were on firm ground. “It is poetic and divine justice that Ethiopia, the first country to succumb to aggression, should be the first liberated and restored,” the Emperor told me. “Others will follow in due course. Please convey to your American readers my deep affection and admiration for your country which always has manifested such deep sympathy for the Ethiopian cause.”35

The Battle for Debra Marcos In his memoirs, Stevens describes what became, for him, the most dramatic part of the journey—the patriots’ entrance to Debra Marcos. 35. Stevens, “Haile Selassie Tells Plans for Ethiopia,” CSM, April 14, 1941, 1.

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• • • A few days after the interview, the Gideon Force leaders were debating what to do next. Debra Marcos was our next objective. It appeared that it was still in the hands of the Italians and the emperor’s uncle, Ras Hailu, who had ruled the Godjam before the Italian invasion, had subsequently collaborated with them. We were hoping that Italian morale had reached such a low pitch that they would withdraw without a fight. On the morning of April 4, a sleek Italian Alfa Romeo limousine arrived at Dembacha and out stepped a chauffeur. I interpreted while he announced that he had been sent by his boss, Ras Hailu, to convey his compliments to “General” Wingate and to announce that the Italians had withdrawn from Debra Marcos and that he, Ras Hailu, wished to declare his allegiance to his Britannic majesty and to place his own army of seven thousand Askiris under General Wingate’s command. He further invited General Wingate to come to Debra Marcos in his limousine. Mastering his astonishment, Wingate consulted with me, and I said knowing the Ethiopians, it might be a trap. In the end we told the driver to thank Ras Hailu for his declaration and the invitation, but we would come there shortly with our own transportation. The following morning we set forth in two of our trucks. Wingate and I rode in one with the armed bodyguards following behind, though we well realized that if this was a trap and treachery was planned, we wouldn’t stand a chance, but Wingate had decided to take the risk. The thirty mile trip proved uneventful save for an occasional native and a cart pulled by a donkey. The road was empty. When we reached Debra Marcos, it too seemed deserted. I should have mentioned that a few days earlier an Italian medical captain had offered his services, just in case, he said, we required medical attention. We tactfully avoided calling him a deserter and welcomed him to join the officer’s mess. The main topography of Debra Marcos was a knoblike hill with a flat top on which the Italians had built a small brick fort. We drove up a winding road to reconnoiter. The fort was also deserted and things seemed quite in order, save for some unfinished food and some scattered papers, which seemed to indicate that the occupants had left in something of a hurry. Luckily, we had got there ahead of the Ethiopian Shufta guerrillas, who had a tendency of making a mess of things. Suddenly, as Wingate and I entered the building, a telephone rang. “Who could that be?” asked Wingate.

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I replied that Gideon Force was not plugged in to any telephone exchange here. It could only be the Italian line connected with the Blue Nile crossing. “You better take the call,” said Wingate, “as you speak Italian.” “But what should I say?” “Tell them you are the Italian doctor, and that the British have taken Debra Marcos and are headed for the Blue Nile crossing.” I took the call and transmitted this misinformation to the Italian switchboard operator, speaking from one of the Nile posts. He was appalled. “Who should I tell this to?” he shouted at the other end. “To your commanding officer,” I replied. “And my advice to you, if you value your skin, is to pack up and get going.” The deception worked. The Italians abandoned their Blue Nile defensive positions and made for the crossing. We were still taking stock of the situation when a representative of Ras Hailu arrived at the fort in the same limousine he had sent to Dembacha for us. This time the emissary announced, “His royal highness and governor, Prince Ras Hailu, invites General Wingate to call on him at his residence.” Wingate turned to me with a frown and asked, “What should we do?” I answered, “We don’t have much choice. We are heavily outnumbered. We can only assume that the Prince is playing the game straight.” We accordingly boarded one of our trucks and drove off down the hill. The winding road beyond was lined on either side with native troops, Askaris, clad in olive-green Italian uniforms, each cradling a tommy gun. We arrived without incident at what proved to be an enormous tent, richly carpeted and with several rows of arm chairs facing an elevated platform on which Ras Hailu was enthroned together with his aides. The Ras was as black as the ace of spades, but his features, far from being Negroid, were finely chiseled and aquiline and very distinguished looking. I later learned that he was eighty-four years old. He started off by welcoming “General” Wingate in Italian. He continued, “I am sorry that I cannot address you in English, though I am an educated man. I do speak Amharic, both colloquial and classical, but also classical Arabic. I used to know some English in my younger years, but I have forgotten it. In fact I visited England, and was received by your then sovereign, Edward the Seventh.” He then went on to say that all the Italians had

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left, and he was now prepared to place his forces and resources at the disposition of the British. At the end of his speech, he proposed a toast in Wingate’s honor, and cups were passed around. I whispered to Wingate, “Make sure that we are drinking from the same pitcher as he is, the Ethiopians are famed for their poison tactics.” It all passed off peacefully, and we headed back toward the fort. En route, we came to the Italian supplies warehouse. This time the Shuftas had beaten us to it. I was appalled to see one gang breaking open drums of gasoline and pouring the precious fuel on the ground. Others were smashing typewriters and other stores of equipment with rifle butts. With the help of two of Ras Hailu’s Askaris, I managed to stop the looting before everything was destroyed. We spent the rest of the day consulting with Ras Hailu’s aides, planning for the arrival of the emperor in Debra Marcos on the morrow. He arrived in midmorning, Sunday, April 6th, triumphantly driven to Debra Marcos in the front seat of one of our trucks with Bimbashi LeBlanc at the wheel. The convoy included the main personnel of the Gideon Force and the leading members of the royal Ethiopian court. A sizable contingent of the better-disciplined and more presentable “shufta patriots” had marched to Debra Marcos during the night. The ceremony on the small parade ground was brief and to the point. The Ethiopian flag was raised on the tall flagstaff to the strains of a bugle call while everyone stood at attention. The emperor refused to tolerate it and turned his back on him. He had his reasons for doing, for the Italian conquest, Ras Hailu, his uncle had joined the invaders and served under them up until the day they retreated from Debra Marcos. We were somewhat concerned at this snub, lest it rouse the old man’s anger and invite reprisals. But he seemed to countenance it without incident. As we advanced from the north, the Italian defenses crumbled fast, and Wingate hoped to reach the capital, Addis Ababa, and restore Haile Selassie to his throne ahead of the South Africans, who were advancing from the south. But this was not to be. British command willed otherwise, and Lieutenant General Alan Cunningham, with his South Africans, took the surrender of Addis Ababa. This upset the emperor who had hoped to triumphantly oversee the liberation of his capital. My Ethiopian adventure ended abruptly shortly afterward when I came down with blackwater fever, an especially virulent strain of malaria, and was flown to Khartoum on the first DC-3 transport plane to land on the Debra Marcos airstrip. I was then flown from Khartoum

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to Johannesburg and hospitalized. After two weeks of intensive treatment, I was well enough to go to Capetown where I interviewed General Smuts before booking passage to the U.S. on a President Line cruise ship for a leisurely crossing to New York.36 • • • Stevens’s courage in battle zones had been proven repeatedly. His capacity for getting behind enemy lines surprised both his colleagues and his editors, and in light of his reporting and analyzing the fall of Europe’s smaller nations to the Germans, Soviets, and Italians, Stevens took this assignment because he recognized the global significance of Selassie’s attempt to reclaim Ethiopia. His coverage of this military campaign demonstrates his characteristic quick thinking and courage, but it does not offer the strong analysis he gave Monitor readers while in Greece or Finland. Instead, these stories were produced by a man who considered himself one of the soldiers. Stevens was imbedded with “the Lawrence of Abyssinia,” as Stevens typically described Wingate,37 the man who gave him an adventure that few war correspondents can claim—not just a front-row seat for the unfolding drama of battle but a pivotal role as supporting actor during a crucial scene. Stevens’s ability to transform from analyst to combatant happened for a very simple reason: he was not indoctrinated with the traditional journalistic training his peers had received. He was guided by his own passion about war reporting: he was a man almost desperate to get to the frontline action. And once there he was willing to play different roles as needed.

36. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 103–9. 37. Stevens, “Abyssinia: Bastion of Victory and Justice,” CSM, June 21, 1941, 6.

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When Edmund Stevens arrived stateside to recuperate, he was reunited with Nina and Vova, and he settled in at the Boston headquarters of the Christian Science Monitor for as many months inside a traditional newsroom as he could bear—about ten. Of all the roles he played during the war years, the roles of husband and Monitor “deskman” were clearly his weakest performances. Nina wrote in her memoirs of his restlessness. His articles and editorials from this period were sharpest when the subject was Russia or the war zones he knew personally. But as each week passed, his writing became flatter, his analyses drier, and his assignments genuinely boring for a man accustomed to slipping in and out of enemy territory. In June and July 1941, he ruminated on the fall of both Crete and Syria and Egypt’s hopes of remaining neutral. As was his obsession, he produced several pieces glorifying the RAF. Some of his work reflected the pithy Stevens style: “Blind to the fate of European neutrals, Egyptian politicians, with the aggressors on their doorsteps, carry the farce of nonbelligerency.”1 His work carried the unique byline, “Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor who has returned to the United States after frontline service on four major war sectors— Greece and the Middle East, Africa, Norway, and Finland.” Remarkably, he considered a possible invasion of Russia by Germany just four days before Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in an attempt to claim western Russia and the Ukraine. Evaluating just how 1. Stevens, “Egypt Clings to Nonbelligerent Farce,” CSM, June 11, 1941, 1. 163

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far Stalin would go to appease Hitler, Stevens hypothesized on June 18, 1941, The long-suffering population accustomed to so many unpleasant surprises might at last balk over a decision say, to compromise Russian sovereignty for Herr Hitler’s benefit and sell them into Nazi economic bondage. This is not a statement of fact, it is merely a working hypothesis. But history has shown that most absolute rulers are prepared to sacrifice their country’s welfare for their own self-interest. And judging from past events it is not inconceivable that Mr. Stalin, driven by the logic of his own appeasement policy, is prepared to make far greater concessions to Herr Hitler than the Russian people would countenance. But there is a point beyond which the most absolute dictator cannot expect obedience and subservience. Even tyranny must sometimes yield to the overwhelming expression of popular will. That is why Mr. Stalin in the end might find himself forced either to fight Germany or abdicate.2

On June 23, 1941, the day after Germany invaded Russia, Stevens wrote a front-page analysis that began, “‘No matter how much you may feed a wolf, he still gazes longingly at the fields and forests.’ Joseph Stalin has proved to himself and the world that this old Russian proverb applies to the Nazi wolf and the fields and forests of the Ukraine.”3 And this was followed by a series of articles examining Russia’s situation in squaring off with Hitler’s forces. But most of his articles included the phrase, “according to overseas reports,” and as the weeks and months passed, Stevens struggled to produce fresh material. By September 1941, he was writing stories about the impact that Russian winters and roadways would have on the war, and the reader of these pieces can imagine a frustrated Stevens standing over the incoming wire stories of colleagues reporting from Cairo, Moscow, or London. His September 20, 1941, article on U.S. involvement began with the surprising lead, “The enormous advance made by the British in protecting supply lines to the Middle East and keeping them open was described to me by friends who have just arrived from Egypt.”4 2. Stevens, “Stalin: Will He Fight, Abdicate, Yield?” CSM, June 18, 1941, 1. 3. Stevens, “Stalin Policy Seen Dictated by Fear,” CSM, June 23, 1941, 1. 4. Stevens, “Sea Lanes: U.S. Helps by Repair of Ships,” CSM, September 20, 1941, 1.

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What becomes clear in Stevens’s memoirs, Nina’s memoirs, and his dispatches is that he is happiest at the front, pursuing what Martha Gellhorn called “the honorable course,”5—seeing with one’s own eyes and reporting the essence of war and its impact on the average soldier and his family back home. Like other journalists in the newsroom, war correspondents have specialties. For Ernie Pyle, it was the perspective of the grunts in the trenches. For Gellhorn, it was her ability to describe in minute detail the images and people she experienced. For Stevens, it was an ability to analyze the unfolding drama and explain its impact on both kings and commoners. But historians consistently delineate the public versus private lives of war correspondents, especially by examining their professional choices in light of their personal circumstances. Pyle left behind a wife struggling with mental illness. Gellhorn abandoned her thenhusband Ernest Hemingway to report the war. Stevens also placed frontline reporting ahead of his domestic life. These are choices admired for the courage required and articles produced but choices not easily understood in light of the concept of self-preservation. “There’s something wrong with somebody who wants to go where people are being shot,” wrote Bill Buford, the founding editor of Granta magazine and a close friend to the late Gellhorn. “They are amazing animals. War breaks out and they want to be there. War breaks out and they get really uncomfortable being home. I think most war correspondents find war fun. You know, there is nothing more exciting than violence. You are in the complete present tense. Every choice counts. Every moment counts. Every second counts. We don’t live that intensely. A war correspondent does.”6 All the evidence at this point in his personal and professional life indicates that Edmund Stevens’s desire to return to the war front increased with each passing week spent on American soil until it bordered on desperation. As a teenager, he’d convinced his mother to let him travel to Europe without her. As a college graduate, he headed off to exotic Russia. In February 1942, with Stevens’s taste of success at war reporting and with even larger battles unfolding, his wanderlust demanded a response.

5. Michael Ferrari, Reporting America at War (New York: Hyperion, 2003), 40. 6. Ibid., 48.

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Domestic Man Although Stevens was determined to get back into action, the Monitor offered him a chance to earn some extra money by going on a lecture tour throughout the eastern half of the United States. Nina wrote of it in her unpublished memoirs: It was decided that Ed should leave for a small war lecture tour, mostly addressing Women’s Clubs as the war had left few men with the leisure for education. Each stop was to be within driving distance of the next. The schedule was tight; starting from Washington, D.C., we drove through the night to the next appointment. I was at the wheel trying to give Ed the chance to relax and sleep between the lectures. For the two weeks I was driving hundreds of miles without complaint, trying to be on time at the next Woman’s Club. With some regret I missed sightseeing the cities we visited, but I kept in mind our commercial tour would help us to buy our own new car. I tried to avoid being present at every lecture, but enjoyed the question period because Ed was not so monotonous and more lively. “Could you be less academic and dull, the way you speak to those women, maybe, by giving them some local color, gossip or something like that, not only the military campaigns?” “How can I, when instead of human faces I only see an endless amount of hats piled with flowers and vegetables.”7

After they returned from the lecture tour, Nina was pleased with their domestic life together and hoped in vain to keep her husband in the states indefinitely. She wrote, One event followed another helping to shape my life in Boston. First and most pleasant was the purchase of the smallest Cadillac, streamlined, steel-blue color, with pig skin upholstery, and which we bought from the money we earned on the lecture tour, a kind I never saw again. Both Vovo and I loved the car; it was easy to drive, unlike Grandma’s old Ford that our ladies had taken back to New York. Almost at the same time, we purchased a small, cute house with a garage and some woods at the back. It was on Silver Hill Road, in Weston, not far from Lincoln. The house was well planned for a small family, having a living room facing a quiet road, a large kitchen, with a dining alcove, two bedrooms upstairs, and a small 7. Nina Stevens, memoirs, 103.

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one at the back of the house, overlooking the woods. Finally, we had a place of our own to live, not an apartment and not at the mercy of the old ladies. We were glad to have some necessities that came with the house: a refrigerator, a gas stove, and a dishwasher. . . . For the time being we lived normally, like an ordinary American family, especially, since Ed finally decided to open a joint account with me at the local bank.8

But unfolding world events continued to remind Stevens that he was missing the action. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Stevens’s page one analysis the following day went straight to his own expertise: With no direct news in as yet from the Soviet Far East, the question how Russia is affected in the new Pacific war is best clarified by asking what will be America’s new attitude to the war in Europe. Russia would lose as much by a Japanese victory or even temporary success in the Orient as America would by a Nazi victory in Europe or North Africa. Just as Japan is utterly committed to a victory of its Nazi partner, America’s future is tied up with the Allied cause. It is all one war. The Russians, who have long insisted on the indivisibility of war and have shown considerable realism in their strategy, are fairly certain to appreciate where their interests lie in the Far East. Within the last few days Great Britain, in response to Russian pressure, declared war on Finland, Hungary, and Rumania, on the grounds that those countries were fighting Britain’s ally. On a reciprocal basis, Russia is therefore committed to declare war on Japan whenever Britain requests her in.9

While most newspapers were producing “War!” headlines and evaluating the surprise attack on American soil, Stevens demonstrated a broader context, and he offered an explanation of the events in a way that stretched far beyond American borders. He produced an analysis of global implications. On the other hand, he continued enduring assignments far removed from frontline reporting. He wrote a feature story about a visit to America by the wife of the Soviet ambassador: “Goodbye Max, take care of yourself and don’t stand around in the cold any longer.” 8. Ibid., 102. 9. Stevens, “Nazis Again Admit Failure against Soviets,” CSM, December 9, 1941, 1.

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Passengers on the Washington-New York express swiveled round in their parlor-car chairs as a firm female voice with an English accent overpowered the hubbub incidental to impending departure. As the train lurched into motion, a large middle-aged lady in a black coat and a beret to match nesting on her white hair, sailed into view from the vestibule. For all her modest appearance, something in her carriage and features set her off as a distinguished person. A whispered, “It’s Mrs. Litvinoff ” fluttered down the aisle. Ivy Watterson, as the Russians called her, had altered little in the five years since I saw her in Moscow, shortly before she left the capital to teach English in Sverdlovsk, beyond the Urals. Perhaps her hair was little more windblown, her face and hands slightly more roughened from the wintry blasts of Siberia.10

The man accustomed to dodging incoming mortar rounds with entrenched infantry fighters now was reporting tea parties with ambassadors’ wives. Assignments such as these surely proved too much for Stevens, who hastened plans to return overseas, even though he had learned that his wife was expecting their second child. According to Nina, I was two months pregnant when I again met Mr. Gratke, Ed’s foreign editor. He surprised me by saying that he had to go abroad soon. The news ruined my happiness. “Mr. Gratke,” I pleaded, “Ed has just come back after two years abroad. Can’t you keep him at the home desk for a little longer?” “I tried, Nina, it hasn’t worked and I’ve given up. Ed is restless and doesn’t fit in behind an office desk. We believe he needs constant first source information, and action which he reports brilliantly. I must let him go!” So, it was decided! I would be again alone, expecting a second child.11

In fact, Nina struggled so badly with the pregnancy, she required intense medical attention for the first few months, and she sought an abortion but was dissuaded by her physician. Stevens wrote nothing of this in his memoirs, apparently wanting to keep his professional life completely separate from his personal circumstances. However, like Ernie Pyle and Martha Gellhorn, he chose “the honorable course” of frontline reporting ahead of American domestic life. 10. Stevens, “Factory Workers’ Cars Impress Wife of Soviet Ambassador on First American Trip,” CSM, December 16, 1941, 14. 11. Nina Stevens, memoirs, 102–3.

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Returning to the Front Despite his wife’s difficult pregnancy, Edmund Stevens continued to plan his return to the front lines of northern Africa. He was stateside when Germany invaded Russia; stateside when the United States entered the war, and stateside as Erwin Rommel and Claude Auchinleck squared off in the North African dessert. He was a man desperate to return to unfinished business in Libya and Egypt, and, as becomes clear from Nina’s memoirs, he took desperate measures to get off American soil. Nina wrote that in the middle of her pregnancy, Ed told her flatly that he was returning to the front. “Nina, I must leave on a short assignment this week-end. I hope to be back before your confinement.” “You never will. Won’t you wait few more months?” “I have told the office, I must be back before that date.”12

Together with Vova, they piled into their Cadillac in mid-March 1942 and took off for Florida for what was to be a family vacation before Stevens left from Miami for South America and then Africa. But immediately after they arrived in Miami, Stevens departed abruptly and under what would prove to be extremely difficult circumstances for Nina. It was hot and humid in Miami. Ed left me in a little hotel near the station and went to get an air ticket for his destination. Presently he returned, his face was hot and sweaty, explaining: “Look, Nina, I couldn’t book a plane, the schedules are uncertain. My only chance is to take a boat, which leaves today.” “You have decided?” “There is no other way, but you don’t have to rush back. Stay a few days and see Miami.” “I’m too tired to go back tonight and I have no desire to stay here alone. Let me have the keys for the car.” “You’ll find it at Johns’ garage, you know the place.” He kissed me “Good-bye” but I hardly knew what to say, feeling tired and cheated on a long trip that could have been fun.13

12. Ibid., 103. 13. Ibid., 104.

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The following morning, Nina went to the garage to pick up her beloved Cadillac for the long drive with her son back to Boston: Feeling rested, I took a bus and went to collect the car. “What can I do for you Mrs. Stevens?” “Just pull out my car, Mr. Johns.” “A car, do you mean a little Cadillac?” “Yes, of course!” “Mrs. Stevens, you are not serious?” “Why do you say so? My husband parked it here, early morning.” “So he did. But your husband, yesterday, came here. He took the car out and gave the keys to a gentleman, who drove away. I guessed, he sold the little Cadillac to him.” “No, No, impossible . . .” Feeling sick, my knees swaying under me, everything was going blank, I was looking for something to hold to. “Here sit down, Mrs. Stevens. Take some water. I am so sorry. I wish he had told you about the car.” I was speechless and short of breath. After a while, Mr. Johns called his son who drove me back. “How do I face Vovo, what do I tell him, how?” was the only thought then in my mind. Later on I understood his “premeditated” tactic and why he wouldn’t fly from Miami: he had to go away before I learned of the truth. The dream was gone. I went to the railroad Station to catch a train back. “Nina, are you very sick? I’ll call Dr. de Normandie.” “Yes, Vovo, I am very sick, sick of your Father!” “What he has done now?” “It’s our car, he sold it.”14

Despite what he told his wife when he kissed her good-bye and departed hurriedly, Stevens did not take a boat out of Miami. According to his own dispatch for the Monitor, published after his arrival in Africa, he flew out of Miami to Rio de Janeiro and then crossed the South Atlantic in a tramp freighter. It is obvious from his initial series of articles that he clearly was happy to be heading back to the center of the action—and that his editors at the Monitor were pleased as well. Note the editor’s introduction to Stevens’s first dispatch—March 20, 1942— after leaving Nina in Miami: 14. Ibid., 105.

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Reporter “Tramps” to South Africa To resume his news post with the British Middle East Command, Edmund Stevens is en route to Cairo. But one can’t just dash off direct to Egypt these days. First he went to South America. He has now arrived at Cape Town. And the Cape-to-Cairo journey is still ahead. Cabling from South Africa today, Mr. Steven contributes the fifth article in the “Correspondent’s Diary” series—personal stories of personal experiences by the Monitor news men who cover the world. He adds a minor saga of the South Atlantic to war experiences which have ranged from the Finnish front to the heart of Ethiopia. By Edmund Stevens Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor CAPE TOWN, March 20—It’s pleasant to gaze seaward from this South African shore. I am still marveling over how I ever reached here after traveling more than 9,000 miles from Miami, 6,000 by plane in three days to Rio de Janeiro, then 3,000 miles across the South Atlantic in a bobbing tramp freighter. When I embarked at Rio it looked unlikely that the vessel would get anywhere. Two prospective fellow passengers had one look and changed their minds, offering me odds that we wouldn’t arrive. Though I was forewarned not to expect a luxury liner, I, too, wavered. At first glance the whole ship seemed tied together with bits of string and adhesive tape. It listed so heavily that it looked as if it might turn turtle at the dockside at any moment. Apparently others shared this mistrust, for climbing the rickety gangplank I almost collided with several crew members going ashore with their bundles. “They quit, no like trip,” a ship’s officer explained to me in broken English. “German submarine she sink one more Brazil ship today.” And I gathered from his expression that he was not enthused over the trip either. This was my first taste of the general tenseness and nervousness that continued all the way across until sighting the South African patrol planes on our last day out.15

15. Stevens, “Reporter ‘Tramps’ to South Africa,” CSM, March 20, 1942, 1.

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Stevens continued, “The ship recalled Mother Goose’s man who walked a crooked mile since, owing to the list, it wouldn’t sail straight, and instead described an endless letter ‘S’ all over the South Atlantic, which at any rate would probably fool any submarine attempting to aim a torpedo.” He also added, “One imaginative fellow passenger, an American Red Cross man, caused a near panic by mistaking a giant sharkfin for a periscope. Otherwise the most exciting event was the total eclipse of the full moon.”16 If Stevens felt any guilt about abandoning his wife and son in Miami, there was no hint of it anywhere in his memoirs or dispatches. What is apparent is that Edmund Stevens had set aside—even abandoned—his domestic roles as husband, father, and newsroom deskman to resume the role in which he thrived—war correspondent. But instead of the frigid Arctic winter of the Russo-Finnish War or the jungles of Ethiopia, he now was headed to the North African desert to cover the battle that would be considered the turning point in the war.

North Africa The North African campaign of World War II, often referred to by historians as the Egypt-Libya campaign, began in mid-1940 and was a three-year, back-and-forth struggle between the Axis powers of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany against the Allies, primarily the British Commonwealth forces from England, Australia, and New Zealand. Motivated by control over the Mediterranean region and the oil-rich deserts of North Africa, the battles were fought in Libya, which had been a colony of Italy since 1911, and Egypt, which was a British colony. Historian Wolf Heckman observed, The campaign in North Africa contributed far more to the outcome of the Second World War than appears at first sight. In the short term, the struggle in the desert served quite obvious objectives. Hitler sent help to the Italians in Libya because he was afraid that they would leave the Axis alliance in the event of their defeat in North Africa. Later, Britain was forced to move out into the desert because her base in Egypt and even the Arab oil fields appeared to be at risk. And in the end, the Allies secured 16. Ibid.

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North Africa to provide themselves with a springboard for their attack on southern Europe.17

The greater ramifications, Heckman argued, included, “the eventual elimination of the Italians and the consequent further reduction of the German defense capability of course influenced the outcome of the campaign and the operations that were to follow; just as Hitler’s inclination ruthlessly to go on investing men and resources in obvious failures like North Africa affected the Allies’ prospects in Central Europe.”18 As General Sir John Hackett, a British commander in the campaign, observed, “It was a war in which the British, and the Americans too, made expensive mistakes and through them learned the war-fighting method, involving the effective combination of tanks, guns, infantry, and air power, which was later to prove so successful in Europe.”19 Like a reporter completely confident in his own abilities and content in his environment—in this case, a war zone—Stevens explained to Monitor readers the significance of the region in a June 16, 1942, article, and he did so like a reporter completely in his element: . . . under no circumstances can the United Nations afford to allow the enemy to invade this area, the loss of which would be a military disaster almost comparable in magnitude with the loss of the British Isles. In the first place, it would give the Axis complete control of the Mediterranean and place in its hands the vast oil resources of Iraq and Persia. Conversely, it would deprive the Allies of their sole remaining oil source outside of the New World, thus tremendously complicating shipping problems. It would sever the American trans-African air route to Asia and would close the chief route for war supplies to Russia. Even more important, it would enable Hitler to join hands with his Japanese ally, thus splitting the democratic world and reducing Britain’s war role to the defense of the British Isles. Lastly, it would place within the Axis orbit virtually the entire Moslem world, which extends from Morocco to the Philippines and whose importance as a world force often is underestimated.20

17. Heckman, Rommel’s War in Africa (New York: Konecky and Konecky, 1981), vii. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., xi. 20. Stevens, “Middle East Vital Base for Defense or Attack,” CSM, June 16, 1942, 1.

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Stevens also summarized the first two years of battle in his memoirs. • • • Before my arrival in Cairo in March of 1942, the “Brits” and “Eyeties” had by turns chased each other back and forth over hundreds of empty miles of desert for two years. It was a clean kind of war, rather like a sporting competition with virtually no civilian casualties and little destruction to property. The Libyan town of Bengasi had changed sides several times without any major impact on the overall fortunes of war. As spring wore on toward the summer of 1942, there was a lull in the fighting, as both sides girded themselves for coming battles. For the Allies, the most ominous portent was the arrival on the scene of the German Afrika Korps commanded by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel who had won his spurs the previous year in the headlong invasion of the Soviet Union. The Allies hoped that a massive increase in airpower from American bomber and fighter squadrons would effectively reduce the impact of the Afrika Korps as their supply lines to Africa would be constantly pounded both by air and from sea, as the British still held control of Malta. This expectation was somewhat optimistic. Citing my notes from a visit to the “Iron Fortress” in mid-April, Heavy Axis bombing has destroyed planes. Bomber no longer able to operate against convoys for lack of underground hangars that might have been built but have not been. Though Italians have their own such hangars at Pantelerria. No convoys have gotten through since November. One was sunk in the harbor. Another was completely sunk at sea two hundred miles from harbor. Axis convoys consequently getting through almost unhindered. Sea lane patrols between Tunis and Pantelerria warn of British moves. When British bombers bound for the Middle East leave from Gibraltar, French send flash to Italians to watch for them. Trip to first armored division, unspeakable chaos of roads. The Capuzzo Trail, masses of wrecked German planes at airports first sight of Tobruk, the harbor clogged with wrecks.21

• • • While Stevens does not identify which iron fortress he visited, his description is consistent with the circumstances around the Mediter21. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 111.

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ranean seaport city of Tobruk, Libya. Stevens also spent much of the spring of 1942 in Cairo assessing the increasing U.S. presence in the Allied front of North Africa. After entering World War II, America supplied a small U.S. Army Air Forces contingent in support of the campaign. In an April 28, 1942, dispatch, datelined “ON THE LIBYAN FRONT,” Stevens wrote, The tremendous growth in Allied air power is the most striking change I find upon returning to the Middle Eastern war theater after a year’s absence. During the interim, the RAF in this area has developed from a few squadrons into a mighty striking force with definite superiority over the Axis. As I write this dispatch my tent reverberates constantly to the hum of airplanes. But without looking outside one may be reasonably sure they are friendly, whereas last year it was advisable to make the opposite assumption. Not only has the number of Allied planes multiplied, but the types of aircraft used are much faster, better armed, and more modern generally. For Americans it is gratifying that American plans have played a leading role in this rearmament of the RAF in the Middle East, providing the British fliers with some of their best fighter and bomber planes. Clouds of American fighters which one vainly hoped for during the war in Greece, have now materialized in Libya, where Curtis-built P-40s, locally known as Tomahawks, and the faster and heavier-armed P-41s called Kittyhawks, carry the brunt of the air fighting.22

His dispatch reverberates almost as much as the tent he is describing in his article. Clearly, Stevens is happy to be back at the front. He was most comfortable in the middle of a war zone, instead of in the newsroom of the Monitor or his own home outside Boston. Once again he was dealing with a harsh climate. Like he did of the Arctic winter in the RussoFinnish War and overwhelming heat of Ethiopia, Stevens wrote of North African dust storms in his memoirs. • • • The taste of the desert war at that stage was best recalled during a trip from Cairo to the desert in early May of 1942. I had gotten a lift with a 22. Stevens, “Allied Air Might Gains in Mid-East; Japan Racing Monsoons to Mandalay,” CSM, April 28, 1942, 1.

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South African mail truck as far as Fort Capuzzo, and we battered our way through a “Hamseen,” or desert dust storm. At regular intervals great swirls of sand and dust whipped up by a scorching south wind blowing straight from the Sahara desert blotted out the road and oncoming traffic. All we could do is pull over to the side and wait for it to abate. Our South African driver swore, “After the war Jerry can have this desert for all of me.” “Aye,” his buddy concurred, “and what’s more, we ought to make him live in it.” The Hamseen is North Africa’s worse phenomenon. Sometimes the blinding, scorching scourge can last more than a week. After three days of it, one isn’t responsible for anything, and even Egyptian law recognizes it as extenuating circumstance, by decreeing that after four days of a Hamseen, killing one’s wife is justifiable homicide. The North African desert constituted the third protagonist in what was actually a three-cornered affair, with the desert ruthlessly and indiscriminately battling against all contenders. The desert dictated the rules and conditions of battle to both sides and sporadically grounded all aircraft and halted all troop movements. Its systematic destruction of equipment was more effective than any human efforts. In the desert, mechanized equipment wore out three or four times faster than it did anywhere else, and the fine desert grit worked itself into the most vital and best-protected parts of any mechanism, wearing away even the toughest steels. The rough, rocky terrain and scorching sun completed the process of demolition.23 • • • Stevens also addressed the impact of the desert’s harsh conditions on the fighting in a May 8, 1942, Monitor dispatch, in which he wrote, “In every offensive by whatever side the desert has largely contributed to halting or pushing back the attacking forces as though it equally resented and resisted all human encroachment on its unconquered vastness. The actual depth of penetration by either side is small. The fighting is generally confined to the narrow coastal strip seldom wider than 50 miles, beyond which the desert rules unchallenged.”24 Besides contending with sandstorms, Stevens had to face some harsh circumstances in travel, including one particularly harrowing flight on his way to the front line. 23. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 112. 24. Stevens, “Africa’s Sand: Foe of Both Sides,” CSM, May 8, 1942, 1.

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• • • Two weeks later, on May 27, I headed again for the battle front in a heavily loaded mail plane. As we approached the fighting zone, we were hedgehopping when our Blenheim’s port engine started to sputter and backfire. The left wing sagged, but the sergeant pilot sitting beside me pulled the stick behind, and the plane responded by lurching upward a few hundred feet. It was apparent that something was seriously wrong as the ailing engine refused to respond to various manipulations of the throttle and the mixture regulator. At a sign from the pilot, I fastened my seat strap tightly and motioned to the Free French officer who was occupying the observer’s seat in the nose of the plane to get down on the floor and sit with his back against my knees. Before we took off, he had been warned to do this in case we were attacked by hostile aircraft. Therefore, his first reaction was that we had encountered the enemy. I pointed to the port engine, which just then sputtered its last. The propeller hung motionless, and I watched the horizon indicator on the instrument board point almost to vertical as we lurched into a sideslip. By banking around sharply, the pilot leveled the craft, but as we circled, the ground seemed to rush up to meet us. The smoothness of the terrain was broken by numerous small ridges, gullies, and hammocks, any one of which would be sufficient to crumple us up or topple us over if we struck it in landing. Inside the cramped quarters of the Blenheim, I took stock of the various knobs and projections that were liable to collide with my anatomy in case we crashed. For an instant I felt panicky, then almost immediately I recalled other occasions when dire peril seemed to threaten and a serene confidence that I enjoyed complete safety and protection banished all suggestions of fear. “Hold tight!” the pilot shouted and pressed a lever that released the undercarriage. I gripped the Frenchman’s shoulders. Fifteen seconds later, the wheels struck the ground, and we rolled to a standstill. It was a perfect landing. The pilot slipped off his helmet and turned to us apologetically, saying, “Sorry, but I have landed you out of the Blue. I guess we will have to walk for it. At least we have plenty of water.” However, at the time not even the prospect of a long hike across the desert could mar my thankfulness for our remarkable escape. The day’s happenings were not over yet. As I climbed out through the roof ’s hatch, I saw a truck in the middle distance. Thinking it must

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be a desert mirage, I rubbed my eyes and had a second look. It was a real truck, and it was charging toward us at a good clip. The driver pulled alongside in a swirl of dust. “Anybody hurt?” he yelled. When we answered in the negative, he explained that he and his companions had watched us in the air, and when they saw we were in trouble, they had rushed over expecting to pick us up in pieces. Our rescuers were a group of three Royal Air Force men sent out on a mission to find emergency landing grounds and happened to be in our neighborhood by sheer coincidence. We transferred our precious cargo of official mailbags from plane to truck and, leaving the rear gunner to guard the aircraft, started on a bumpy ride. Several hours later, we reached the camp of a New Zealand maintenance crew whose job it was to patrol the supply lane and repair any bomb damage. Over their field telephones we reported our mishap and received instructions for the pilot to stand by until repairmen arrived and to take them to the plane, while I should take the mail and get it somehow to its destination. A passing truck belonging to an antiaircraft battalion fortunately for me had a puncture just before our arrival and could take me on my way. It was after sundown when we started, and we drove under the moon without headlights. We had had our forced landing at noon, and it was well after midnight when, after a series of lifts, I reached my destination and handed over the mailbags to the astonished signal officer on duty.25 • • • Adventurer. Courier. Hero of his own story. Edmund Stevens soon would reclaim his most natural role: frontline correspondent. Having given up on being a “domestic man,” both in terms of trying to live a normal family life with Nina and Vova and in serving as a deskman at the Monitor headquarters, he returned to the other family he knew best—the brotherhood of fighting men. It was a constant theme in his reporting from North Africa.

German Offensive • • • The all quiet period in the western desert ended abruptly on May 27 when shortly before 10 a.m., a German tank force attacked the south25. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 113.

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ern end of the Allied line from the rear, while other tanks continued to advance northward. To launch the attack the Germans had moved up some thirty or forty miles in the night. As they were operating in a waterless area surrounded by minefields, they must have entirely relied on supplies of water they brought along. As the most they could carry was a three-day supply, they had to achieve quick results. The coastal sector had flared into activity the day before with an artillery barrage, combined with divebombing of frontline Allied positions. At the time, I was with a group of correspondents in Tobruk where the Eighth Army spokesmen confidently forecasted they would not only stem the German drive, but turn it into a smashing Allied victory. They described the Italian troops as mostly second line, low in morale, and even claimed that German morale was at a low ebb.26 • • • Stevens recorded, however, just how wrong the army’s press liaison was. • • • On the first night of the offensive, enemy aircraft were constantly cruising overhead, bombing machine-gun nests, and armored-car parks. Several times we watched twin engine bombers spraying the ground with luminous tracer bullets that sent us scurrying into the trenches. In a leisurely, methodical way, they circled back and forth in the moonlight, supplemented by scores of parachute flares completely lighting up from the desert landscape and the narrow, glistening ribbon of tarred road. Having located targets, they power-dived, sometimes shutting off their motors. We could hear the air whistle as they swooped downward. They came in small formations, but no sooner had one lot located a target, dropped bombs, and turned homeward, then we heard the approaching hum of a new formation. The most spectacular item on the program was reserved for seven o’clock the following morning. Hearing the roar of approaching fighter planes, I ran out of my tent, expecting that our boys had come to chase the Axis planes off. Instead about twenty-five Axis fighters, their throttles wide open, swooped over the brow of a hill and flew straight at us with their machine guns blazing. As I ducked into a trench, I heard bullets whistle past my ear. Several ricocheted, and their momentum spent, rolled to a stop outside our tent. Just then a squadron of Kittyhawks appeared hot on their trail, and a few seconds later all the 26. Ibid., 114.

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planes disappeared over the sea. The new enemy fighters had passed so low, we could distinguish clearly the insignia and the numerals on the planes. They were all Italian Macchi 202s.27 • • • But in a June 2, 1942, dispatch, datelined “WITH THE BRITISH EIGHTH ARMY IN LIBYA,” Stevens wrote, The tank battle of Knightsbridge is still progressing with the remnants of the German forces concentrating on their two narrow gaps in the minefields, leaving behind them many vehicles destroyed and captured, and a considerable number of prisoners in addition to many killed and wounded, and with the British in possession of most of the battlefields. This marks the failure of the Nazi offensive action which began early on the morning of May 27 when German armored forces came around the southern flank of the Allied positions at Bir Hacheim in a drive to storm Tobruk and cut off the main Allied forces from the rear.28

The next day, he noted the role the tanks supplied to the British by the United States played in this battle: It certainly shakes one to have a 75mm. gun of a new American-built General Grant tank go off in one’s ear. The first time it happened to me, I instinctively ducked, imaging that the enemy was shelling us and had scored a direct hit on the front of the tank’s armor plates. The General Grants are 28-ton medium tanks mounting 75 mm. guns, with 37 mm. guns in the turret, and with armor immune to most types of armor-piercing shell. They are the “secret weapon” which the British Command had kept up its sleeve until the present Germany attack.29

Stevens’s June 7, 1942, dispatch went even further: “Britain furnished the manpower and America furnished the firepower. That is the story of Nazi defeat in the desert. It is the story of how the Germans, in their latest drive, were turned back in their assault upon Tobruk.”30 In his next report, he saluted the British infantry: 27. Ibid. 28. Stevens, “Why Rommel’s Desert ‘Blitz’ Failed,” CSM, June 2, 1942, 1. 29. Stevens, “‘General Grant’ Playing Important Part in British Victory over Rommel Columns,” CSM, June 3, 1942, 1. 30. Stevens, “British Note from Libya: Thanks for the U.S. Tanks,” CSM, June 7, 1942, 1.

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All day long the artillery has boomed as the Germans rained a steady barrage of shells on Knightsbridge, that sand swept Libyan crossroads whose stubborn British defenders have proved the chief stumbling block in Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s line of advance. The defenders did not mind German shells. They were dug in strongly and were ready to meet an infantry attack should it follow the barrage tonight as it did last night. At that time, in the moonless darkness, British machine guns found their mark, mowing down several hundred of Marshal Rommel’s picked infantry and it is not anticipated that the German soldiers have much enthusiasm left for a repetition, but the defending brigade was ready for any event.31

But as Stevens was to note in his memoirs, the tide soon turned against the British. • • • Rommel’s first attack soon appeared to have lost its momentum. But the Allied command failed to follow up its initial success with a counterthrust, and by mid-June the Afrika Korps was again poised, this time for a drive on Tobruk. General Neil Ritchie, the new Eighth Army field commander, nevertheless seemed to radiate confidence. I was present at a desert news conference where he predicted that within a fortnight, as soon as additional American General Grant tanks arrived, his forces would chase the Axis forces back to Bengazi and beyond. In mid-June the Germans regained the offensive in Libya after their first offensive had been brought to a full stop. The Nazis had managed to turn the tables by achieving heavier firepower thanks to a bigger gun, much as the British had a short time previously surprised the Germans by using the American-built General Grant tanks. The General Grant’s superior firepower and thicker armor had given the British an advantage. And the Germans, having sampled this, had consistently avoided fighting tanks with tanks. Operating on this principle, the Germans had not merely sought to avoid tank battles, they had tried to use their armor primarily against units with smaller arms, including supply echelons and other “soft stuff.” Applying the practice of always attacking with a weapon heavier than the object of attack, the Germans chose as their main desert arm the eighty-eight millimeter antitank cannon. It fired a heavy, high velocity, armor-piercing shell capable of knocking out any tank in the desert. It was endowed with greater accuracy and range far 31. Stevens, “Infantry Plays Vital Role in Libya,” CSM, June 11, 1942, 1.

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superior to that of the American General Grant’s 75. German strategy was to set up guns at night, well camouflaged so as not to disclose their positions until British tanks were well within target range, and then open up with knockout blows. They accounted for the heaviest British losses and enabled the Germans to retain the initiative.32 • • • Stevens also recorded these details in his June 17, 1942, dispatch, in which he concluded, “War is primarily a bully’s game and unsportsmanlike. It is the soundest fundamental military strategy, whenever possible, to attack a force weaker than one’s own while avoiding superior or even equal odds. If you want to be sure of winning, use revolvers against swords, Tommy Guns against revolvers, machine guns against Tommy guns, etc., and never in reverse order.”33 The following day, he began producing rapid-fire dispatches about German victories against the Allied forces, starting with a piece about the impact of America’s very real involvement: CAIRO, June 18, 1942—The presence in the Middle East of United States Army Corps long-range bomber squadrons, which already have made important and successful operations, is the most heartening news that this area has had in many days. For the first time, an American combat unit is participating in the Middle East war side by side with British Allies under our own flag and under our own command. Motoring out to visit them at their station Wednesday, correspondents found a representative cross section of young Americans hailing from every section of the country. Youths from Worcester, Mass., fly with those lads from Texas and Kansas. They learned to fly at training fields widely scattered over the nation and, after being chosen for long-range bombing, were joined into squadrons in Florida whence they flew their consolidated B24D four-engined bombers across to Africa and up the Nile scarcely more than a week ago.34

In his June 19, 1942, article, he reported the gravity of the situation: The position of the Libyan front is still fluid and it is therefore premature to pass final judgments on the campaign especially since military security naturally requires a certain reticence regarding the facts at this stage. 32. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 115. 33. Stevens, “German Mobile Cannon Gives Rommel Superior Fire Power over U.S.Built Tanks,” CSM, June 17, 1942, 1. 34. Stevens, “Middle East: Aerial ‘Second Front,’” CSM, June 18, 1942, 1.

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However, on the basis of information so far released it is no exaggeration to say that the Allied forces in the Middle East in the past five days have suffered a severe setback. The British Eighth Army, in the face of disappointments, yet with its courage unbroken, is hard at work building up its offensive power and armor.35

Three days later, he wrote, At the moment when British counterattacks had all but immobilized the Nazis in Libya, indecision gave the Germans 48 hours to recover their strength and start the drive which now has thrust the British back to the Egyptian frontier. . . . Thus it is that the capture of Tobruk has come. It writes a dramatic “finis” to the latest Libyan campaign. For Field Marshal Erwin Rommel has achieved his immediate objective, which is the capture of Tobruk.36

His article the following day read, It now can be confirmed that in losing Tobruk the British Eighth Army lost many of its most proficient fighting men. Among those in the captured garrison were Indian, South African and British units which have done some of the finest fighting in the Middle East. Regardless of whether the Axis claim of 25,000 prisoners is accurate or exaggerated, it is admitted in Cairo that the bulk of Tobruk’s defenders were captured.37

He also reflected on his experiences during this offensive in his memoirs. • • • The last shipments of supplies to the beleaguered Tobruk garrison were delivered on June 16th, four days before Rommel’s Afrika Korps crushed all resistance and forced the British Eighth Army into full retreat, taking Tobruk on June 21, 1942. Thereafter, the Afrika Korps plunged into Egypt with a momentum that was to bring them almost in sight of the Nile Delta. 35. Stevens, “Middle Eastern Front Still Fluid Despite Reverses to British—More U.S. Aid,” CSM, June 19, 1942, 1. 36. Stevens, “Allied Leaders Failed to Take Advantage of Initial Gains—What Nazi Success Means,” CSM, June 22, 1942, 1. 37. Stevens, “Loss of Veteran Soldiers Real Blow of Tobruk’s Fall,” CSM, June 23, 1942, 1.

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The pattern was much the same as that of Rommel’s previous offensive operations, with the panzer columns looking for openings toward the west and east of Tobruk, attempting to reach the Gazala Road, thereby isolating the South Africans from forward positions, and cutting Tobruk off from the rear. Rommel captured Tobruk and crossed the Egyptian border.38 • • • In his June 30, 1942, dispatch, Stevens spoke directly for the British fighting men: Desert Army’s Plea: “‘Give Us Guns. Can’t hold back tanks with bare hands,’” says officer as troops fall back fighting By Edmund Stevens Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor WITH THE EIGHTH ARMY IN THE WESTERN DESERT, June 30— “Give us guns, antitank guns, artillery, and tank support and we will not only hold the Jerries but destroy them.” This expresses the sentiments shared by every Allied soldier in the desert from generals to privates. Eagerly and anxiously they asked me whether on the route from Alexandria I had seen any 25-pounders, 6-pounders, or General Grant tanks coming out and whether more stuff was on the way from America and if a thousand or even a hundred planes loaded with antitank guns could not be over from America or England or from anywhere. Dust covered and gaunt featured but still full of fight, most of these men have been on the go since the offensive started. For the past 10 days since the retreat began they have done nothing but fight and fall back, and fight again. They ask: Don’t the people in Washington and London realize when they discuss the grand strategy of the war, future second front plans, and astronomical war production figures that here in the Western Desert is a very real and vital front where defeat would be the most staggering blow to the Allies since the fall of France and that a few score antitank guns might make all the difference between victory and defeat?39

According to Stevens’s narrative, courage and determination swept the entire rank of Allied soldiers in the desert, and they fought on despite a lack of true understanding and support back home. His sympathy for the defeated army is clear, and one gets the feeling Stevens was writing 38. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 116. 39. Stevens, “Desert Army’s Plea: ‘Give Us Guns,’” CSM, June 30, 1942, 1.

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his own opinion in the last paragraph and attributing it to the men around him. One gets this same sense of pride and almost blind loyalty toward the British commanders from an event recounted in his memoirs that happened on July 1, 1942. • • • We went into El Daba just as the town was being evacuated. We knew the Germans were coming, but how soon nobody could tell when. Some said they were just under the brow of the escarpment south of us, and some claimed that they had already bypassed us and that we would be cut off at any moment. There was an ochre-colored mosque and slender minaret the height of which was elongated by the desert mirage. Onestory, clay-and-plaster hovels clustered around, some of them bashed in by bombs. El Daba was typical of scores of stations dotting the rail lines from Alexandria to Matru. As we were short of rations, we located a feedstore. One counter was still doing business, while supplies, including piled up cases of American canned beer, were being hastily loaded into waiting trucks. But this was no fire sale, and top prices were being charged. As we paid our bill, the cashier informed us that at the neighboring ordnance supply depot they were giving away everything including large quantities of clothing. Driving through the open gate into the barbed wire enclosure, we came upon a dozen sheds filled with every conceivable article from socks and camp equipment to field radios, rifles, and Lewis guns. The shed was filled with “customers” helping themselves to everything portable. Whatever was left, we were told, would be destroyed to prevent the Germans from getting it. As we gazed on the depressing scene, it occurred to me that canned beer had filled precious space on American lend-lease ships, space that might have been used for much needed antitank guns, which were now assigned priority. As if in answer to my thoughts, at that moment, a motorcar drove up, the doors were flung open and out stepped five red-capped generals. I promptly recognized General Auchinleck. After a friendly greeting, I could not help mentioning what a pity it was to see all those stores being wasted. He smiled and said, “In a war it is a small enough thing young man, but I have made arrangements that they won’t be lost.” For several hours that afternoon, with a calm and steady hand and a smooth unruffled voice, he brought order out of chaos, fitting together the broken pieces of the military organization, imparting his serene self-possession to others. For many days before his succession to Lieutenant General Neil Ritchie, as Eighth Army commander in the field, was announced,

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General Auchinleck was out there in the desert working tirelessly day and night, inspecting every defense position and offering personal encouragement to the men.40 • • • Stevens described the British generals in the most flattering terms. Auchinleck was portrayed more as a caricature than as a human being. He’s the iconoclastic, wise, benevolent father calming his progeny and spreading a feeling of security and rightness to all in his presence. Ritchie also gets praised by Stevens as one who encouraged his men right up to the moment of his departure. Generals as gentle fatherly men. Infantry as brothers who are fighting for one another as they would their own kin. These themes are prevalent in Stevens’s writing, even though at that very moment he was missing his own opportunity to play the kind husbandfather-protector role for Nina, Vova, and his daughter, Stasia, who was born that month in Boston. He wrote nothing in his memoirs about where he was or what he was doing when he learned of Stasia’s birth, perhaps because it was the month from hell for the British Eighth Army. Stevens’s perspective reflects that of a journalist watching his own troops being devastated by the enemy. But soon he would be reporting a tide turning back in favor of the British, starting with the following dispatch: “CAIRO, Egypt, July 6—The thunder of artillery rolls across the low sand hills west of Alexandria as the Battle for Egypt nears a climax. In the area of the so-called El Alamein positions some 50 or 60 miles from the great and historic seaport, Gen. Sir Claude Auchinleck’s Imperial troops are making their decisive effort to halt the Axis invaders.”41 After this report came a rapid-fire release of dispatches about Allied victories. On July 9, 1942, Stevens wrote, WITH THE BRITISH ARMORED BRIGADE AT THE EL ALAMEIN FRONT, July 9—Britain has won its Egyptian battle of the Marne. Along the smooth-backed ridge, which parallels the Mediterranean for some 10 miles inland, the fluid battle for Egypt temporarily has crystallized. The Nazis have been checked. Every effort of General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to regain momentum and initiative since his headlong drive was blocked last week has been thwarted by the defenders’ reorganized determination back up by considerable quantities of 25 pounders.42 40. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 117. 41. Stevens, “Nazis Face Alternative of Breaking Through Quickly or Retreat to Libyan Bases,” CSM, July 6, 1942, 1. 42. Stevens, “British Win Egyptian ‘Battle of the Marne,’” CSM, July 9, 1942, 1.

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Eight days later, he reported, ON THE EL ALAMEIN FRONT, July 17—Fighting is going on at many points along the so-called El Alamein line, both sides trying to register local gains. From our campsite in a fig tree grove between white sand dunes directly behind the El Alamein coastal position we watched tank flares rocket skyward along the skyline, and the earth shook with a crescendo of artillery in a heavy duel. We learned that the Germans on Tuesday evening had launched an all-out attack against the farthest advanced Australian units holding the Tel el Elsa railway station in the coastal region they captured a week ago.43

Then, on July 23, from Cairo, he wrote, A major Allied offensive operation appears to be underway in the Egyptian desert as fragmentary reports today outline the heavy fighting of the past 24 hours in every sector of the 10-mile battlefront at El Alamein. Within the limits imposed by local censorship, it is possible only to summarize the extent of the damage which the British Imperials have inflicted on the Axis. They have knocked out half of the German “operative” tank strength.44

Stevens’s coverage also focused on the U.S. contribution to the war effort: WITH U.S. ARMY TANK CREWS IN THE WESTERN DESERT, July 30—The first American land combat forces in North Africa, or in the entire Middle East for that matter—a small group of tank crews—are parked out here on a bleak, bare stretch of desert. We arrived to see them in the midst of a howling dust storm. Knowing their approximate location, after floundering blindly about we eventually located them by the unmistakable accent of their voices. They were feeling rather lost in these strange surroundings and were indeed glad to see us. “Ah didn’t know there was this much desert outside of Texas,” a native of that State drawled, whereupon we answered: “Boy, you haven’t seen anything yet.”45

43. Stevens, “Armies Poised for Egyptian Showdown,” CSM, July 17, 1942, 1. 44. Ibid. 45. Stevens, “U.S. Tank Crews Arrive in Egypt,” CSM, July 30, 1942, 1.

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The phrase “passed by American Military Censor” appears in the following dispatch. It would become a regular note in most of his articles the rest of the campaign. CAIRO. Passed by American Military Censor. Aug. 12—Indicative of America’s determination to come to grips with the enemy wherever possible it now can be revealed that United States fighter pilots with their own American-made planes are completing final training in the Western Desert preliminary to going into action. While unable to disclose the actual numbers it can be stated that the group is of substantial size and is at present undergoing instruction at the hands of veteran RAF desert fighters who are teaching the Americans all the tricks and fine points about fighting in the skies over the desert.46

In his memoirs, Stevens reflected on some of the peculiar elements to the war, including a unique encounter with four British soldiers and his observations of life in and around Cairo during this time. • • • By mid-August the military situation had been stabilized. The Afrika Korps was still at El Alamein, but was showing signs of war weariness, due largely to the growing effectiveness of Allied airpower attacks over sea and land on their vulnerable supply lines. Nevertheless, the threat of a two-pronged drive through Egypt to the Middle East, linking up with German forces descending through the Caucasus Mountains into Iran, still seemed real. • • •

Escaped Prisoners • • • There was no lack of odd experiences. One day we were parked outside the sandbagged entrance of the South African Brigade headquarters watching RAF Bostons bomb enemy positions when a 1500 heavyweight Ford with German recognition crosses on the roof and the palm tree and swastika insignia of the Afrika Korps stenciled on its doors drove up. Judging by the model and appearance, the truck must have 46. Stevens, “America to Hear a Lot Soon about Air Force Almost Ready to Fight in Western Desert,” CSM, August 12, 1942, 1.

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been one of those captured from the Germans. It had the overworked, decrepit look all vehicles seem to acquire in the desert almost before they are broken in. Sagging fenders, headlights askew, and a ratchet that once held a side mirror hanging loosely from a bolt. Of the four men who climbed out, one was a bit dusty, though still quite presentable in the yellow khaki uniform and the peak hat of the Afrika Korps, but his three companions were caked with grime beyond recognition. Their shirts were discolored and in oil-soaked tatters. Only wisps of red on their shoulders identified them as South Africans. One stepped forward and announced, “Second Royal Durban, light infantry, reporting back with two men from my company sir.” Then he reported to the astonished staff officer, “We escaped from Tobruk, and brought along this prisoner as a mascot.” In this matter of fact way he told his story. For several days after the enemy occupied Tobruk, the sergeant and his men determined not to give themselves up and went into hiding, planning to escape. Carefully choosing a point in the perimeter that seemed the least guarded, they set forth at night. They had two water canteens between them, four cans of bully beef, and service revolvers. Moving by night and hiding by day, they hoped to reach Allied lines on foot. At that time they had no way of knowing that the Allies had withdrawn quite far. They managed to continue for five days, narrowly avoiding escape several times. Finally, exhausted and starving, they managed to ambush a German truck, shoot its driver, and continue the three-day drive to Allied lines, getting shot at by both sides in the process. • • •

Traveling from Cairo • • • Moving forward from the city was like swimming upstream against a powerful current, and progress was slow. Near the city, the faces of the men—drivers and troops riding in back are smiling. Battle scarred, exhausted, and discouraged though they may be, they brighten up in anticipation of soon being in Cairo. One could hardly blame them for temporarily forgetting the war and thinking only of their enjoyment. Some of them, most of them probably, had been out in the desert continuously for months and months with nothing but sun, sand, bully beef,

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and the dull monotony of war with its few brief moments of excitement. Now within an hour they would be in Cairo with money in their pockets. As one traveled farther and farther away from Cairo, the smiles on the men’s faces faded. Memories of the front were still too stark and anticipated pleasures still too distant to counteract them. Motor vehicles of every make and model were included in the endless procession. Streamlined staff cars and station wagons rub dumpers democratically with fuel tankers and supply vans. A five-ton Ford with munitions truck, spattered with machine-gun bullet holes tows a Chevrolet troop carrier with a smashed radiator. Other vehicles bear scars of shellfire. Some have their front end hoisted up on the backs of others. Now and again, jammed in among these maimed monsters, a civilian passenger car with Cairo or Alexandria license plates struggled to forge by. Through the windows one catches a glimpse of a white linen suit or a woman’s hat, incongruous reminders of another world that seemed far away and forgotten. The highway forked where the road to the western desert turned off. Beyond, the scene is much the same except that as one nears the fighting, almost within picnic-party distance of Alexandria, traffic thins out a bit. You haven’t far to travel to see war. You simply choose a spot by the roadside and watch it flow past you. Only don’t linger too long and keep mobile. Even in those crucial days when Rommel’s then-victorious forces were advancing ever nearer to the Nile Delta, and seemed to be carrying all before them, Cairo’s vast cosmopolitan population appeared somehow indifferent, particularly the great mass of Egypt’s have-nots. It was partly the fatalistic “it is written” and “it is the will of Allah” of their Muslim faith that accounted for the amazing indifference to bombing in oft-raided places such as Alexandria.47 • • • Despite the surreal nature of Cairo itself in the summer of 1942, Rommel’s pounding of the British in North Africa was one of many problems the Allies faced. Hitler was pressing closer to the oil rich land of Russia’s Caucasus region and had once forced the evacuation of the government out of Moscow. Germany also held its iron grip on Western 47. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 118.

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and Central Europe. In the Pacific, the Japanese had driven MacArthur from the Philippines and taken the Dutch West Indies, Burma, and Singapore. The American victory at Midway was significant, but the Allied powers desperately needed other victories. Stevens’s editors in Boston clearly were pleased to have sent him back to the war front. Meanwhile, Nina gave birth on July 21, 1942, to their second child, a daughter she named Anastasia. His domestic roles of husband and father abandoned for the time being, Stevens successfully reclaimed the international voice of a frontline reporter, and he proved he could cover not just the lesser-known battles involving minor characters such as Finland and Romania, but also the epic battles between military giants and geniuses as they unleashed their forces in the sands of an ancient land. El Alamein wasn’t yet decided in August 1942, when Stevens took on yet another role, this one an exotic departure for which he was uniquely suited—Russian linguistic and cultural interpreter to British prime minister Winston Churchill’s staff in a special conference with Russian dictator Josef Stalin at the Kremlin.

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7 With Churchill in Moscow

The Second Moscow Conference between the major allies of World War II took place August 12–17, 1942. During the historic meeting, Edmund Stevens traded his role as war correspondent for that of interpreter and technical adviser to British prime minister Winston Churchill’s staff and entourage for the delicate matter of convincing Soviet premier Josef Stalin to meet with Churchill and Roosevelt in order to strengthen an alliance between the U.S., England, and Russia, while also delivering the news that an Allied invasion of Europe would be delayed until 1944. Because he had agreed to stand as interpreter, Stevens did not cover the conference as a journalist—until nearly a year later in a special feature entitled “I Flew to Moscow with Churchill,” which was published in the Monitor on June 7, 1943. Stevens’s memoirs reveal how exhausting the trip was for Churchill, who, according to Stevens, remained humorless during much of the public venues of the conference. • • • In August, Winston Churchill landed in Cairo on his way to Moscow, for the thankless task of justifying to Stalin the decision of the Western powers to postpone landings on the French coast and the opening of a “second front”—originally scheduled for the spring of 1943—until 1944. On the American side were W. Averell Harriman, President Roosevelt’s personal representative, and Brigadier General Sidney Spalding. In Cairo, the party picked up General Archibald Wavell, the chief of British Middle East Forces, and Major General Russell L. Maxwell, the head of the American military mission. Maxwell, in view 193

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of my Russian experience, invited me to go along with the rather vague title of technical adviser, together with his aide, my close friend Naval Lieutenant Sumner Gerard.1 • • • Churchill went to Moscow to persuade Stalin to meet face-to-face with Roosevelt and Churchill to discuss an Allied war strategy and postwar cooperation. The three would eventually hold conferences in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam. But in the summer of 1942, two questions weighed heavily on Roosevelt: What would Stalin demand in order to agree to ally himself with the U.S. and Britain? Would Churchill be able to tolerate Stalin’s demands? Roosevelt considered an agreement between Russia and Britain to the principle of postwar international cooperation as the highest priority of the meeting. According to historian Keith Sainsbury, This carried with it the necessity of securing also specific Soviet/British promises of participation in the international organizations which would be necessary to implement such co-operation. These objectives were not expected to be easy to obtain. In particular the suspicions and mistrust of the Soviet government, and its preferences for secretive and unilateral action had to be overcome. It was true Soviet experience of previous international organizations between the wars had not been encouraging for them. The League of Nations had singularly failed to halt the march of Nazi Germany, but had seemed only too ready to condemn Soviet actions. The USSR, therefore, would need some persuading to join a new international organization. The problem with the British on the other hand was somewhat different. The Americans suspected that the traditionalists of the British Foreign Office had little faith in their idealistic proposals for international co-operation. . . . In addition Churchill had made it clear that he regarded the continuance of the Anglo-American alliance as a more important bulwark of post-war peace and security than any new international institution.2

Roosevelt and Churchill’s first joint conference with the Russian dictator was held November 28 to December 1, 1943, in Tehran, Iran. As Sainsbury argued, “Militarily, it decided the main course of Allied strat1. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 128. 2. Sainsbury, The Turning Point: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and Chiang-Kai-Shek, 1943: The Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran Conferences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 12–13.

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egy till the war’s end. Politically, it paved the way for the Yalta division of Europe and much of the rest of the world into American and Soviet spheres of interest.”3 But before Potsdam, before Yalta, and before Tehran, there was the delicate matter of winning over the steely dictator who was infuriated that the U.S. seemed to be dragging its feet on invading Europe to open another front. That task fell to Churchill himself, an indomitable force for the British, a symbol of determined resistance throughout Europe, but, according to Stevens, a human being clearly strained by the task before him. • • • The flight proved strenuous, a circuitous seven thousand miles, in two hops of seven and ten hours, with an overnight stop in Tehran. There were four planes, three RAF Liberators, and one U.S. military B-24. From Tehran we soared over the Elborz Mountains, black and barren on their southern exposure, densely forested on their northern slopes that dropped steeply from twelve thousand feet to the Caspian, two hundred feet below sea level. On instructions from our Soviet radio operator, the planes reduced altitude to a few hundred feet, this partly for recognition purposes, so that Soviet spotters would not mistake the huge unfamiliar birds for hostile aircraft, and also to be less conspicuous aloft, lest any German aircraft happened to be lurking. Only the previous week a German reconnaissance plane had appeared over the main Iranian Caspian port of Pahlavi, presumably to photograph supply dumps. It had dropped nothing more lethal than leaflets calling on the inhabitants to rise up in the name of the “Prophet,” promising them full support from that “staunch defender of Islam Adolph Hitler.” It happened that the leaflets were in Turkish, so that not even the literate minority of Iranians could enjoy a good laugh. But it would not have been funny if our convoy had encountered enemy aircraft, even only a reconnaissance plane. The Messerschmitt 110, generally used for reconnaissance, was essentially a long-range fighter, and it was armed with Oerlikon cannons and fifty-caliber machine guns. Only one of our four planes, the American B-24, was battle worthy. The Liberators, in which Churchill and the British party were flying, had been stripped of their guns and armor for greater speed and load capacity. This typical bit of British bravado rather astounded the Soviet air force officers who briefed the party in Tehran before takeoff. The Soviet 3. Ibid., 1.

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major had advised the British flight commander to keep his guns ready and the gunners at their action stations throughout most of the flight, but he was told this would not be possible, as there were no guns to man. The danger was obvious. Cairo Airport, our departure point, was then less than twenty minutes flying time from Axis airfields. And much of our flight over Soviet territory would be within easy air radius from the German lines. Luckily, the only untoward event was engine trouble that forced the plane with Sir Archibald Wavell to turn back to Tehran when we were forty minutes out. We were soon above Baku, where clustered forests of oil well derricks covered hundreds of square miles. Even from our height, the air seemed saturated with oil. Thereafter, the countryside grew more open and greener, rolling fields alternated with thick forests. We crossed the Volga River near the city of Kuybishev, formerly known as Samara, and made a beeline for Moscow. We flew above lush meadows, winding streams, and small toylike villages of log houses strung along either side of a single line, with an onion-domed church at one end. It all inspired a deceptive sense of bucolic peace. Our Russian radio operator kept carefully checking the course on his large-scale map. He warned each successive town en route of our approach and at what time to expect us. This was necessary in order to prevent antiaircraft gunners from getting their signals and silhouettes mixed up and shooting at us. Churchill slept most of the flight, and it was well that he did, for he would have scant opportunity to sleep during his four whirlwind days in Moscow. When his large gray Liberator landed, the small man in a zipper siren suit lowered himself through the bomb hatch and stepped free of the fuselage. With a brief smile he produced his familiar two finger “V” sign for the benefit of the cameras. He was welcomed by a contingent of senior officials led by Molotov, whom he had met when the foreign commissar visited London. A military band blared “The Internationale,” followed by “God Save the King.” Our party then left the airport aboard black limousines. Churchill had arrived safely in Moscow. He was billeted in solitary splendor in a sumptuous country dacha with a lovely garden.4 • • •

4. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 128–31.

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Stevens’s involvement would remain enigmatic if one had access only to his memoirs. Once again the journalist capable of playing different roles exceedingly well—observer, analyst, war correspondent and survivor, and even combatant—left significant holes in his own memoirs, this time on his role as translator and cultural adviser to the British prime minister’s staff during one of the most historic meetings of the twentieth century. But Harriman’s memoirs regarding Churchill’s trip to Moscow explain, at least in part, the role that Stevens played. When Harriman learned he’d be accompanying Churchill to Moscow, he took action to address U.S. interests: Seeing the value of a small staff to check on Lend-Lease developments and the Soviet war effort, Harriman set about recruiting one in Cairo. At the American embassy he ran into Loy Henderson, who had been charge d’affaires in Moscow during the period of Stalin’s great purges. Henderson was in Cairo on an inspection tour for the State Department, and when Harriman cabled for permission to take him along, the Department readily agreed. He also found Brigadier General Sidney P. Spalding, a Lend-Lease officer who had been sent out from Washington to survey the Persian Gulf supply route, in Cairo. In addition, Harriman persuaded General Marshall, by telegram, to let him borrow Major General Russell L. Maxwell, commander of American supply forces in the Middle East. Marshall stipulated, however, that General Maxwell not be empowered to discuss strategic questions with the Russians.5

While Maxwell would have limited access to Churchill or Stalin, he could assess the Soviets’ fighting ability, the conditions inside Moscow itself, and the effectiveness of Stalin’s commanders. Maxwell landed in Cairo determined to put together his team, and he tapped Stevens because of his fluency in Russian and his clear understanding of Soviet culture in general and Moscow’s political layers in particular. In the North African desert where the Germans and British were laying waste to each other’s armies, this American general found an international journalist uniquely suited to give support to a delicate diplomatic mission inside the Kremlin. An observer to Finland’s fall to Russia, Greece’s fall to Germany, and Italy’s fall to a triumphant, returning Ethiopian emperor, Edmund Stevens might once again have had a front-row seat 5. W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin (New York: Random House, 1975), 150–51.

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to unfolding drama. But, this time, he was virtually locked out of the theater. He wrote of his trip in Russia Is No Riddle: “Thanks to Harriman’s zipped lips, virtually no news leaked out during the actual Churchill-Stalin talks in Moscow. Churchill avoided the press completely. Only after we had flown back to Cairo was the curtain of censorship lifted to let out the bare fact of his visit.”6 Stevens also recounted his experience in his memoirs. • • • The American party, consisting of Harriman, two generals, Naval Lieutenant Gerard and myself, were taken to the foreign ministry guesthouse where state visitors from scores of nations had preceded us. If only its walls possessed a speaker as well as microphones, what gripping stories they could tell! Through the passing years, the guesthouse register was signed by scores of emissaries from almost every corner of the globe. Friends, foes, and neutrals alike enjoyed the generous measure of Russian hospitality. The guesthouse was located in central Moscow, rather less than half a mile from the Kremlin. Soon after we arrived, the chef came to Gerard and myself with a typed four-page culinary list. He asked us to check our party’s gastronomic preferences. And this we did according to our own tastes without distracting our superiors from affairs of state with such trivia. The resulting menus would have been breathtaking anywhere, let alone in war-torn Moscow. Every meal consisted of at least four courses. And the table was always embellished with a basket of tempting fruit. Only with difficulty could we persuade the help that we did not want champagne for breakfast. Once we invited the American press correspondents for supper. When they saw the food, they asked if we had brought the provisions with us. Even the American embassy staff, including the ambassador, Admiral Standley, found meals at the guesthouse a real treat during our stay. The days were largely devoted to consultation on technicalities, including ordering and delivery of supplies and respective merits of various weapons. Members of our group compared notes with U.S. and Allied diplomats and military personnel and consulted with Soviet officials on a wide range of issues. At some point in every such exchange, the needling issue of the second front was sure to crop up.7 6. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 132–33. 7. Ibid., 135.

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• • • Whether he placed this excerpt in his memoirs with plans to develop it more fully is anyone’s guess. What is quite clear, however, is that Stevens clearly and comfortably saw himself playing exactly the role that Maxwell had asked him to play—support staff addressing America’s unique interests—and he compartmentalized accordingly. He even included the comment, “we invited the American press,” an odd statement given that he himself was a member of that corps. During his time in Moscow, Stevens received orders to gather as much information as possible from his own friends and relatives, presumably to understand how the war was hitting Moscow residents. It was a request that gave him the opportunity to check on Nina’s immediate family. • • • My assignment was to look up as many Russian friends as possible. I started with my wife’s family. My mother-in-law and Nina’s eldest brother, Evgenyi, were living in our house. As a skilled worker, he was exempt from military service. But the youngest brother, Aliosha, commissioned a lieutenant in the tank corps, vanished without a trace in the first German onslaught. The middle brother, Piotr, had been a partisan behind the German lines. One morning a notification of his death was delivered, but that same afternoon he phoned from a hospital. He was wounded, not seriously, and had been picked up and flown from behind the lines. Twice firebombs had hit the house, and both times Evgenyi managed to put them out. The Germans were still advancing, and the Volga lifeline was cut. Railway and highway links with the Caucasus were severed. But nowhere among my friends was there the least suggestion of defeatism, or doubt as to the final outcome.8 • • • Note the change in tone. Stevens writes of close friends’ circumstances with almost impersonal detachment. It is especially telling in contrast to his writing in the company of the powerful. Stevens also attempted in his memoirs to summarize the overwhelming circumstances facing enemies of the Axis. • • • Our mission to Moscow came at a time when Allied fortunes seemed at low ebb. Sevastopol, the main Soviet Black Sea naval base in Crimea, 8. Ibid., 135–37.

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had just fallen after an eight-month siege. In the east, the Wehrmacht had reached the Volga. To the south, the Germans were deep into the Caucasus. The Maikop oil fields were in enemy hands. The town of Grozny was besieged. In Africa, Rommel was almost in sight of Alexandria. Prophets of doom envisioned a nightmare scenario in which victorious Axis forces, advancing from these two directions would link up somewhere in the Middle East. When the Germans launched their invasion, Churchill predicted that the Soviets would soon cave in. Even now, negotiating with Stalin, he was far from sure they could win, despite admittedly heroic resistance. Some months earlier in London, Churchill had spoken to General Wladyslaw Anders, the commander of the Polish army formed in Russia, but never in combat. Anders’s pretext for the trip to England was to get uniforms and equipment. But his real aim was to arrange evacuation of his men from Soviet territory to Iran. Anders told Churchill that Russia had totally exhausted all resources. Transportation and the economy were in chaos. By summer’s end the Germans would have crossed the Volga and completed the conquest of the Caucasus. Baku with its oil would be theirs. The Soviet Union was doomed. But if the Polish troops were evacuated in good time, they could help strengthen the defenses of the Middle East against the inevitable German offensive from the Caucasus. Churchill was so impressed by Anders’s scenario that he not only backed the evacuation of the Poles from Russia to the Middle East, but ordered large contingents of Indian troops switched from Burma to Iraq to Iran. Before Anders saw Churchill in London, he voiced his views to the thirty-odd generals and eighty-odd brigadiers in charge of British GHQ in the Middle East and fully convinced them. Only after it became all too obvious that the Soviet Union would survive, did Churchill and the military brass realize the Anders scenario was an unconscious product of wishful thinking that the Germans and Russians, Poland’s historic enemies, would destroy each other like the Kilkenny cats. The Russians in good faith even provided a special plane to fly Anders as far as Cairo. It waited there with its crew for two weeks to take him back to Russia and then took off without him. Anders never again set foot in Russia. The Kremlin soon learned that his basic aim had been to convince the Anglo-Americans that the USSR would be defeated by Germany. This knowledge tended to aggravate Stalin’s mistrust of Churchill, and Stalin had not yet forgiven the British for Munich, when according to

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the Russians, the Chamberlain government had tried to form an antiSoviet coalition of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. Another black mark against Churchill in Stalin’s book was Churchill’s support of Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The Soviets still harbored serious misgivings over the Rudolf Hess episode. They insisted that Hess did not fly to Britain on his own initiative, but at Hitler’s behest to solicit British backing for the anti-Soviet crusade he was then about to unleash. The Kremlin still suspected that a de facto Hess request for an armistice was tabled, and that Britain might still be playing some double game, encouraging both the Soviets and the Germans to exhaust each other. Lack of a second front added to these gnawing doubts in Stalin’s mind. Churchill, on the other hand, deeply resented what he considered Soviet lack of appreciation for the British effort. He sensed a lack of credit to the British for braving the blitz and for the time when they stood alone against the aggressor in the face of apparently hopeless odds. Nor had he forgiven the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, when Soviet policy seemed to favor Germany, and that Soviet grain and raw materials aided Hitler’s war effort against Britain. Churchill, like Stalin, was haunted by the specter of a separate peace.9 • • • When organizing his memoirs on this point, Stevens chose to use his old account about the outcome of the meeting rather than to write a new one that included updated observations or facts. Ironically, this meeting increased Stevens’s own chances of returning to the Soviet Union as a working journalist because a strengthened Allied force meant greater openness to the Soviet Union’s and the Allies’ press corps. Yet there’s no new information here that can’t be found in other sources. Imagine if Stevens had written a detailed account of how he was selected and whether and how often he was in the presence of Churchill and Stalin together. He said of the walls in the foreign ministry guesthouse, “what gripping stories they could tell!” The same is true of the journalist himself. Imagine if Stevens had offered the world a more compelling account of his Moscow adventure with Churchill. Instead, the reader gets a geopolitical essay tinged with food reviews. Harriman’s observations address another element predominant in the trip—the issue of the second front:

9. Ibid., 138.

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Churchill has recorded his conflicted thoughts upon the approach to Moscow, his first visit to “this sullen, sinister Bolshevik State I had once tried so hard to strangle at its birth.” . . . He was determined to tell Stalin the blunt truth that there would be no second front in 1942 and to have it out with him face to face. “It was,” Churchill reflected, “like carrying large lump of ice to the North Pole.” Less than three hours after their arrival, Churchill and Harriman met with Stalin at the Kremlin. Harriman found Stalin looking older and grayer than the year before, but no less vigorous. Their first talk of three hours and forty minutes went unexpectedly well, although the first two hours were somber enough as Churchill explained, “with the greatest frankness,” in Harriman’s view, why the second front could not be opened in 1942.10

According to Stevens’s memoirs, Churchill wasn’t the only person preoccupied with this issue: the entire Allied contingent discovered on its trip that the second front was on the mind of seemingly every Russian it encountered. • • • Popular feeling in Russia was especially bitter over failure of the second front to materialize as promised in London to Molotov. It flared up to the point where members of Allied military missions who went outdoors in uniform were jeered by the public. There were snide jokes about how the English and Americans had set up their second front in the front row at the ballet. Although official sources reserved comment, the newspapers featured reports of mass meetings called by labor and leftist groups and organizations demanding the immediate opening of a second front. There was little attempt to weigh prospects in terms of forces available, especially of shipping. The Russian public did not know that out of a convoy of forty-eight ships bound for Murmansk in June 1942, forty-five were sunk, and that if one-third of a convoy made port, it was termed a success. They likewise knew little of the heavy Allied involvement in the naval operations against Japan. Such oversights were comprehensible. The Nazis were still gnawing their way deeper into Russia’s living flesh.11 • • • In fact, while Stevens walked the streets of Moscow listening to average residents complain about what they considered to be a slow response 10. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 152. 11. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 137

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from the Americans to invade Europe, the same point remained—as expected—the hottest potato in the series of meetings between Churchill, Harriman, and Stalin. This put the British prime minister on an emotional roller coaster and explains Stevens’s observations about a sometimes visibly crabby Churchill. According to Harriman’s notes, the first meeting between Churchill and Stalin went exceedingly well. Elie Abel wrote, “After the Kremlin meeting, Harriman rode with the Prime Minister back to his dacha a few miles outside the city. Both were delighted with the talk. The Prime Minister, who was meeting Stalin for the first time, felt it had been the most important conference of his long life. He was pleased at Harriman’s presence and thanked him for his help in getting over some of the rough spots.”12 But the following night, while hosting the American correspondents, Stevens observed what would be the start of a hard meeting for the two world leaders. • • • As for Churchill, after a hearty dinner, well lubricated with his favorite scotch, a heavily curtained, bulletproof, black American limousine, like those made famous by gangster movies, came for him near eleven, and whisked him to the Kremlin, in keeping with Stalin’s habit of doing his heavy work late at night. On at least two occasions Harriman was present for a short time only. The nitty gritty was a tete-a-tete, ChurchillStalin dialogue, conducted through Stalin’s skilled interpreter Pavlov.13 • • • Harriman’s notes from the meeting elaborate Stevens’s observations: “Harriman was occupied with other business. He sent off his cables to Washington, called on Ambassador Standley at the American embassy and invited the American correspondents in for a drink in the evening,” Abel wrote. “He had just started dinner about ten o’clock in the guesthouse when Stalin had insisted that Harriman take part in the second meeting again. Thus, at eleven-fifteen, Churchill and Harriman returned to the blacked-out Kremlin for what turned out to be an unexpectedly tough encounter with Stalin.”14 The Soviet dictator bullied Churchill and Harriman regarding the postponed U.S. invasion of Europe. After listening to an extensive memo translated in painful detail, Churchill took issue with Stalin’s browbeating. Later, in a cable to his war cabinet, the prime minister wrote, 12. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 154–55. 13. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 135. 14. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 154–55.

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he [Stalin] said a great many disagreeable things, especially about our being too much afraid of fighting the Germans; that if we tried it like the Russians we should find it not so bad. . . . I repulsed all his contentions squarely, but without taunts of any kind. I suppose he is not used to being contradicted repeatedly but he did not become at all angry, or even animated. . . . On one occasion I said: “I pardon that remark only on account of the bravery of the Russian troops.”15

But Harriman noted the prime minister’s ability to remain calm and focused throughout Stalin’s attack. By the end of the evening, according to Harriman, Stalin was relaxed—certain Churchill was sincere and the Allies were doing their best. But Churchill was visibly depressed: In Harriman’s view, the harshness of Stalin’s hot-and-cold tactics could only be understood in relation to the plight of the Red Army at that moment of grave crisis. The Germans were advancing toward Stalingrad, and by all accounts, the battle was going badly for the defenders. Leningrad was still under German blockade after 350 days. Stalin could hardly be blamed for pressing the Western Allies to take action, any action, that would force the Germans to slacken their attack by drawing off some divisions to the west. “They were really desperate,” Harriman recalled. “Stalin’s roughness was an expression of their need for help. It was his way of trying to put all the heat he possibly could on Churchill. So he pressed as hard as he could until he realized that no amount of additional pressure would produce a second front in 1942. He had the wisdom to know that he could not let Churchill go back to London feeling there had been a breakdown.”16

Both Stevens and Harriman noted the strain between the two world leaders. In Russia Is No Riddle, Stevens wrote, The turning in the road was not yet visible in August 1942. The long bitter agony of Stalingrad lay still ahead. It was far from easy for Churchill and Stalin to reach an accord that would lead to an Allied victory. The unresolved conflicts of interest had to be subordinated to wartime strategy. Personality antagonism was involved. In two decades Stalin had not dealt with statesmen of equal political rank. He was used to laying down the law and calling the shots. Though Churchill’s tenure in power was 15. Ibid., 156–57. 16. Ibid., 159.

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shorter, and his authority less absolute, he could in his way be as domineering and intolerant of opposition as Stalin.17

According to Harriman, “Stalin’s dinner for Churchill and Harriman, on the evening of August 14, seemed less gay and far more abstemious than the party for Harriman and Beaverbrook the previous year. . . . Stalin ate a little cheese and single potato, explaining to Harriman that he had dined earlier, and sipped his wine from a small vodka glass for the toasts. The mood was sober, hardly an occasion for great festivity.”18 But in their final private meeting, Churchill and Stalin made peace and, in fact, created a bond, as noted by Stevens in his memoirs. • • • The British aristocrat and Georgian cobbler’s son were like positive and negative charges of the same high voltage. Their antecedents and temperaments generated antagonism at every level. Logical imperative and mutual hatred for the Bechtesgaden paperhanger [Hitler] provided their common ground. Churchill managed to convey to Stalin why the Allies could not land in France for the present. He told him about the planned expedition to North Africa as a second-best second front. The Soviet generalissimus was far from satisfied. But subsequently press needling over the second front abated, save for Ilya Ehrenburg, who refused to be silenced. Churchill was reassured that the German offensive would be halted and that Russia did not intend to seek a separate peace. The two men were hardly friends, but they respected each other. Before takeoff several cases of the best Georgian cognac were lifted aboard Churchill’s Liberator through the bomb hatch. And later Stalin referred to Winston quasi affectionately as, “etot stary boievoi kon” (that old warhorse).19 • • • As Harriman related, Their personal relationship was firmly cemented on August 15, Churchill’s last evening in Moscow, when he called on Stalin alone to say goodbye. Stalin kept him talking all evening, in fact for seven hours. The 17. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 136; Edmund Stevens, Russia Is No Riddle (New York: Greenberg, 1945), 96. 18. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 160. 19. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 137; Stevens, Russia Is No Riddle, 98.

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Prime Minister acknowledged that some of the things he had said must have been painful to Stalin but he believed in plain speaking. He had traveled to Moscow “with the earnest wish for a personal understanding” and he hoped that Stalin shared his own feeling that progress had been made. Stalin responded that the visit had been of the utmost importance. “We have got to know each other,” he said, “and we have understood one another. Obviously there are differences between us but differences are in the nature of things. The fact that the meeting has taken place, that personal contact has been established, means that the ground has been prepared for future agreement.”20

Immediately after the Stalin-Churchill meeting, Stevens returned to North Africa and wrote nothing about what he saw and heard in the presence of Churchill. As he noted in Russia Is No Riddle, Only after we had flown back to Cairo was the curtain of censorship lifted to let out the bare fact of his visit. Churchill’s press conference back in Cairo was singularly uninformative—consisting mostly of generalities about how well he and Stalin had got along with each other. Not till later did the gossip gradually leak out about the unfavorable impression caused at the Kremlin banquets by the Prime Minister’s appearance in a siren suit—the Russians are sticklers for form—by his grumpiness during the toast-making, and by the unceremonious way he sat on his own Ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr, when the latter proposed a toast to Stalin’s health. Churchill told Sir Archie that as Ambassador he could address himself only to Molotov, the Foreign Commissar.21

His first published article after the conference focused on Churchill’s visit to Cairo and only referred to the prime minister’s trip to Moscow. Stevens likely knew that Churchill personally appointed General Sir Harold Alexander as regional commander, but he merely reported, “There has been no disclosure of any direct connection, but the timing of the new appointment of Gen. Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander as Commander for the Middle East can hardly be interpreted as anything less than one of the results of the Prime Minister’s conclusions.” Nothing in Stevens’s article betrays just how close he had been to Churchill, perhaps because Churchill had not allowed support staff to get near him during the trip: 20. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 162. 21. Stevens, Russia Is No Riddle, 101–4.

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Russia: No Substitute for a Land Front Churchill’s quick action after flight to Egypt and Moscow due to put war in high gear By Edmund Stevens Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor CAIRO, PASSED BY U.S. MILITARY CENSOR. Aug. 22—Vigorous action in widely differing spheres—sweeping changes in the British Middle East command and the daring invasion “rehearsal” at Dieppe, all following close on Prime Minister Churchill’s record-breaking tour— appear as the first tangible indications of decisions taken during the Cairo and Moscow visits. They testify far more eloquently to determination to prosecute the war with vigor than all the published statements to that effect. Serious Allied reverses on two fronts—the North Caucasus and North Africa—probably provide the underlying impetus of Mr. Churchill’s trip. In Egypt he wanted to examine for himself, on the ground, the reasons for the succession of defeats in the Western desert. He went to Moscow primarily in order to give the Russian people and Premier Stalin personal assurance of full Allied support. At the same time consultations were held with Soviet leaders and outstanding Americans such as W. Averell Harriman, President Roosevelt’s personal representative, Maj. Gen. Russell L. Maxwell, Commanding General of the United States Army forces in the Middle East, and Brig. Gen. Sidney P. Spalding who accompanied him, to determine how this aid could best be implemented. In Egypt the Prime Minister undertook a housecleaning with his customary thoroughness and literally bolstered up the situation by infusing some of the forcefulness of his own fighting personality. His Cairo tasks were simplified by his thorough familiarity with the setup and people involved and his complete authority. With the aid of the best British military experts, for more than a week he studied the situation, heard everybody’s case, inspected the front within sight of the enemy lines, and talked with men in the field. There has been no disclosure of any direct connection, but the timing of the new appointment of Gen. Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander as Commander for the Middle East can hardly be interpreted as anything less than one of the results of the Prime Minister’s conclusions. And the appointment of Maj. Gen. Herbert Lumsden as Commander of the 13th Corps is clearly an effort to make use of commanders who are “developing the goods” under combat conditions. For it was General

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Lumsden, an expert on mechanized warfare who, with some 20 tanks, held up the Germans for two days at a key point in the protection of the evacuation of Dunkirk. Far more complex was Mr. Churchill’s task during his briefer Moscow visit. Lately there had been recurring reports of Soviet dissatisfaction with the amount of Allied support. For exactly 14 months now the Russians almost single-handed have borne the concentrated impact of the German war machine backed by the combined manpower and economic resources of the Nazi-occupied and satellite European States. The Russians have taken and inflicted terrific punishment, but now with the Germans deep in the Caucasus it is a problem of how long they can continue effective resistance unless something drastic is done to divert at least a portion of the concentrated Nazi striking power. Today in Russia there is one question and one question only on the lips of every articulate citizen. It is: “When will the second front be opened?” In the popular mind and in Kremlin circles this matter of a second front has become crucial. By comparison all other questions such as increased flow of war materials recede into the background. In Russia selectivity of published news provides an important barometer of policy. For weeks now the Soviet press has daily printed long reports of popular movement and clamor on Russia through casualties or occupation of Soviet areas by the Nazis. One can’t fight this war to win on such a basis they point out. Russia would probably continue fighting whatever happens. But though Russian morale has been magnificent, the sacrifices and suffering they have already been subjected to might have broken people made of less stern stuff, and should the struggle continue long at the present tempo without any prospect of relief even they might reach the limit of endurance. All these considerations were doubtless in the minds of Mr. Churchill and his aides as they winged to Moscow above the clouds, and unless the Prime Minister had something very positive to say and something specific to offer on a crucial point it is doubtful that he would have undertaken the long and hazardous journey. Conclusive results of the Moscow journey should be soon apparent.22

22. Stevens, “Russia: No Substitute for a Land Front,” CSM, August 22, 1942, 1.

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The following year, after returning to the United States and the Boston office, Stevens finally wrote more of the details in his piece, “I Flew to Moscow with Churchill.” In the June 7, 1943, feature, Stevens concluded, The world can only guess what passed at these tete-a-tetes, but there must have been plain speaking on both sides. The Soviet press at that time at any rate was not mincing words in its campaign for the opening of a second front. Yet nowhere among my Russian friends was there the least suggestion of defeatism or doubt as to the final outcome. Although bomb damage was comparatively slight in Moscow, the war was visible and tangible everywhere, it was written on the faces of the people, on the facades of buildings. The very atmosphere was charged with the intensity of struggle. I had been catapulted by bomber into this grim, determined city I had known so well in better days, straight from Cairo, another wartime Capital close to the front lines. But in Cairo, even during the early summer “flap” when a German breakthrough was expected from hour to hour there was plenty of frivolity; food was plentiful, evening clothes still the rule in many places. The social season had never been so brilliant. Speculators and profiteers “coined” money and inside tips on the stock exchange were worth their weight in banknotes. The situation in Cairo might be hopeless, but never serious. By comparison, Moscow was both an inspiration and a rebuke. Mr. Churchill, too, must have felt the contrast keenly. A sort of brooding gruffness took possession of him, and even at the Kremlin banquet, when Mr. Stalin and the other Soviet leaders were in top form, Mr. Churchill failed to rise to the occasion and sparkle. It may have been partly physical weariness, it may have been pondering over the still indefinite future. It may have been that he had met a man who was his equal in toughness, determination and indomitable courage. For in these qualities the two utterly alien leaders were on common ground. At any rate, Mr. Churchill’s farewell to Mr. Stalin: “I am now and shall continue to be your friend,” was mumbled with conviction. When his mission terminated and he was winging his way home, the Prime Minister soon recovered his buoyant elasticity. Back in Cairo other problems faced him. He had first to find out what was wrong with the Eighth Army and try to set it right. There was much work ahead. The victory at El Alamein and final ousting of the Axis from Africa still lay well in the future.

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But one battle, perhaps the most momentous of the war, lay behind him. Whatever may have been Mr. Churchill’s mood of the moment, he must have done some of the hardest, fastest and most persuasive talking of his histrionic career when closeted with Mr. Stalin.23

With Harriman and Churchill, Stevens proved his trustworthiness when stepping outside the role of journalist, his dedication to American interests in the war, and, again, his flexibility in moving from role to role. Thrilled to be out of North Africa for a short while to enjoy genuinely luscious meals in the Kremlin, happy to see family and friends in Moscow, Stevens would return to the North African desert to watch the great climax in the epic battle between military geniuses Rommel and Montgomery. At the end of the summer of 1942, Rommel’s pounding of the British was one of many problems the Allies faced. Germany held its iron grip on Western and Central Europe. Hitler was pressing closer to the oil-rich land of Russia’s Caucasus region and had once forced the evacuation of the government out of Moscow. In the Pacific, the Japanese had driven MacArthur from the Philippines and taken the Dutch West Indies, Burma, and Singapore. The American victory at Midway was very significant, but the Allied powers desperately needed other victories.

23. Stevens, “I Flew To Moscow with Churchill,” CSM, June 7, 1943, 1.

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8 Wendell L. Willkie, Iraq, Iran, and Victory in North Africa

When Edmund Stevens returned to the North African desert, he immediately witnessed the impact of two overwhelming changes that had forced the tide to turn in favor of the Allies: Bernard L. Montgomery’s taking command of the British Eighth Army, and FDR’s unleashing of American military power against Rommel. Stevens reported how it felt to see American flags flying in this desert region in one his first dispatches after the Churchill expedition to Moscow: WITH THE ALLIED FORCES IN EGYPT. Passed by the United States Military Censor, Aug. 28—Over a cluster of white-walled Army tents amid the sun-drenched reaches of the desert, we suddenly saw a large American flag waving in the host breeze. It is strange what the sight of one’s own familiar flag amid remote alien surroundings does even to unsentimental news reporters, evoking the mingled powerful feelings of nostalgic yearning, national pride, and love of country. The words of childhood— ”I pledge allegiance to my flag”—assume a very real meaning.1

The description is vivid, Stevens uncharacteristically patriotic, and Monitor readers get their first account of America’s large scale entry into the North African war. As historian Rick Atkinson observed, 1. Stevens, “Americans in Egypt Cooperate with Allies—‘Let’s Get Job Done’ Is Goal,” CSM, August 28, 1942, 1. 211

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North Africa is where the prodigious weight of American industrial might began to tell, where brute strength emerged as the most conspicuous feature of the Allied arsenal. . . . It is where Allied soldiers figured out, tactically, how to destroy Germans; where the fable of the Third Reich’s invincibility dissolved. Here were staged the first substantial tests of Allied landpower against Axis landpower, and the initial clashes between American troops and German troops. Like the first battles in virtually every American war, this campaign revealed a nation and an army unready to fight and unsure of its martial skills, yet willful and inventive enough finally to prevail. . . . From a distance of sixty years, we can see that North Africa was a pivot point in American history, the place where the United States began to act like a great power—militarily, diplomatically, strategically, tactically. Along with Stalingrad and Midway, North Africa is where the Axis enemy forever lost the initiative in World War II. It is where Great Britain slipped into the role of junior partner in the Anglo-American alliance, and where the United States first emerged as the dominant force it would remain into the next millennium.2

Along with American might, the Allies had a new commander, one who proved to be personally arrogant and militarily brilliant. On August 13, 1942, General Bernard Montgomery took over as commander of the British Eighth Army and transformed the unit into a better-organized operation that he would run with a stronger, more effective military strategy than his predecessor had. Rommel attempted to encircle the Eighth Army at the battle of Alam Halfa near El Alamein on August 31, 1942, but Montgomery broke Rommel’s transmission codes and prepared accordingly. By the beginning of September, Monty had his first victory against the legendary German commander. On September 4, 1942, Stevens reported the results: United Nations bombers and fighters are carrying on an around-theclock intense air offensive against Axis fighting units, supply lines, debarkation ports and convoys in the Mediterranean. Hitler has not been able to provide his little desert Napoleon with planes with which to counter-balance the growing air might of the United Nations. Here in North Africa the Axis is getting its full-dress demonstration of the real implications of the United States’ entry in the war. For Marshal Rommel

2. Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 3–4.

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and his men rising curves of United States war production must have more than an academic meaning.3

Only three days later, he recorded the next major development: CAIRO. Passed by United States Military Censor Sept. 7. Delayed— Despite cautious language of the United Nations communiqués it hourly becomes more evident that something very much resembling a major defeat has been inflicted on Axis forces in the western desert. An important if indirect proof of this thesis is provided by the strange behavior of the Axis Radio. Both Rome and Berlin radiocasters having previously announced that General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launched an offensive, now try to pass the whole thing off as a mere reconnaissance operation. Such contentions are completely believable by the scale of operations while they lasted—by the fact that the entire striking force of the Afrika Korps was involved as well as Italian armored units, while enemy tank losses are estimated at well over the hundred mark. The caution of the British communiqués is quite comprehensible. In the past Marshal Rommel has proved a wily adversary and in the Gazala campaign his temporary withdrawal into a minefield gap was prematurely heralded as a United Nations victory.4

On the heels of the Allied victory, Stevens reported another demonstration of America’s commitment to Britain in the visit of Wendell Willkie, a former FDR opponent who was now the president’s personal representative to the front. Describing his seven-week trip as the highlight of his public career, Willkie later wrote, “I went for three chief purposes. The first was to demonstrate to our Allies and a good many neutral countries that there is unity in the United States. That was my idea. The second purpose of my trip was to accomplish certain things for the president. The third job I set out to do was to find out as much as I could, both for myself, and for the American people, about the war and how it can be won—and quickly.”5 FDR and Willkie agreed that Willkie, who had lost to Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and who was the head of the rival 3. Stevens, “Allied Air Power Slows Rommel Drive,” CSM, September 4, 1942, 1. 4. Stevens, “Major Defeat for Axis Indicated from Egypt,” CSM, September 8, 1942, 1. 5. Steve Neal, Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie (New York: Doubleday, 1984), 231.

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Republican Party, was the ideal representative of the president to carry the message that all of America was united in winning the war. As historian and Willkie biographer Steve Neal observed, “Among the reasons FDR had encouraged Willkie to make the trip was that it would provide a dramatic demonstration to the world that the Allies were in control of strategic air routes. A German or Japanese plane could not have completed such a wide-ranging journey. In addition, the President did not underestimate the propaganda importance of having his erstwhile rival, the leader of the opposition party, as his special envoy to Stalin, Chiang, and de Gaulle.”6 Willkie left the United States on August 26, 1942, and, after several brief stops along the way, arrived in the Middle East. Stevens and Willkie apparently met in Baghdad on September 12, and Stevens filed his first of several dispatches on Willkie’s mission from there. The following article focused on Willkie’s especially effective visit to Jerusalem: BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 13. Delayed—Traveling fast since he left Cairo for Ankara last Monday, Wendell L. Willkie as President Roosevelt’s personal representative has covered the Middle East from Turkey to Iraq with intermediate stops in Lebanon and Palestine. . . . Besides conveying personal messages from President Roosevelt to the heads of various local governments, Mr. Willkie has been giving them factual evidence of America’s determination to throw its entire industrial and military weight into the victory scales, such as the most impressive figures on airplane and shipping outputs.7

Stevens reported that Willkie had collected a tremendous amount of first-hand military, political and economic information, both of local and world significance. . . . It is all a matter of approach. In a few hours of concentrated inquiry Mr. Willkie extracts more meat than less penetrating observers gather in months of research. Thus during one afternoon at Jerusalem he tackled Palestine’s knottiest Arab-Jewish problem. By turns the foremost leaders of the two opposing camps were ushered into the American Consul General’s cozy homelike living room, given a comfortable chair and provided with tea and cakes and invited by Mr. Willkie to set forth their views and air their opin6. Ibid., 233. 7. Stevens, “Willkie Promises Mideast All-Out U.S. War Effort,” CSM, September 15, 1942, 1.

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ions and grievances “without pulling punches.” Thawed by this genial American directness, each in turn unburdened himself readily with complete candor. Mr. Willkie listened intently, occasionally interrupting with a well-aimed question or request for further enlightenment on some particular point. As soon as each spokesman had finished stating his case he was cordially thanked and given assurance that Mr. Willkie was interested in learning the full truth in order that America might assist in finding an equitable solution. No sooner had the door closed discreetly behind one leader than another door swung noiselessly open to admit the next lecturer in this impromptu seminar. A separate entrance and exit were tactfully used in order to avoid embarrassing encounters as Arabs and Jews alternated. The new arrival would be seated in an upholstered arm chair vacated a few seconds previously by his keenest opponent and would be poured tea from the same pot.8

In fact, Willkie held these meetings in Jerusalem in the home of Lowell C. Pinkerton, the American consul general. Because the home had a double staircase with front and back exits, he could speak to one group in a room immediately after another group had left the room down the back stairs and a third group waited just outside the front door. According to Neal, He talked with Moshe Shertok, who called for the immigration of two million more Jews into Palestine, as well as the Zionist hard-liner Arieh Altman, who wanted ten million immigrants to build a Jewish state. Moderate Arab leader Ruhi Abdulhadi told him of the growing discontent with British rule. Arab nationalist Awni Bey Abdul Hadi rejected any Jewish claim to Palestine. Willkie talked for hours with Henrietta Szold, the American Zionist, and they agreed that the British were encouraging Jewish-Arab tension in order to sustain their political control over the region. In blunt language, Willkie told Sir Harold MacMichael, the British high commissioner, that both the Jews and Arabs should be brought into the government of Palestine. “It is probably unrealistic to believe that such a complex question as the Arab-Jewish one, founded in ancient history and religion,” Wilkie later wrote, “and involved as it is with high international policy and politics, can be solved by good will and simple honesty.”9

8. Ibid. 9. Neal, Dark Horse, 241.

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During his visit to Baghdad, Willkie stayed at the royal palace but made a point of meeting with locals in coffee houses and markets. He insisted on touring the poorest sections of the city, and he inspected a blanket factory and laid a wreath on the tombs of Faisal and Ghazi, Iraq’s first two kings. Stevens reported, Mr. Willkie left behind him a legion of warm new friends, who include, besides members of the Iraqi Government, with the Premier, Gen. Nuri es Said, heading the list, a goodly portion of the Iraqi people. Such, at any rate, was the impression produced by the cordial and spontaneous reception from the citizenry lining the sidewalks wherever he went. Even heavily veiled women joined the cheering. Such complete departure from the usual apathy or even hostility toward foreigners frankly amazed the local foreign residents, who are mostly British.”10

Stevens described Willkie’s personal manner as “simple, direct, sincere, contagiously American, and democratic—so utterly and refreshingly different from the stuff-shirted formality of the accustomed run of big shots and diplomats.”11 This “complete departure” was noted by others as well. Neal observed, “Indeed British comment in Baghdad was that while the visit had strengthened pro-American and pro-Allied feeling, it had nevertheless resulted also in some increase in the anti-British sentiment because of the extreme contrast between Mr. Willkie’s democracy and the pukka sahib exclusiveness of the local British community.”12 Once again, Stevens returned to the one of his favorite themes—the relationship between the common man and the powerful, ruling party. Following Iraq, Willkie headed toward Iran, which Soviet and British troops had invaded one year earlier, ousting the pro-German Reza Shah Pahlavi and replacing him with his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. At the time of Willkie’s visit, Soviet troops occupied the northern half of the country, and British soldiers occupied the south. Stevens traveled to Tehran with Willkie aboard Willkie’s plane, the Gulliver. • • • During our stay in the Iranian capital, Willkie discovered that Iranian politicians were even more slippery than some of their American coun10. Stevens, “Mr. Willkie Captures Baghdad Amid Setting of Arabian Nights,” CSM, September 16, 1942, 1. 11. Ibid. 12. Neal, Dark Horse, 243.

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terparts. And though Iran was under Allied occupation, many Iranians were banking on a German victory. An old-timer in Tehran explained to Willkie that an Iranian will promise a visitor anything for the sake of politeness and hospitality. But the promise was considered in no way binding. Frankness and veracity were not virtues but signs of a feeble intellect. With one Iranian Willkie got along famously, the young Shah Mohammad Reza. The monarch seemed much impressed by Willkie’s assurances that the U.S. would defend the rights of smaller nations, both in wartime and at the peace conference table. Then followed a pleasant luncheon at the Shah’s summer palace (at which the servitors backed away with empty plates, so as to always face the table).13 • • • During their lunch together, Willkie learned that the Shah had never been aloft in an aircraft. Stevens reported that Willkie had volunteered to take the Shah on his first airplane ride: Willkie Takes Shah of Iran on First Air Ride By Edmund Stevens Correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor TEHRAN, Iran. Sept. 17 Delayed—Wendell Willkie wound up three whirlwind days here yesterday by taking the Shah of Persia for his first airplane ride. The young Iranian Monarch’s flight was made in the huge fourmotored B24 Liberator bomber which is carrying Mr. Willkie on his tour of the Middle East. The Shah thoroughly enjoyed himself during the flight, plying crew members with eager questions, examining the controls, and when, after circling for half hour above the city and nearby mountains, the pilot nosed the aircraft back toward the landing field the Shah showed signs of keen disappointment. The flight was the result of a sudden Wilkie idea while lunching with the Shah at the Summer Palace. In conversation the Shah happened to mention that he had never been in a plane, whereupon Mr. Willkie invited him for a ride in “the finest and safest American plane, and we do build some fine planes, Your Majesty.”14

In the middle of the war, Stevens broke from frontline reporting to go flying with the Shah of Persia. One can almost imagine a relaxed Stevens, 13. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 142–43. 14. Stevens, “Willkie Takes Shah of Iran on First Air Ride,” CSM, September 18, 1942, 1.

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happy to be writing features on Willkie instead of death accounts. But a showdown was under way in North Africa that would show American GIs the tragic nature of war, test British commander Bernard Montgomery, and compel Edmund Stevens to surpass all of his previous journalistic achievements as a war correspondent by covering one of the four major battles of World War II and successfully identifying—at the moment of its unfolding—a turning point in global history. Historians agree that in the history of World War II, El Alamein was equal in importance to Midway, D-day, and the Bulge. By November 1942, Edmund Stevens had spent four years reporting and analyzing battles between troops, negotiations between world leaders, and the hardships endured by millions of refugees. He knew the British Eighth Army in particular, and in the final months of 1943, he was presented with just the right opportunity. Stevens’s dispatches held up against competitors, deadlines, censors, and the logistical nightmare of transmitting stories from a war zone.

Bernard Montgomery Historians have described Bernard Montgomery as one of the most recognizable, controversial, and arrogant commanders of World War II. Military historians generally agree that his capacity for being a thorn in the side of Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and even Churchill was countered by extreme loyalty and high regard from his own fighting units. His overwhelming victory in the North African desert starting in the fall of 1942 was his greatest achievement. Characterized by his attention to troop morale, thorough battle strategies and preparations, and precise execution of those strategies, Monty had strong opinions about how to defeat Germany long before his boot ever touched the sands of Cairo, and historians note this accordingly: The enemy must be brought to battle, and fought to the bitter, decisive end. Such a victory would achieve far more than the gain of ground: it would be the basis of the professional self-confidence of the entire army in future—while at the same time shattering the pride and morale of the enemy. This conviction, born in England in the summer of 1940 after Dunkirk, had been the foundation of Montgomery’s dedicated command thereafter. He had been mocked by many, considered mad by some: but the record of his self-preparation and the training of the officers and men

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beneath him probably has no parallel in the history of British arms since the days of Wellington and Nelson. . . . At Alamein, Montgomery’s conviction was at last put to the test—and justified. The battle was decisive in a more profound respect than any other Allied engagement in the West during the war, save perhaps D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. Not only did it herald a new era in Allied offensive operations in the West, but it rocked Axis morale to an incalculable extent. The legendary Rommel had been beaten, and a demonstration of the relentless Allied intention to prosecute the war until final victory had at last been given. The ruthless professionalism of the German armies which had overrun Poland, France, Norway, Greece, Crete and North Africa was now being matched and surpassed—a fact which many journalists noted at the time.15

Monty’s leadership, the British Eighth Army’s resurrection, and the American support in the form of tanks, planes, and soldiers produced an indomitable force that would drive Rommel’s army more than fourteen hundred miles in about three months. In late October, Monty unleashed the opening salvos of the battle of El Alamein. As Stevens reported on November 3, 1942, “For the first time in the North African field, United Nations forces appear to have a decided superiority in troops and arms of every category. Both in tanks and artillery the Allies have the advantage in number, arms and firepower.”16 Meanwhile, other journalists reported the unique response to the news inside the United States. C. V. R. Thompson, a British journalist based in the U.S. and working for the Daily Express, reported from New York on November 4, 1942, the day after American midterm elections, Another important change has come over America in the past 48 hours— a change in her attitude towards Britain. Singapore, then Tobruk, did Britain damage with the people. Even some of our friends began to question the ability of our High Command, even the fighting of our troops. Because of that questioning, other anti-British talk gained some credence in this country. Overnight that talk has been swept away by the great victory in Egypt. What is also significant is that there is little talk about America’s elections today; it is all about the defeat of Rommel. Montgomery has driven the election off America’s front page.17 15. Nigel Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield: Monty’s War Years, 1942–1944 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983), 7. 16. Stevens, “United Nations Have Edge over Nazis in Tanks, Artillery, and Troops in New Drive,” CSM, November 3, 1942, 1. 17. Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 4.

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And so it seemed that virtually overnight, the Allies had reason to be hopeful about turning around the Axis victories. Just a few days later— on November 8, 1942—the American Expeditionary Force landed in northwest Africa—near Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers with plans to trap Rommel. As Stevens reported on November 12, 1942, For this is the first time in this war that the United Nations have seized the initiative not in a narrow sector with a limited objective but over a vast continent with boldness and breadth of offensive strategy that hitherto seemed to be solely the enemy’s prerogative. . . . The direct goal is final liquidation of the Axis African bridgehead, finally ending the seemingly interminable and indecisive desert seesaw. If all goes according to schedule, shattered remnants of General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s forces will be caught in an east-west pincers squeeze play.18

Stevens’s tone, his observations, his ability to see the larger picture sometimes leaves the reader forgetting that Stevens wrote this as it was actually unfolding. It feels more like a passage written by a historian, an element that makes Stevens’s contribution all the more compelling. His November 16, 1942, dispatch reported the speeding Rommel’s retreat across the northern coasts of Egypt and Libya: AN AIRFIELD IN LIBYA, Nov. 16—The battle for Egypt has become a battle for Libya. Over the weekend the last straggling remnants of the broken and defeated Axis armies left Egyptian soil. That was in the corner above the Salum and Halfaya Passes, scenes of some of this war’s most bitter fighting. This time, however, Axis troops had neither the will nor the means to attempt a stand. . . . By the evening of Nov. 12, the enemy was frantically evacuating Tobruk both by sea and land with British armor closing in on him while United Nations aircraft sank heavily laden barges, lighters and U-boats as they tried to escape from the harbor.19

Doubtless Stevens was at the Martuba airfields, located near Tobruk and strategically important for securing air support from RAF. Monty had made this location, and the nearby port city of Derna, high on the “to be captured” priority list. Ironically, Rommel retreated so quickly, and some of the units of the British Eighth advanced so rapidly, Stevens and 18. Stevens, “AEF-British Desert Rendezvous Nears,” CSM, November 12, 1942, 1. 19. Stevens, “Allies and Nazis Battling in Bizert,” CSM, November 16, 1942, 1.

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his traveling companions (mostly other reporters) found themselves quite alone inside Derna—and in the middle of what seemed to Stevens to be a situation comedy: “DERNA, Libya, November 16, Delayed—The Allies—a couple of dozen of us in all—have taken Derna. The capture was successfully carried out by a small mixed force consisting of two armored car crews, one Czech observer, one RAF squadron leader, one British Army public relations officer and four war correspondents.”20 Stevens and his comrades had been driving for hours along the Italian-Libyan highway through Bahria past Gazala before realizing that they were alone in the war zone and were incredibly relieved when they stumbled on an RAF aircraft detector unit who “hospitably fed and sheltered us through a night of torrential rain.” The following morning they risked driving through a mined road to reach the Libyan city of Derna: “So on we drove, every moment expecting a mine to send us sky high. We were not reassured when a few hundred yards down the road we found an armored car lying in the ditch, its front end a tangled and lacerated mass of metal.” Still, there was no turning back, no sign of Axis or Allied troops—nothing to do but continue toward the city, which, according to Stevens, emerged as “an inviting picture, its neat houses of white mingled with the pale pastel hues of Italy against the dark green of luxuriant subtropical gardens framed by the blue Mediterranean— like a morsel of the Riviera detached from Europe and grafted onto Africa.” Without any military support, the group of journalists entered the city. “As we advanced down the road our little army was increased by droves of native children, shouting and cheering, who fell into step. By the time we reached the hospital—our first destination—we had collected a considerable crowd.” Mistaken as a liberating force by the locals, his group was placed inside “Derna’s sole surviving hansom cab, which served as a victory chariot for our triumphal tour of the town, followed by an ever-growing multitude of cheering natives, mostly of the younger generation.” He concluded, The climax of our visit came when we visited the town hall, where two very frightened native police officials invoked our protection. Meanwhile a wildly cheering crowd filled the square. From the Mayor’s office on the second floor we threw a large paper portrait of Mussolini, wearing his 20. Stevens, “Libyan Town Seized by Handful of Soldiers and Correspondents,” CSM, November 19, 1942, 1.

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best scowl, to the throng below, which eagerly tore it to shreds with cries of “Finito Benito.” Thereafter we started back on our long climb to where our vehicles were parked. As we trudged up the slope we saw a company of Ghurkas coming down armed to the teeth and crouching as they advanced cross country in battle formation. We informed them Derna was ours.21

Stevens could afford the humor in this piece because Rommel’s troops had fled; however, the Eighth Army remained dangerously spread out. According to Hamilton, If Rommel discovered he was only being pursued by armoured cars and light Crusader tanks he might well dispute possession of the Martuba airfields. It was vital, therefore, that while Monty threatened to outflank Rommel with armoured cars, he should waste no time in bringing 1st Armoured Division, with its fresher tanks, forward from the Sollum bottleneck to reinforce the worn-out tanks of 7th Armoured Division and ensure that Rommel did not have time to reorganize and even mount a counter-attack while Eighth Army was so weak in front.22

But the legendary German general did not realize the weakness of the leading British units. “Rommel was beating a hasty retreat—‘we have to be grateful for every day that the enemy does not close in on us,’ he had written on 14 November—having wished ‘I were just a newspaper vendor in Berlin,’ as he told his ADC the previous day.”23 Stevens’s accounts summarize the desert chase: AGEDABIA, Libya, Nov. 23. Delayed—General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps will in all probability make their last desperate stand in the narrow coastal strip around El Agheila, through which the road to Tripoli runs. As this is written the retreating Axis forces are less than 100 miles from El Agheila. Marshal Rommel knows El Agheila terrain well. Twice in the past it has saved his forces, permitting him to reform and prepare for a counterattack.24 21. Ibid. 22. Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 60. 23. Ibid. 24. Stevens, “Axis Due to Stand on Road to Tripoli,” CSM, November 25, 1942, 1.

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In fact, the Axis and Allied forces were crossing the desert so fast, Stevens’s dispatches got scrambled out of order, and his report from Bengasi required the following editor’s note: “The article appearing today was filed from Bengasi and obviously was written before the dispatch printed Wednesday, which was datelined Agedabia, a point well over 100 miles beyond Bengasi. Fortunately the delay detracts little or nothing from Mr. Stevens’s colorful detail.”25 Stevens summarized the devastation he found in Bengasi: “British armored forces which yesterday entered Bengasi found the city an empty shell whence everything of value had been either removed or destroyed by the retreating enemy. No battle preceded the occupation nor did advance units encounter any resistance among the ruins. They merely captured a handful of Axis stragglers and recaptured several hundred of their own troops, mostly Punjap Indians and South African natives who had been held here since last June.”26 Three days later, Stevens analyzed the unfolding events for Monitor readers: War in Desert Enters New Phase Few correspondents are better equipped to draw a balance sheet of the battle in the West Desert than Mr. Stevens. The British Eighth Army’s drive is the third North African campaign which he has reported from the front lines, in addition to covering the British reoccupation of Ethiopia. Today’s broad survey of the situation answers the question of how General Montgomery broke the Rommel line—and surveys the possibilities that lie ahead. By Edmund Stevens Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor CAIRO, Nov. 30—Headlines from many fronts have altered the war picture since that zero hour a month ago when Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery’s massed artillery fired the opening shot of the battle that was itself the start of a much wider world offensive. The brilliant campaign which to date has ousted the Axis from Egypt and Cyrenaica will perhaps figure in history as a major turning point of the war when the Axis lost and the United Nations gained world initiative. Smashing to Axis front in Egypt helped insure the success of Allied landings in French North Africa. In turn, these combined operations have

25. Stevens, “Axis Burns Vast Stores before Quitting Bengasi,” CSM, November 27, 1942, 1. 26. Ibid.

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already relieved pressure on the Russian Army which has been prompt to seize the opportunity. Even brighter are prospects of future offensive actions. General Montgomery’s victory at El Alamein which started this dazzling sequence, although complete, was no bargain purchase. A solid, honest price was paid for it in effort, courage and sacrifice in men and equipment on the open field of battle. Neither craftiness nor slight-of-hand but strength of arms prevailed. Essentially, Axis forces were severely pounded by superior artillery tanks and air power in a frontal onslaught—the old technique of Flanders Fields. . . . The result of this sustained effort was the biggest United Nations victory to date.27

After reflecting on the greater meaning of the battle and its place as a turning point in the war, he returned immediately to the chase, reporting the British capture of Cyrenaica, Mersa Brega, and Tripolitania, where he filed this dispatch the day after Christmas 1942: Cutting swiftly and almost unopposed across the desert south of Sirte, British armored forces today penetrated to within about 250 miles of Tripoli, or approximately as near to the Italian Colonial Capital as General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was to Cairo at El Alamein. For once, however, our little party—consisting of three American correspondents, a British conducting officer and drivers of our two vehicles, a Ford staff car and a Chevrolet half-ton truck—did not have to worry about mines. Not even Marshal Rommel has enough to mine the desert’s vastness.28

The dispatches held this urgent tone for three more weeks through the fall of Tripoli, which happened on January 26, 1943. In his memoirs, Stevens wrote of the moment Monty takes the city. In his account, “Geoffrey” refers to Captain Keating, Monty’s top press aide and a colleague Stevens clearly respected and enjoyed. • • • Our good friend General Bernard Montgomery was parked in his caravan on a ridge in the desert some thirty-odd miles above Tripoli. He had not figured the extent of Italian resistance and was waiting for

27. Stevens, “War in Desert Enters New Phase,” CSM, November 30, 1942, 1. 28. Stevens, “British Skim Desert Sands as Rommel Flees in Mist,” CSM, December 31, 1942, 1.

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information before attacking with his favorite unit, the Fourth Division Tank Corps. That was when Geoffrey seized the initiative. After loading a few guns and cameras into our jeep, he called on me to join him, and with two soldiers and a machine gun, we took off in the direction of Tripoli. He said nothing to the Fourth Armored Division, which more for practice, continued their occasional shelling of the road. Thereafter, keeping off the road to one side for safety from the shells, we started out in the direction of the city. Some ten miles down we sighted an Italian agricultural (farming) settlement where we were warmly welcomed and wined. Thereafter, we resumed the road to Tripoli, reaching the city walls during the evening lull. We went on to the center of town, finding it quite deserted and finally stopped at the governor’s palace. We then called on the governor, telling him to expect to see General Montgomery in the morning. And so it happened that Geoffrey and I were the first of the British to arrive in Tripoli. We registered ourselves in at the main hotel entering our names on the registration book just below those of the most recently departed guests, officers of the Wehrmacht. We sent a messenger back to suggest to General Montgomery that he meet us on the city limits in the morning. Then, we sent word to the Italian city governor reminding him to keep the appointment. It all went off without a hitch. The Italian governor and his aides stood resplendent in full-dress uniforms, gold braid and all; Montgomery and his aides arrived in their fatigue jackets covered with desert dust. Monty’s only comment was, “Who are these fairies?”29 • • • In fact, Stevens recounted this meeting between Montgomery and the Italian governor for his Monitor readers in an April 24, 1943, feature written after he had returned to the United States. The article examined the nature of Monty, using this meeting to describe the contrast between the dusty British commander and the overdressed Italians. Monitor readers, however, never heard Monty’s reaction, and Stevens left out of his article, and his memoir, one other fact: he himself had served as Bernard 29. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 126–27. In fact, Montgomery’s original word was fag, but it was crossed out and replaced by a handwritten fairies. When Nigel Hamilton recounted the story in Master of the Battlefield, he used the word buggers.

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Montgomery’s translator when Tripoli’s Italian leaders handed over power of the city to the British. According to Hamilton’s research, the Italians believed not only in dressing well, but in long speeches before handing over the city. Monty was not fluent in Italian, and Stevens translated.30 Stevens was not the only reporter who noted the Italians’ fashion that day. William Munday, a war correspondent for the News Chronicle, referred to “Italian police, stiff in musical comedy uniforms” patrolling the streets of Tripoli. Meanwhile, in his own diary, Montgomery summarized the event with his typical cool observational tone: The troops had a good reception from the population. The city was quiet and there was no panic. I myself arrived outside the city at 0900 hours, met Comd 30 Corps, and gave orders as to the continuance of the operations, procedure in the city and so on. I sent for the leading Italian officials to come and report to me outside the town; this they did and I gave them my orders about the city and requested their co-operation in ensuring the well-being of the population. I then drove into the town and had my sandwich lunch on the sea front.31

The reader can imagine the thin, dusty general sitting peacefully by the sea, eating his sandwich, and staring at the waves. But while Montgomery himself wrote about the historic moment in understated sentences and the world pondered the event as a turning point of war, Edmund Stevens once again slipped out of the role of international journalist and frontline reporter to take on yet another job: city news editor. Tripoli Gets Real News in Place of Fascism By Edmund Stevens Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor with British Forces in North Africa TRIPOLI, North Africa, Feb. 3—For the first time after a dreary generation of spoon-fed Fascist propaganda, the people of Tripoli are getting accurate news of the world. The vehicle for its dissemination is a two-page bilingual daily newspaper with an English version called the Tripoli Times, and Italian version called the Corrieri Di Tripoli. The first number appeared within 48 hours of the British entry. This and subsequent issues were literally published on a shoestring, for which 30. Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 121. 31. Ibid.

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the main credit belongs to a young English captain, a former newspaper reporter, who had edited the Crusader, an illustrated weekly, and the Eighth Army News, a daily, both for exclusive circulation among the forces in the field. Joins Paper’s Staff A few hours after the British occupation of Tripoli this officer recruited the assistance of this correspondent as interpreter and advisor. The first step was to investigate printing facilities—ascertain whether the departing Axis forces had spared any plants and machinery. We located a plant which until 4 days previously had the town’s only daily, the Corriere Di Tripoli, and found it still intact. We then rounded up the owner and employees and explained our plan. These Italian workers proved entirely cooperative. They were pathetically eager to be back at work. Our chief production handicaps were shortage of paper and electric power with which to operate the linotypes and presses. Owing to the coal shortage current was strictly limited to between 7 p.m. to midnight and efforts to obtain special dispensation from the authorities proved fruitless in those hectic days everyone was much too busy with other problems. Nevertheless, practically single-handed we managed somehow to put out Vol. 1, no. 1, Jan 24. Luckily there were plenty of lengthy official proclamations, which together with BBC news bulletins, well filled 2 small pages. But by the time the edition was sent to press, less than 1 hours power remained—barely sufficient to run off 15,000 copies the flat press. These were distributed next morning free. There was a terrific scramble for them. Every copy passed many times from hand to hand until the whole population was talking about it. It was decided to sell the paper hereafter at 1 lira, or five cents, a copy. Before the second issue appeared the new publication obtained its first Italian editorial assistant, the deeply tanned Fillipo Salerno. He is a lawyer in civil life and was for more than 20 years a member of the Fascist party. Last summer Signore Salerno, increasingly disillusioned with Fascist policy, voiced open criticism, resulting in his arrest and conviction on a frame-up charge. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison when he was released the day before the Allied entry. His vitriolic pen and intimate knowledge of local and national Italian affairs proved an invaluable addition to the newspaper. News of Russian Front Beginning with the third number, the Italian version began carrying editorials of which the first dealt with Axis claims to Allied shipping

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driven from the Mediterranean of which any citizen could convince himself by strolling down to the waterfront. A second article reviewed Axis Radio propaganda regarding the Russian front and the present belated admission of Rome commentators of the seriousness of the military situation there. The effect on the population of these articles, plus the first authentic war news, was electric. Every issue sold out within the first half-hour of its appearance on the streets. The sale of the newspaper is handled by Cesare Filcchioni who settled in Tripoli when the Italians first took possession and who has long been a distributor of all Italian papers and periodicals. He complains that he could dispose of 10 times the present printing and is eager for the day when Cairo, British and American newspapers and magazines will be displayed in his shop on shelves now bare save for one pair of second hand German jackboots with a sale sign. The intense interest in the new publication contrasts with previous apathy toward the Fascist press. One high civil Government official of pre-Fascist vintage told me that five years ago he made a vow, which he has maintained, never again to read an Italian press, preferring to do his own thinking and for his own opinions. In the musty editorial premises of the former paper which the new publication has now taken over are voluminous files of recent numbers of Italian dailies amply documenting the grotesque extremes of Fascist propaganda. Thus, for example, the Eighth Army break-through at El Alamein routing Axis forces and capturing the bulk of Italian infantry, is described as “withdrawal to new positions at Fuka according to a pre-established plan.” And thereafter each day’s operations are described in a manner to leave the reader with the impression of brilliant Axis successes, save that the names of the places mentioned move steadily westward, and so on to the very latest issues available on Jan. 17, when British forces were advancing to the gates of Tripoli. Hatred for Allied Forces Scarcely any issue neglects to include an inflammatory article titled “Hate the Anglo-Saxons,” and proclaims the barbarous savagery of the British and Americans as compared, for example, with the gentle, enlightened Japanese. The war declaration by the Japanese puppet in the Nanking Government against the Allies rates banner headlines. It is editorially hailed as an event of world historic import.32 32. Stevens, “Tripoli Gets Real News in Place of Fascism,” CSM, February 3, 1942, 1.

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Just as he overlooked his own role in chronicling the crushing of the Iron Guard, Edmund Stevens left out of his memoirs his observations about one of the five major battles of World War II and his unique adventures in the desert as a reporter, an interpreter for General Montgomery, and even a vehicle for a democratic and free press in Tripoli for the first time in many years. Then, without explanation— either in his memoirs or in his dispatches—Stevens returned to the United States in February 1942 and was again welcomed warmly in the Boston headquarters of the Monitor.

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9 A Moscow Correspondent Once Again

Stevens’s nine months in Boston in 1943 were not marked by the same frustration and desperation as his ten-month stint that started in mid1941. This time his writing showed even more confidence in his own understanding of the war. He knew with certainty—and from the lips of Winston Churchill himself—there would be no U.S. invasion of Europe until 1944. Rommel had been soundly defeated in North Africa. Stevens had graduated to senior war correspondent, and it was time to write his first book, Russia Is No Riddle. For all of 1943, he filed fewer than forty articles for the Monitor, less than half of what he produced annually in 1941, 1942, or 1944. He wrote on topics ranging from how Americans are viewed in the Middle East and the impact of Nazi defeats on Hungary and Romania to growing speculation about an Allied invasion of Europe. He appeared on radio broadcasts as a Russian expert and a war correspondent, and his speeches in the Boston area began drawing the attention of the press. The Monitor sent a reporter to cover a speech he gave on March 10, 1942, at a joint luncheon of the Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs: “Mr. Stevens, who has been with the British Eighth Army, said that the North African campaign is the prelude battle for Europe and that the Germans are merely fighting a delaying action in order to hold up Allied European invasion plans.” According to the Monitor article, Stevens told his audience that, as long as the Germans hold Tunis, the Allies could not claim the military advantage of the Mediterranean region. He told 231

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his audience, “Once we get Tunisia we can eliminate the present long route around the Cape of Good Hope and thereby treble our shipping capacity to Africa. The entire soft underside of Hitler’s ramshackle empire will then be exposed. We can keep him guessing as to where we are going to hit him.”1

Stevens returned to Moscow in December 1943, apparently to take advantage of the strengthening Allied bond among Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—which opened the doors to allow more foreign press inside Russia—and to gather fodder for his upcoming book about the Soviet Union. In fact, the excerpts included in this chapter come not only from Stevens’s memoirs but also from his 1945 book Russia Is No Riddle. It is not possible to know his intentions for developing these excerpts within the context of memoirs, but they offer two distinctly different writing styles Stevens used to capture the essence of Soviet culture and to explain the nature of the common man and woman of Russia. His sympathy for the Russians and his ability to make them real people to an American audience had developed in just nine years from a curiosity about the social experiment of Communism in 1934 to a unique and strong expertise in Soviet culture by 1943, an expertise now given a new and highly prized platform—his own book—made possible by the strengthened U.S.-Soviet alliance and increased American interest in Russian culture. Stevens was a rare creature—an American-born journalist who believed that in order to explain Russian culture, one needed to speak the language fluently and to get inside the thoughts of the common Soviet citizen—whether peasant or bureaucrat. Journalist Andrew Nagorski explains how peculiar Stevens’s attitude was compared to many of his peers who tried to work from Moscow: correspondents who don’t speak Russian like to convey the impression that this is a minor inconvenience instead of the crippling handicap it really is. Their editors, many of whom have no foreign reporting experience and no direct knowledge of the Soviets, are easily convinced. At one of the first cocktail parties I attended, I listened to a British correspondent, who did not speak Russian, declare that even a rudimentary knowledge of the language should not be a prerequisite for the job of Moscow correspondent. We stood there in a foreigner’s apartment among other Western reporters and diplomats, and he won at least the 1. “German Hopes in No. Africa Declared Gone,” CSM, March 19, 1942, 12.

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nodding agreement of many of those around him. His advice for any editor was “to just get someone with good reporting instincts.”2

Stevens certainly was gifted with good reporting instincts, but his excerpts in this chapter—very poignant accounts of his journey back to Moscow and the people he met there, followed by his observations of the Kharkov hangings—could not have been possible without his understanding of nuance in the subtlest gestures and word choice by those he encountered. The typical correspondent Nagorski describes could not have produced what Stevens did. The first excerpt focuses on his return to Moscow in late 1943. There are no dispatches to further explain his thoughts and actions during this journey, and the reader may find that refreshing because his travelogue style is engaging and captivating. Note that Stevens gently inserts himself into the dialogue to bring out the clarity of his subjects—border guards, shipmates, and hoteliers. His ability to amplify the voice of the common folks—their lives, their dreams, their responses to war— is as strong here as it is in any of his frontline dispatches.

Passing through North Africa Again • • • The return to Cairo late in 1943 was something of an anticlimax. I was again headed for Moscow, not with Churchill, but as war correspondent. The flight from Algiers took me over territory I had traced and retraced in the seesaw desert war against Rommel. Now even the areas of heaviest fighting were as empty as a theater lock up for the night after the audience had gone home and the stage had been cleared. The shifting sands had filled the old trenches and bunkers and were slowly engulfing the rusted hulks of vehicles, tanks, and planes. After calling on a few old friends, I was ready to leave Cairo for Tehran, retracing the route I had taken with Harriman and Churchill in August 1942, again on my way to Moscow to cover the war in Russia. My transportation from Tehran on my own this time took more than a week to arrange. 2. Nagorski, Reluctant Farewell: An American Reporter’s Candid Look Inside the Soviet Union (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985), 40–41.

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When I arrived in Tehran on my way to Moscow one year later, both for Allied personnel and for war materials, the road into Russia led through Iran. A roundabout route, no matter how you hold the map, in wartime a straight line is seldom the shortest way. The next leap of my journey was overland to the Caspian port of Pahlavi. For this I joined forces with two state department couriers, Charles Walson and Ashton Clark. Their baggage included ten pouches of diplomatic mail and about two tons of freight, much of it motion picture reels for the Moscow embassy. The couriers were extremely conscientious and spent most of their time checking and rechecking the load against long typewritten lists, until there was no more room left in the margins for additional pencil marks. For transportation to the Caspian, the U.S. Army provided us with a six-wheeler Studebaker truck. It was somewhat worse for wear, and by the time we got to Kazvin, our overnight stop, we were thoroughly saturated with white Persian dust. After unloading we took the truck to an army garage for a complete overhauling. This involved replacing several gears and a wheel and putting on a complete set of new tires. As Kazvin was the last American repair point where the Americans handed over their trucks to the Russians, there were plenty of spare parts available. Beyond Kazvin we would be in the Russian-occupied zone where Americans seldom ventured. Clem, our Negro driver from Virginia, had never spoken to a Russian in his life and did not relish having to drive back alone once he had delivered us to Pahlavi. The American colonel in command at Kazvin agreed to lend us his interpreter, a sergeant who was only too glad for a chance to see the forbidden country of the Sovietoccupied zone. And so with the three of us riding atop the pouches and freight and the interpreter in the cabin with the driver we started off on the next lap of our trail to the Soviet Union. A few miles beyond Kazvin we suddenly bore down on the first Red Army checkpost. In the center of the road stood a buxom girl in an olive drab Red Army blouse and blue denim skirt. Unruly bunches of flaxen hair cascaded down under her cap. Firmly grasped in her hand was a tommy gun, pointed at that moment in our direction. The glint in her eye was far from friendly. Clem jammed the brakes to a lurching halt. “Put that pistol down, babe,” he implored the Amazon. She lowered her weapon and, giving us a cool once over, asked the driver in Russian for our credentials. I produced the courier letter from the American legation in Tehran. Directing her gaze to the attached authorization of the Soviet embassy, she read

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it to herself in a half whisper. Then with the usual Russian “seichas” (which literally translates as “this hour,” and actually implies anything from two minutes to infinity), she disappeared into a small shack with a hammer and sickle over the lintel. In a few minutes a lieutenant appeared in the doorway. “Who of your speaks Russian?” “I do,” I answered. “Please step inside a moment.” The small room, hardly more than an alcove, warmed by a kerosene stove, contained portraits of Lenin, Stalin, and Beria. Two officers of the border patrol service were inside: one of them, a major, was seated and the other, a captain, was standing. “Is that your only document you have?” the captain asked me. “No, we also have our personal passports with Soviet visas,” I answered. “But what about the truck? Have you a visa for it?” “The truck is not going into Soviet territory,” I answered, deliberately misconstruing his meaning. “It’s only taking us to Pahlavi and then returning.” The captain countered, “The truck should have a special permit for the zone of special occupation.” “We enquired about that and were told by the Soviet embassy that that would not be needed.” “You should have consulted the Soviet military. They not the embassy make the rules,” he fired back. Just as things seemed nearing an impasse and I had grim visions of our being turned back to Tehran, the major intervened. “After all, Anton Palych, we should not be too sticky and formal, they are our allies.” The captain’s objections collapsed completely, and he beamed accord. He had simply been relieved of the responsibility of a decision made by a superior officer. Having settled business matters, tensions eased. Both officers were friendly and talkative. “What did I think of the liberation of Kiev a few days before? You Americans do not seem to be making much headway in Italy.” All leading up to the inevitable: “When will the second front be opened in France?” On most of these questions all I could tell them was wait and see. Moreover, I knew my companions must be getting restless. We still had

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some 130 miles of narrow, dusty, winding mountain roads to negotiate before nightfall. As we started off, our lady roadblock gave us a winning smile and waved us farewell. Later, the Soviet Union used to find such girls doing the same job in frontline areas, directing traffic at intersections and river crossings, trying to prevent traffic snarls that would delay supplies vitally needed up forward to make targets for roving enemy planes. They stood for hours in icy winter snows and under broiling summer suns. Thousands had been killed at their posts by bombs and machine guns. Flanking the spurs of the Elborz mountains, the road dropped dizzily toward the Caspian in an endless succession of hairpin turns, and usually at every turn there was another Studebaker six-wheeler coming at us from around the corner. More than once when we were crowded to the edge of a narrow road, I saw the wreck of some truck that had toppled off into space lying far below in a dry watercourse. But we had to make time. Clem manfully wove our juggernaut in and out of the long, slow-moving supply convoys, earning the curses of the Russian, Persian, and central Asiatic drivers. (I presently observed that many of the Soviet troops assigned to driving on this run had the flat Mongoloid features of the Uzbek and the Kazakh.) As we neared the shores of the Caspian, we emerged into a different world. The desert bareness of the Persian plateau country suddenly gave way to lush vegetation. Thick, dark green forests climbed the slopes to meet us, but down lower the vegetation had a steamy tropical character. There were palms and acacias and swamp pine festooned with lichen moss. The fields, divided into squares by little earthen causeways, were ankle-deep in water that nourished the slender rice shoots. But though nature was more generous here than in southern and central Persia, the people looked just as ragged and undernourished—if anything, a little worse off. Almost everyone had the emaciated, fever-racked look of the malaria victim. • • •

Pahlavi • • • Pahlavi was a dreary hole. It had once enjoyed a boom as the gateway of trade between Europe and Iran; but when the railway, by the old Shah’s

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royal whim, had been built to the eastern corner of the Caspian, the town’s future was seriously compromised. For the moment, however, it was on the main transshipping points for lend-lease goods; there they were transferred from trucks to ships that took them to the Soviet ports of Baku and Machach Kala. It also was a transshipping point for us, and our first call was at the office of the Soviet Steamship Agency. The director, a swarthy gentleman with Oriental features and the picturesque Russified name of Mahmoud Hassanovish Ibrahimov, proved most obliging. The passenger steamer to Baku had left only two days previously. We could either wait for the next potluck and rough it on the first available vessel. But, he warned us, it wouldn’t be luxury traveling. We immediately chose the second alternative. Within the hour we had unloaded all our baggage except the diplomatic mail in a warehouse well surrounded by Soviet sentries. The pouches had to be carried up several flights of stairs to our hotel room, because the couriers could never leave them for an instant—those were the rules. We took turns mounting guard. The Hotel Imperial, Pahlavi’s sole hostelry, a big, rambling agglomeration of planless buildings round a courtyard, had no conveniences but was tolerably clean for Iran. It was owned and operated by a Greek family from Salonika. They had been there for several generations, yet until the war they kept close contact with their homeland. The head of the clan and of the establishment was a monumental matriarch in ruffled black chiffon that matched her eyes and hair. A huge ring of massive keys dangled on a chain from the folds of her dress. The key ring somehow harmonized with her heavy, plain-gold earrings. Obviously such a woman would be a force in any community, and Pahlavi was a very small puddle. There was a bevy of daughters—lesser, paler editions of their mama—who did most of the work around the place. Two sons, I learned, had volunteered and were now with the Greek army in the Middle East. This family of Greek hoteliers reminded me of other Greeks I had met in the jungle outposts of the Sudan, living in thatch huts and trading calico and trinkets with naked savages who came out of the bush with rings in their noses. No one but Greeks, I reflected, would have the persistence to stick it out in a dump like Pahlavi. The matriarch proved a gold mine of local information. Before the Russians were in the war, the town had been full of the agents of German business firms. They handled the Reich’s extensive trade with Iran. Besides providing a market for German goods, the Shah’s kingdom had

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been an important loophole in the economic blockade of the Reich, thanks to a treaty with Russia that provided for duty-free transshipments. When the Russians marched into Persia in August 1941, one of their planes had dropped a small stack of bombs on Pahlavi. They had all fallen in the dock area among warehouses crammed with German goods. A year later, a German plane had flown over the town, causing considerable alarm. But instead of bombs, it had dropped leaflets that nobody could read because they were printed in Turkish instead of Persian. Pahlavi wasn’t exactly a gay spot for young girls. Were it not for the war, the lady implied, her daughters, instead of hanging around the hotel, would be with relatives in Salonika on the lookout for husbands. Marrying a Persian was, of course, unthinkable for Christian Greek girls. Why, Persian wives were worse than chattel slaves—even spinsterhood was preferable. Now, she added, with the Russians here, things had livened up. There were Soviet movies or shows and concerts by traveling Soviet troupes almost every week—never before had there been so much cultural life in Pahlavi. And the Russians were quite nice, many of them. Several of their officers lived and boarded at the hotel. They paid their bills regularly, were clean and well behaved—this last said almost wistfully, as though they overdid their good behavior. They never consorted with anyone other than their own nationality, women not excepted, even though they presumably belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church. The Russians’ conduct was a distinct surprise. The news of their coming had started a frantic exodus of the wealthier Persians. To unpleasant memories of the first World War, when the Tsar’s troops had occupied this same region, were added fears of Sovietization. Instead there had been complete order. The Russians had not meddled with the local administration or confiscated property. At present the richest man in town was getting very handsome rent from the Soviet Shipping Agency, which had leased his docks and warehouses for the duration. The main landmark of Pahlavi was the Shah’s palace, a rather derelict and hideous Oriental adaptation of the late nineteenth century, standing on the bay shore in a weedy garden enclosed by an iron grating sadly in need of repair. In the bay beyond the palace a large luxury yacht rode at anchor, gleaming white in its shipshape trimness. You could guess without being told that this was the Shah’s royal yacht. It was built in France at the old Shah’s commission. Neither the old man nor his son,

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the present Shah, had ever set foot on board. But during the old man’s reign, it was sometimes used by his favorites for orgiastic pleasure cruises. The town of Pahlavi proper lay beyond the palace on the far side of the bay from the docks, and thus outside the main strain of commerce. Our hotel faced a small square opposite the main entrance to the dock area, which the Russians had fenced off. No one got past the gates without the proper propusk—pass. The traffic jam that pivoted about the base of an equestrian statue of the old Shah in the center of the square defied description. The nearest comparison that comes to mind is Forty-Second Street and Broadway during the theater rush hour. But the vehicles in the Pahlavi crush were mostly six-wheeler Studebaker trucks instead of New York taxicabs, and none of the drivers ever let up on their horns. The bedlam lasted from dawn till midnight. Yet the confusion was more apparent than real. Freight was transshipped at Pahlavi with an efficiency that seldom permitted supplies urgently needed by the Red Army to pile up. The man who kept things moving was our friend Mahmoud Hassonovish Ibrahimov, and in due course, he moved us out of there too. • • •

A Trip on the SS Spartak • • • The morning after our arrival Mahmoud advised that he could put us on a ship the following morning. Again, he warned us that the accommodations “would not be those of a cabin liner.” Again, we assured him that this mattered not at all, that our interest was to get moving. And so early on the morrow we carried our ten mail pouches—average weight well over one hundred pounds—down from our third-floor room, loaded them on a truck provided by Mahmoud Ibrahimov (our truck had turned back with Clem and the sergeant the previous morning), collected our other two tons of freight at the warehouse, and headed for our embarkation. Our first sight of the SS Spartak, which was to take us to Baku, proved that Comrade Mahmoud Hassonovich Ibrahimov had meant every word when he apologized for the accommodations. Not even on her maiden voyage could the Spartak have contended for the title of flagship of the Caspian merchant fleet—and that had been back in 1871.

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She had been steadily going to the dogs ever since. The captain explained that she had been consigned to scrap before the war. But now every available bottom was desperately needed, and so even this superannuated hulk was pressed into service. She creaked indignation at this outrage at every seam. As an added protest on the trip down to Pahlavi, the main engine bearing had burned out. But there was no time for repairs, and so we would be returning to Baku on a towline with a cargo of steel ingots in the leaky hold. “Unless we get in a storm and tow houser snaps, we should make it all,” the captain opined reassuringly. But, in any case, by that time our ten pouches of diplomatic mail and two tons of freight, all duly rechecked, were in the hold on top of the ingots, and so it was too late to turn back. The Spartak’s decks and quarters were in keeping with her character. Every inch of exposed surface was caked with oily soot that left an indelible smudge on everything that touched it. Again the captain explained, “No time to stop and paint—we’ve got to keep moving.” The only sitting space indoors was in two wardrooms below decks that served as the officers’ and crew’s messes, respectively. The walls in both were decorated with pictures of the political bureau of the Communist Party. We were assigned a little stateroom off the officers’ mess aft with three bunks in it and room for nothing more. For once Watson and Clark could not sleep with their mail pouches. But the stateroom had been made tolerably clean, and everyone from the captain down seemed eager to make us as comfortable as possible. The most remarkable feature of the Spartak was its crew. The captain, Vassili Ivanovich, a stocky young man of twenty-seven, had been invalided out of the navy for wounds received on the Sevastopol run the year before. He was just beginning to recover the use of his right hand and arm, the ligaments of which had been severed by machine-gun bullets when the destroyer on which he served as gunnery officer was strafed from the air. Every day he eagerly tested the articulation slowly returning to his stricken limb. He dreamed only of when he could return to combat duty and quit this “paddling about in a mud puddle on a stinking wreck with a bunch of women, kids who ought to be in school, and grandpappies who should be warming their bones on top of a stove.” “But,” I objected, “the job you’re doing now is tremendously important for the war, you know.”

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“Perhaps,” came the rejoinder, “but it isn’t my job. My job is killing Germans. There’s thousands of people could plow this old tub through the irrigation ditch, but good gunnery officers are needed in our navy.” “I see your point,” I replied, “and hope you get your wish. But you can’t go on killing Germans all your life.” “Of course,” he said, “we won’t go on killing Germans indefinitely. We’ve killed a lot already. But they’re a lot more that need killing before we can stop.” “But when the shooting does end,” I persisted, “and it will, sooner or later, then what would you like to do?” At this point he squared his chin and a note of pride came into his voice as he said, “I serve the Soviet Union. I shall go wherever my party and my government send me and do as they order me.” “But,” I insisted, “your party and your government assigned you to be captain of the Spartak, and though you do it, you don’t enjoy it. What I meant was, not where you would be sent, but what would you like to do if you had the choice?” Vassili Ivanovich’s face, which had been scowling through the first part of my remark, suddenly lit up. “If I had my choice,” he almost shouted, “after the war I should like to be captain of one of those new, luxurious diesel ships that will ply between Vladivostok and San Francisco. Have you ever been to San Francisco?” But before I could answer, the rosy vision faded from his eyes. With a deprecatory smile and indicative nod toward the shabbiness around us, he said, “I’ve got to get to work; the tug’ll be here any moment to take us off.” The mate of the good ship Spartak was easily twice the captain’s age— a likeable old ruffian with a salty tang. “I was born in Baku,” he told me. “If you’ve never been there, you haven’t missed much. Terrible place, oil in everything—in the air you breathe, in your food, in your hair, on your clothing. You can’t get away from it. I first tasted oil with my mother’s milk, and I haven’t been able to get rid of the taste since.” He spat disgustedly into the tar-streaked scum that lapped our side. “Doubt if all the vodka in the world would rinse it from my mouth, and I’ve used my share in the attempt.” Uncle Fedya, as the other members of the crew called him, had been at sea ever since he was twelve years old. “Started out to see the world, I did,” he commented sardonically, “and what did I see? Astrakhan, Kislovodsk, Makhachkala, Pahlavi. Forty years

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I’ve swum circles around this landlocked pond, like one of those sturgeon that spawn their caviar in the mouths of the Volga once a year. Only now I’m past my spawning season, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever see the ocean. Tell me, is it true that the water there is a deep, clear blue—not dirty gray like this Caspian of ours?” The peak of Uncle Fedya’s career had been back in 1918, when as a young man he had worked for the British, who were then occupying Baku. They had given him a slick motorboat all to himself. And his job had been to take parties of officers out fishing. “Save for one or two of the senior officers,” he reminisced, “they were all young fellows, about my own age. High-spirited, they were, always laughing and joking in English among themselves. Sometimes their jokes were on me, but since I couldn’t understand, it didn’t matter. In any case, it was all good natured. Our luck with the fish wasn’t always good. But that didn’t seem to spoil their fun or dampen their spirits. They’d ask me to sing—I had a pretty good voice in those days, and I sure let them have it. They’d whoop and stomp and try to lend vocal support. Several times we almost tipped the boat over.” Uncle Fedya had also learned a few English expressions, few of them printable, though he used them in all innocence. With ear-rending whistle blasts, two steam tugs nosed into us. The Spartak, inert and powerless, was slowly prodded into the channel where the ship that was to tow us to Baku was waiting. It took more than an hour to fasten the towline, which, when it was finally unsnarled and tautened, looked woefully slender. The Spartak was so heavy with steel ingots that the main deck was not more than a foot above the waterline. Slowly, painfully, we gathered momentum until we were scudding through the muddy gray water at our ceiling speed of four knots. We cleared the harbor breakwater at noon, but at sunset the rococo turrets of the Shah’s palace were still visible. The work of getting the ship under way had been performed entirely under the direction of the young captain and the old mate by boys in their middle teens. They were a noisy, quick-tongued, high-spirited crew clothed in ragged, patched-up hand-me-downs—almost to the last detail like any bunch of tough kids on a waterfront anywhere in the world. Several turned out to be refugees from the invaded Ukraine, whose families had perished or had been caught behind German lines. One snub-nosed, freckle-faced redhead was from Stalingrad, where his house and parents had been blown to bits by a Nazi bomb before his

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very eyes. But close contact with slaughter and the soul-searing horrors of war had not destroyed their essential childlike simplicity and innocence, for which their outward air of toughness was a not-tooconvincing camouflage. The boy from Stalingrad took a fancy to Ash Clark, to whom he bore an amusing facial resemblance, and applied himself to teaching Clark simple words in Russian, laughing uproariously at his mispronunciation. There were four women on board. Two of them, the navigator and the radio operator, were officers; the other two ran the galley. Though we had brought along our own provisions for the trip, the captain insisted that we share the cabbage soup and potatoes of the officers’ mess. We agreed, provided they permitted us to contribute something, and so we produced canned peaches and pineapple and graham crackers for dessert—delicacies that none of them had ever tasted before. That was our dinner the first night out. Thereafter, there wasn’t much eating done on the voyage. For long before morning a storm blew up that shook our ship like a terrier shakes a rat. For the first time in many thousands of miles of ocean travel I was sick that morning, but my mortification was mollified when I found that practically the entire crew was in similar straits. Angry mountains of gray water seemed to converge upon us simultaneously from all directions. It is a sea without rhyme or reason in its motion. That, I was told, was because the Caspian’s landlocked shallowness left no elbowroom nor a deep broad groundswell, and even during a raging storm the water simply slopped from side to side as in an agitated bathtub, which made it all the more treacherous. The towline didn’t snap, and the Spartak didn’t founder; we woke up the morning after our second night on board to find ourselves lying in Baku Harbor. The clustered houses of the ochre-colored town climbed the surrounding hills. The skyline was broken by the tall silhouettes of public buildings that were under construction at the time of the German invasion, when work on them had been suspended for the duration. In the course of the morning, we drove alongside a dock to unload our mail pouches and freight. Again, the list was carefully rechecked as each item came out of the hold. An Intourist man appeared with a truck that would take everything to the hotel. In customs I shed my luggage and received a perfunctory examination from a charming lady customs inspector who had majored in American literature at the University of Leningrad. She asked me if I had anything in the way of American magazines that I could leave with her for reading practice. She had had a big

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library of English books at her home in Leningrad where she had spent the first two years of the war as a firefighter, living through the famine and blockade of the frightful winter of 1941–1942. Her husband, she mentioned him in passing, had been killed at the front, fighting to defend the city. Her house had been demolished by a shell from the longrange German siege guns that bombarded the beleaguered city day in and day out for more than two years. And finally her health undermined, she had been ordered to evacuate and had been given this quiet job, far from the fighting, in order to recuperate. “I don’t enjoy it,” she apologized. “It makes me feel as though I were making others pull my weight when there’s still so much to be done.” At the big, modern Intourist Hotel we spent the next two hours rechecking the pouches and the freight. The pouches had to be carried up to our rooms; the freight we had to turn over to Intourist, who would forward it to Moscow by train. We would leave for Moscow in the morning by the plane. Back in our rooms we ordered dinner. In the midst of the cabbage soup, there was a knock on the door, and an individual strode in wearing a dark blue uniform strongly reminiscent of a New Jersey motorcycle cop, with boots and riding breeches. Embroidered on his sleeve was an American spread eagle, almost lifesize, clutching a shield with the stars and stripes, and underneath—as though that weren’t enough—a big “U.S.” in gold thread. A similar crest adorned his hat. “Not bad, eh?” the visitor inquired proudly as he followed my glance to the insignia. “Designed it myself.” He turned out to be a technician, sent in by his employer’s firm to help the Russians install American-made diesel engines in submarines. When he first arrived in Russia, he’d had himself a hell of a time hanging around Moscow for two weeks with nothing much to do. But then they’d sent him down here to the shipyards in Baku. The town was an awful dump, without one decent cabaret or anything else in the way of entertainment except movies. The people were real friendlylike though—most of them—especially the dames. And there were some nifties. If only they had the clothes. If any of us wanted dates, he knew girls who had plenty of friends. He could fix it up in no time. There weren’t many joints you could take ’em to though. The best place in town was the Naval Officers’ Club, where they had a bar and an orchestra of sorts. He and his pal had gone there the other night with a couple of girls, but they hadn’t felt any too welcome; and the next time they tried

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going, they wouldn’t let them in. But probably if we all went, they wouldn’t keep us out. It would be worth a try anyway. We thanked him for the invitation but excused ourselves on the grounds that we had to be up at five in the morning for the long drive to the airport. • • •

Flying into Moscow • • • Early the next morning, after rechecking the pouches to make sure none had walked off in the night, we drove back in the dark for two hours through shadowy forests of oil derricks to the Baku airport. Our fellow passengers in the bucket seated C-47 were Red Army officers. We skimmed along the Caspian and the barren, saline Kalmyk steppes to the port of Astrakhan on the mouth of the Volga, landing on a bleak airfield where the mud snowballed round the balloon tires of our landing gear and caked on the ailerons. Only with great difficulty did the plane get off the ground again with this weight of mud added to the diplomatic cargo. Following the broad silvery band of the Volga, we reached the ruins of Stalingrad. For miles in all directions, zigzag trenches and circular gun emplacements scarred the ground. We hedgehopped along a railway line where the ravages of battle seemed still fresh—charred hulks of freight cars toppled against signal towers, a locomotive sprawled on its back in a ditch. . . . Gaining altitude, we passed the tumbled ruins of factories and apartment houses. But everywhere among the destruction were signs of returning life. The remains of tanks, planes, field guns, trucks, cars, and other scrap had been gathered from the battlefields into enormous junk piles. Forests of wooden scaffolding had grown around the empty shells of gutted buildings, many of which already had bright new roofs. All this we saw in a few seconds. Then, just as we were preparing to land, low-hanging clouds, which had kept us close to the deck all the way from Baku, swallowed us completely, blotting out Stalingrad and its airport. After a few minutes of futile floundering, our pilot gave up the search and nosed the plane in the direction of Moscow. Our Stalingrad passenger took the news with Russian stoicism. He curled up in his bucket seat, tucked his sheepskin around him, and went to sleep.

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I have had some harrowing plane rides in my time, including flights to the front line with loads of ammunition and high octane gasoline, and a forced landing in the trackless desert in an old Blenheim bomber. But all of these rides were tame compared with that flight to Moscow in a C-47. The Russian pilots do not fly on a beam, but rely on landmarks for guidance. On the Stalingrad-Moscow run their usual course was to follow the railway. They also flew so low that once one of their planes actually scraped a train. By a miracle no serious damage was done. But the pilot insisted that the accident was the train’s fault. It was off its timetable and had no business being where it was! Visibility, which had closed down on us at Stalingrad, grew worse as we flew westward, until we were literally plowing our way through a heavy blizzard. But our pilot, still flying by landmarks, instead of climbing over the storm, continued to hug the ground. Now and then a jagged hole in the white blanket would reveal tree tops rushing by our cabin windows, swaying our slipstream. But most of the time we saw nothing and just hoped. Once there was a sickening lurch as our pilot yanked the stick barely in time to avoid clipping a church tower. But Fate was kind, and over Moscow the sky cleared in time for us to land in the fading winter twilight. Another hour and the balloon barrage would have been up, sealing the airport for the night.3 • • •

The Kharkov Hangings In late April 1945, Benito Mussolini dangled from a rope at the Piazzale Loreto in Milan, a visible retribution orchestrated by Italians citizens, who had themselves long endured the brutal, capricious ruler who fell from power and was simply trying to escape the country. This image— of the common man’s willingness to hang and abuse a corpse for public display—meant the victim was seen as something less than fully human and that the aggressors themselves wanted both justice for what they had suffered and a shocking symbol of what they would no longer tolerate. This image—a human form hanging from quickly-improvised gallows—became part of the lesser-known realities of the Soviet Union during the World War II as the Russian soldiers and citizens reclaimed 3. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 164; Stevens, Russia Is No Riddle, 114.

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their land from the German aggressors, especially in the Ukraine, which had endured the brunt of Hitler’s brutality. “Of all the Eastern areas conquered by the Third Reich, the Ukraine was by far the most important,” according to historian Alexander Dallin. “It was the largest Soviet republic which the Germans occupied in full, and it was held longer than the other parts of Great Russia which they were able to seize. As a provider of food and manpower, it was second to none.”4 Civilian losses during the war in the Ukraine are estimated to be between five and eight million, and of the estimated eleven million Soviet troops who died in the war, 2.7 million were ethnic Ukrainians. World War II historians distinguish the Ukraine as a nation that endured some of the greatest bloodshed of the war. Edmund Stevens was present when one expression of retribution was unleashed deliberately for the press. • • • A group of Allied pressmen awoke from a chilly sleep in Kiev one morning soon after the city’s liberation to blink at several Germans dangling from the hotel balcony outside their room windows. The Soviet newspapers carried no reference to these hangings, and the censors did not allow the correspondents to cable anything about them. But the interference was obvious. At the recently terminated Moscow conference, the Russians had insisted on a declaration concerning the punishment of the individuals responsible for German atrocities in the occupied countries and areas. The Russians contended that the category of such war criminals embraced everyone from the Nazi higherups, who had issued the general directive for the extermination of Jews, and other sections of the population down to the meanest Wehrmacht private, who had mowed down unarmed civilians with a machine gun or used his bayonet in the gruesome fulfillment of the directives. The Russians further asserted that any officers or soldiers who had committed atrocities against civilians forfeited their right to be treated as belligerents, and that in the event of capture, they could be tried and punished as common criminals. The Kiev hangings indicated that the Russians, with the accustomed zeal for combining theory with practice, were already meting out retribution to any such criminals that fell into their hands. 4. Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941–1945: A Study of Occupation Policies (London: Macmillan, 1981), 107.

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There was no available count on how many other Germans had silently shared the fate of those the correspondents saw swinging from the balcony in Kiev. Isolated episodes are rare in Russia; most things happen according to plan. One month later, on December 15, a public trial of war criminals opened in Kharkov in the liberated Ukraine. This time the Russians made every effort to publicize the proceedings as widely as possible. The best Soviet writing talent was mobilized to cover the trial, and representatives of the Allied press were flown down to attend the last day’s sessions and to witness the executions the following morning.5 • • • Stevens’s December 17, 1943, dispatch, datelined Moscow, began, Soviet determination to mete out individual and collective retribution to the Nazis for crimes and atrocities committed against the civil population is strikingly illustrated by the trial which opened in Kharkov Dec. 15 before a military tribunal. There, amid the ruins of the twice-occupied Ukrainian city, whose prewar population approached the 1,000,000 mark three of Hitler’s lesser underlings and one Russian traitor who served them are personally being called to answer for their crimes.6

In his memoirs, Stevens described the trial itself: • • • Russians are past masters at mise-en-scène, and the atmosphere of that Kharkov trial room was distinctly reminiscent of the famous treason trials of 1936–1938. In fact, two of the defense lawyers, Kommodov and Kaznachayev, had defended some of the figures in the treason trials. Their presence provided an element of direct continuity. This, too, was a military tribunal: judges, prosecutor, and attendants were all in uniform. The sessions were held in the Kharkov Dramatic Theater, which had somehow miraculously escaped demolition even though the city had changed hands four times. As at the treason trials, admission tickets valid for one session only were distributed to factory workers and office employees through their trade union organizations, so that the audience kept rotating. The faces of these Kharkov civilians who had lived through two years of Nazi occupation—mostly young girls and older 5. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 165; Stevens, Russia Is No Riddle, 115–16. 6. Stevens, “Retribution Period Opens with Nazi Trial in Soviet,” CSM, December 17, 1943, 1.

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men and women—were charged with a breathless tenseness that never once relaxed through the long hours of the interrogation. During the recesses, I discovered that many of the people in the audience had personal knowledge or experience of the events and atrocities described and had seen or known the defendants during the German occupation. Several times during more gruesome bits of evidence, there were stifled sobs from some woman—not out of pity for the defendants. For the most part, the proceedings took place against a background of concentrated silence. The theatrical setting of the trial was enhanced by the blaze of klieg lights as whole batteries of cameramen filmed every minute of the proceedings from all possible angles. As in the Moscow treason trials, all legal niceties were observed to a fault. The defendants and their counsels had full latitude to speak or interpolate, and every comma of what was said was translated into German for their benefit. Another interesting parallel with the treason trials was the apparent eagerness of the defendants to confess to their crimes. They almost seemed to revel in their wickedness, gratuitously filling in all the lurid details. Thus stocky, red-headed, beefy-faced Wilhelm Langheldt, whose carriage, heel clicking, and rows of ribbons proclaimed a German soldier of the old school, calmly described how he trumped up charges against Soviet war prisoners when he was in command of a prisoner-of-war camp. “My immediate superior, Major Lulai, upbraided me for not shooting enough people. I excused myself by saying that I had only been at the camp a short time and had not yet had an opportunity to show my diligence.” Langheldt then went on to show how he made up for his early laxity. When prisoners refused to sign faked testimony, he simply had his translator forge their signatures. When Ukrainian peasant women from nearby came to the camp looking for relatives, he had them arrested on charges of helping to establish contact between prisoners and partisan groups. They were beaten and then shot, together with the children they had brought along with them. When the prosecutor asked Langheldt whether the German high command ever punished its soldiers or officers for ill treatment of civilians, he pondered a moment, rocking slightly back and forth on his toes

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and heels, and then answered in the same quiet, measured voice in which his entire testimony had been delivered, that on the contrary such treatment was deliberately encouraged and rewarded. At each conclusion of his testimony, Langheldt saluted smartly, turned on his heels, and strode back to his seat in the prisoner’s box.7 • • • According to their own testimony, the defendants were responsible for slaughtering thirty thousand citizens, including women, children, and the elderly. Stevens attended the trial with Alexei Tolstoy, and together they heard the testimony of the three Germans, including Hans Ritz, “a mustached 24-year-old son of a professor and a music student, until drafted into Army for service on the Eastern Front.”8 Ritz testified that he personally had killed at least two thousand people, once even using a tommy gun to impress his superiors. Stevens wrote, “Commenting on Ritz, Alexei Tolstoy writes: ‘So much for university, music lessons, and a professor’s family—all bounced off Hans Ritz’s conscience like peas off a wall. . . . I declare I have never yet seen such moral degradation.’”9 According to Stevens’s memoirs, Ritz was a specialist at using “Gasenwagons”: • • • This bit of Nazi deviltry is a sealed truck into which the exhaust fumes are diverted. The victims are simply loaded into this portable lethal chamber and are ready for burial by the time the truck arrives at the mass burial pits, usually located on the edge of town. The Gasenwagon, Ritz stated, had been used extensively in Warsaw, Riga, Kiev, Poltava, and Smolensk—as well as in Kharkov and Taganrog. Ritz, like his codefendants, made no effort to hide his crimes. But unlike the others, he was university-bred. At one point in his brief and about-to-be-terminated career, he had studied law, which he now proceeded to quote on his accusers. Thus he sought to place the blame for his own misdeeds and those of others like him on the shoulders of his superiors. He cited Hitler’s direct orders for the inculcation of systematic cruelty and the doctrine of German race superiority, whence followed the advisability for exterminating inferior races, including the Russians. He also quoted Heinrich Himmler, the gestapo chief, as hav7. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 165–68. 8. Stevens, “Nazi Captain in War Trial Boasts of Slaying and Cruelty,” CSM, December 18, 1943, 1. 9. Ibid.

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ing declared that in imposing capital punishment, one needn’t consult the statutes, only one’s Aryan instincts. He ended with what was intended as a moving plea for himself and others like him who had grown up under Nazism and had never had a chance to know anything better. If only his life were spared—if only the court would give him another chance, he would devote his entire energies to the destruction of Nazism. When the time came, he said, he would gladly give evidence against the Führer himself. But his words thawed none of the ice in the court. Every face in that room outside the prisoner’s box wore the same expression of hatred and contempt that signified too clearly “thumbs down!” The court and the people watching knew what was coming. Most of them had seen the four gallows-trees being erected in the center of the market place. But even though the defendants must have sensed the hostility around them, I wonder if they appreciated the full hopelessness of their position. After all, they doubtless told themselves, they had merely acted on orders from higher up. Had they refused, they would have been subject to court-martial. They probably expected that they would now be let off with a prison sentence that would be commuted when the war had ended and its animosities had had time to cool off. The very decorum of the court strengthened such optimism. After all, they probably figured, if the Russians intended to execute them, they could have simply lined them up against a stone wall. It should be added that the one Russian in the prisoner’s box, Mikhail Bulanov, did not share the illusions of his German codefendants. From the very start, the quaking feat that convulsed his frame and the wild horror in his eyes showed he knew full well the shadow of the gallows was upon him. Of course, he doubtless realized, as did the Germans sitting alongside him, that he was in a separate category—a traitor who could therefore expect no clemency. There was no room for mercy in that surcharged courtroom; it was crowded out by the unseen audience of uncounted thousands of tortured and massacred Ukrainian men, women, and children whose blood the defendants and others like them had shed. The sentence of hanging was read by the chief judge around midnight in a final blaze of klieg projectors. As he heard the sentence, Bulanov sagged and had to be supported. But the other Germans stood stolid and unconcerned, first through the original reading and then through the painfully slow translation. Apparently the illusion still persisted. Wasn’t

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it an old Russian trick to lead presumably condemned men to the scaffold before finally revealing that it was all a bluff? Not till the following morning when they were hustled out of a Black Maria and saw the four erected gallows-trees stark against the gray December sky, saw the closepacked crowd that thronged the market place, surging against the cordon of soldiers struggling to keep the space around the gallows clear—not till that moment did they realize the jig was up indeed.10 • • • In his dispatch from Kharkov on December 20, 1942, Stevens wrote about the executions, Yesterday morning at 11:45, under a gray winter sky, the sentence of a military tribunal was executed on three German war criminals, and a Russian traitor, Mikhail Bulanov. From early morning, thousands of Kharkov citizens gathered on a piece of waste ground, formerly the site of a market which was burned by the Germans. Some persons climbed on the roofs of adjoining buildings. The crowd struggled to get nearer to the place of execution, and a cordon of Red Army men held it back with difficulty. But everything was done speedily and simply, and after a time, the people went home in orderly groups with a feeling of satisfaction that justice had been administered. Every occupied country has its Hitlerite viceroys and its Bulanovs who have sold themselves to the fascists either from fear or for 90 Reichsmarks. Hence the exemplary trial here, which is the first of its kind, has historic significance. I flew from Moscow yesterday morning to attend the closing session of the trial. First of all I heard the speech of the prosecutor, who, with citations of international law, stated briefly the most lurid and shocking facts of the case collected from witnesses and the defendants themselves. He demanded the supreme penalty.11

• • • We too, witnessed the hanging. It was all over in a couple of moments. The defendants were hoisted into the back of four open trucks and stood on stools. Then the nooses were looped around their necks. There was no blindfolding. During the preliminaries three of the four prisoners 10. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 168–70. 11. Stevens, “Four War Criminals Pay Price of Crime in Soviet Court,” CSM, December 20, 1943, 1.

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had to be propped up. Bulanov had fainted; Ritz and Retslau had turned a pasty white; they drooled at the mouth, and their knees gave way. Only Langheldt, the old soldier, remained stiff as a ramrod throughout, never once flinching. Once the nooses had been adjusted, at a signal the trucks pulled away, and the four were left dangling and kicking in midair. Throughout all this, the crowd of more than one thousand watched in complete silence. There was no sign of emotion—no pleasure, no revulsion, no sympathy—at the spectacle of men being hanged; only a natural curiosity, like that of people watching a steam excavator somewhere in Manhattan. Strangely enough, this attitude was contagious, and none of our group of British and American correspondents—which included two women—felt any untoward emotion. At first I was baffled for an explanation. Then I realized that in the past two years these people had lived in such constant daily contact with this kind of thing that they had become hardened and used to it. It was as though their cup of feeling and emotion had evaporated. From now on nothing could phase them.12 • • • In his analysis of the Kharkov trial and hangings, Stevens produced his own condemnation against the defendants and their cause: Terrible as are the Germans’ physical crimes and atrocities, in some ways their systematic elimination of cultural and moral values is even more appalling—the closing of schools, burning of books, spreading of antiSemitic poison, their scheming efforts to tempt and corrupt those whose lives they spare, seeking to make wide sections their accomplices for purposes of subsequent extortion and intimidation. Illustrative of the German negative attitude toward morals and ethics was the conduct of the German defendants. They avowed their crimes almost with gusto, gratuitously filling in all lurid details. They professed regret for the actions, although here their motives were obviously suspect, as their sole hope for leniency lay in “making a clean breast” of everything. But never once was there the faintest suggestion of any moral repentance or shame for their past. They readily blamed everything on their Nazi chiefs and seemed to think the circumstance that they were obeying orders from above absolved them from any personal moral guilt for 12. Edmund Stevens, memoirs, 172–73.

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their actions. Perhaps this destruction of individual conscience and individual moral responsibility among his followers is Hitler’s greatest crime of all.13

But he also paid tribute to the Ukrainian citizens determined to rebuild their lives: Kharkov, which has been in Russian hands since August, now is well advanced on the road to recovery and reconstruction, despite the terrible destruction which swept over it. While I was there attending the war-criminal trials, we saw several American movies advertised, including a Deanna Durbin picture. Schools also have reopened. Three daily newspapers have resumed publication. Electric-light service is partially restored. Four of the original 16 streetcar lines of the city are in operation again. With the partial return of evacuees, the population now exceeds 300,000. Factories are being repaired, and equipment for re-equipping the devastated coal mines in the neighboring Donets Basin is being produced. Next year, the huge Kharkov tractor plant will resume operation.14

The Kharkov narrative is the last of the World War II material within Stevens’s memoirs, and it is a fitting ending for this text because it brings together several characteristics for which Edmund Stevens should be remembered: 1) his ability to report the lesser-known elements of World War II—Finland, Greece, Hungary, Romania, and the Ukraine; 2) his determination to place the common man and woman from Russia on center stage for his American readers; 3) his capacity for taking a single event and analyzing its place within a world at war; 4) and his passion for getting inside the minds of Russians—both individuals and communities—to understand the war’s impact on them. Only a determined journalist fluent in Russian and passionate about Soviet culture could do what Edmund Stevens did—both during the war and after. Stevens returned to the United States after several months in Russia. He spent most of 1945 completing Russia Is No Riddle before moving his entire family back to Moscow after the war. In 1946, despite the allied efforts of the United States and Russia during the war, American corre13. Stevens, “Kharkov Rebuilds on Ruin Left by Nazis,” CSM, December 24, 1943, 1. 14. Ibid.

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spondents in Moscow faced increased harassment and censorship from the government. In 1949, after virtually fleeing Russia with his family, Edmund Stevens produced a forty-part series entitled, “This Is Russia Uncensored,” for which he claimed the 1950 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. After a six-year stint in Italy as the Monitor’s Mediterranean bureau chief, Stevens returned to Moscow as a correspondent where he stayed until his death more than thirty-five years later and where he worked for many organizations, including Time, Life, Newsday, the Saturday Evening Post, NBC radio, the Times of London, the Sunday Times, and the Evening News of London. Earl W. Foell, Stevens’s former editor at the Monitor, wrote, “The last time I saw Ed himself, he was in The Monitor research library, gathering material for memoirs. What he talked about on that occasion was a kind of obituary for Lenin’s empire. His first, best sketch for that obituary was the series completed in 1950—when much of the world thought the empire invincible.”15 But Foell was not entirely correct. Stevens’s “first, best sketch” came much earlier—in 1939, in fact, when he went behind enemy lines with Finnish soldiers to interview Russian prisoners of war; when he spent hours describing for his American readers what the Russian peasants and bureaucrats were suffering in Moscow at the hands of both Stalin and Hitler; when he analyzed Stalin’s motives for signing a nonaggression pact with Germany; and when he reported from the front lines of battles between Stalin, Hitler, and the smaller states they were attempting to crush and absorb. The editors of Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism, 1959–1975 describe the “eloquent” images that war correspondents recreate for their readers: Yet, for all their eloquence, these images are ultimately inscrutable. “We will show you everything,” they seem to say. “We will show you more than you can bear to see. But don’t ask us what we mean.” Meaning depends on relation, the relation of one event to another in a sequential or causal chain. This kind of meaning has traditionally been the province of the story, a term broad enough to embrace myth, history, fiction, and yes, war journalism. . . . Like all storytellers, war journalists must decide where to open and close their stories, which characters and events to 15. Earl Foell, “A Correspondent with Few Peers,” World Monitor, June 5, 1992, 4.

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emphasize, which details of setting to describe, and—most important— what to make of it all.16

In this work, I have deliberately focused on Stevens’s World War II years in an attempt to examine his unfinished memoirs within the greater context of history and his own dispatches while highlighting his skills as a frontline correspondent. It is accurate that “meaning depends on relation,” and Stevens offers all journalists—even the most experienced—a remarkable model for analyzing the greater meaning of a single event. His ability to explain “one event to another in a sequential or causal chain” made him a great asset to the Monitor, which valued this ability more than many American newspapers. It also earned him a Pulitzer Prize, but he could not have claimed that Pulitzer in 1950 without years of practicing analysis. World War II and the Monitor gave him that opportunity, just as his childhood in Italy gave him wanderlust and his own courage and passion gave him the determination to face down incoming mortar at the front lines. His professional achievements—in articulating meaning in the lives of Greek soldiers, the RAF, or common Russians—came at the expense of his own family life, and the distinction of the public versus private Edmund Stevens comes to light as a reporter—like Ernie Pyle or Martha Gellhorn—willing to sacrifice domestic life for war zone bylines. Yet he and Nina remained married for more than forty-five years, until his death in May 1992, just six months after the passing of their daughter, Stasia. Nina Stevens died in Moscow in the fall of 2004. Their son, Edmund Jr., or Vova as he is known to his family, is an architect living in Lincoln, Massachusetts, with his wife, Shari.

16. Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism, 1959–1975 (New York: Library of America, 2000), xiii.

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An Inevitable Journalist Samples of Stevens’s Reporting

March 18, 1940 Clarifying Big Issues of Russo-Finnish War By Edmund Stevens Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor HELSINGFORS, Finland, March 18—The conclusion of the RussoFinnish War permits one to speak more freely and clear up a number of misapprehensions about the Finnish situation which have been used to sow confusion among the people abroad. Among a batch of recent American clippings I found views expressed that are apparently common in a certain section of American thought. They oppose sending aid for the women and children victims of the war. False Premises To begin with, the legal Government of Finland is referred to as the “Mannerheim Government,” a label manufactured by Soviet Russia at the time that it set up the Kuusinen puppet Government at the border town of Terijoki to bolster the fiction that the attack on Finland was in reality a Finnish civil war and that Russia was presumably helping the liberation of the Finnish people. Later the Kremlin rulers cast off this disguise and sent Otto Kuusinen packing.

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Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim has not been a member of the Government, which is a parliamentary coalition of representatives of the democratic political parties enjoying the confidence of the overwhelming majority of the Finnish electorate. Called From Retirement Moreover the veteran Field Marshal was summoned from retirement by popular demand to take command of the national forces when the danger of invasion arose last fall. From the outset he urged every effort to avoid war and it is reported to have been at his insistence that the present harsh peace terms were accepted. Hints are thrown out that the influence of the “reactionary Allies” may have inspired the Finnish hostilities. From this it is deduced that Russia is fighting a defensive war. Such an argument ignores the whole course of the negotiations between Russia and Finland before the war and the Russian provocation and invasion of Finland. It repeats the Soviet contentions that Finland presumably attacked Russia at the Allies’ instigation. “Not England’s Tool” Without analyzing the policies of England and France, which may be far from blameless in the Finnish question, especially in their failure to support Finland effectively, the very fact that Finland itself steadfastly, up to the last, refused to apply for Allied aid and sought to prevent its conflict with Russia from becoming a part of the general European war, disproves the claim that Finland was England’s tool. There is a tendency to suspect the British Government of being permeated with a subtle Fascism, but those who urge this point overlook the fact that Soviet Russia worked hand in glove with reactionary Germany, whose Fascism is not of the subtle variety, and that it was German diplomacy which delivered Finland finally into Russia’s hands. The example of Finland gives sufficient evidence that Soviet Russia, despite the democratic sheep’s clothing of its one ticket Parliament, has joined the totalitarian wolf pack and is the bitter foe of everything that America would mean by liberty and democracy.

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April 16, 1940 Nazi-Planned Treachery Caused Oslo’s Downfall, Uncensored Story Reveals Writer saw few signs of resistance—In Sweden better defense is apparent By Edmund Stevens Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor STROMSTAD, Sweden, April 16—I have just arrived at this little Swedish frontier town after a difficult motor ride from the beleaguered city of Oslo. Oslo is still virtually completely cut off from the outside world. But its isolation is not alone the story of German conquest. It is a story of German-engineered treachery in which key defense points were surrendered to Nazi invaders without a shot. And the occupation of Oslo is a story of tragic unpreparedness. For only one of Norway’s six divisions of troops was at the capital to defend it when there fell the sudden blow of German invasion. Witnessed German Occupation Our trip out was made against the wishes of the American Legation which feared the worst would befall us along the route. [Mr. Stevens was the last American newspaper correspondent to leave Oslo. Two others with him left shortly after the city was invaded. Electing to remain, Mr. Stevens was isolated in Oslo for more than four days. He has had an unusual opportunity to view conditions under German occupation.] Against the Legation’s advice I started out by car for Sweden with the help of a plucky American girl who volunteered as chauffeur, but we encountered no bullets along the way. Armed with an authorization from the German Legation, we passed safely through the German lines between Fredikstad and then passed through a strip of Norwegian territory still unoccupied by the Germans and so on to the Swedish frontier unhindered. The extent of resistance around Oslo is greatly exaggerated. Nowhere did we encounter any signs of fighting save in Fredrikstad itself, which had been twice bombed by the Germans, but not very heavily.

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On the Swedish side we saw more evidence of major preparation with tank traps and other defenses, and many soldier boys marching toward the frontier. Puppet Government Falls The situation when we left Oslo was as follows: The Germans having failed in their attempt to set up a puppet government had openly declared a military occupation and a citizens’ committee had been set up after pressure had been brought on various men in public places, a committee consisting of university professors, tradeunion heads, and Judges of the Supreme Court to serve as a connecting link between the German General Staff and the population. [Delayed dispatches to the Associated Press from Oslo confirmed the setting up of a committee under Ferman control, headed by Ingolf Elster Christensen, Governor of the Province of Oslo.] This marked the complete fiasco of the German attempt to set up Maj. Vidkin Quisling as a Norwegian Hitler. The people simply would not co-operate with the traitor and the Germans tired of furnishing him with bodyguards. Otherwise, however, in Oslo itself the situation was fairly calm and the people knew little of what is happening in the rest of Norway. Advancing slowly from Oslo northward and westward in the past few days, German troops have penetrated the Norwegian hinterland to within a radius of about 100 kilometers. Their task was facilitated because the “fifth column” operation within the Norwegian General staff had delivered into their hands without firing a shot many of the Norwegian key defense positions. Bow to Inferior Force This happened yesterday, for instance, at Cloverg, one of the strongest fortresses southwest of Oslo where 1,500 men were disarmed by their officers and surrendered to a far inferior German force. This coincides with the announcement that the Norwegian General Otto Ruge was appointed Commander-in-Chief to replace General Lake. However this comes too late to remedy the situation in the Oslo area. Here Norwegian resistance has crumbled because three of a total of six divisions have been sent to the Far North during the Soviet-Finnish War to guard the frontier against the threat of Russian invasion. Only one division remained at the Government’s disposal at the time of the

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German surprise attack. [Stockholm dispatchers of the Associated Press said the newspaper Social Demokraten contended that German forces occupying Oslo never could have reached the Norwegian capital had not Norway been betrayed. Only the Norwegian mine layer, Olav Tryggvason, stood in the way to keep three German cruisers from reaching Oslo. With the battle still going on, the Olav Tryggvason’s commander received evidently false orders from the commander of the Horten fortress saying that King Haakon had instructed surrender. Because of this and other false orders, the fortresses at Horden and Oscarborg surrendered, eliminating what naval experts said would have been impenetrable barriers to Oslo.] The Germans encounter chief resistance below Hamar and Elveram to which the Government and the King were forced to flee. German bombing squadrons constantly leave the Oslo airport headed in this direction. East of Oslofjord there was also some resistance at Orje near the Swedish border. A few days ago by car we passed back and forth several times through these lines. Only at one point on the approach to the bridge across the Glemmen River near the town of Askim did the Germans halt us and politely advise against proceeding as there was “warm fighting” ahead. German Buses Attacked This was confirmed when later after detouring by another road we reached the Norwegian side. According to the Norwegian soldiers when busloads of Germans sent from Oslo tried to cross the ridge the Norwegian fire destroyed the first three busloads completely. The Germans behind left the buses and tried to advance through the woods but were repelled. The Norwegians claimed 350 Germans killed. Though the Norwegian troops seemed well enough equipped one was struck by a lack of co-ordination. Nobody seems quite certain what to do or where to resist if at all. In one town which we passed through volunteers had collected only to find that the officers who were supposed to command them had left them leaderless. On many crossroads we saw the troops waiting for busses to be collected. But no busses came for them.

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Much confusion was also caused by contradictory orders received from the puppet authorities in Oslo countermanding orders of the legal Norwegian Government. At several points we found the soldiers had barricaded the roads with tree trunks and barbed wire. They received orders from Oslo to remove the barricades which they obeyed. Later other orders came from the legal Government to restore the barricades and again they obeyed. Many Bridges Blown Up Yesterday the Germans entered Fredrikstad where the Norwegian Government had a radio station. But the Norwegians still control a considerable strip of territory between the Glommen River and the Swedish border. All bridges have been blown up. West and southwest of Oslo the Germans have encountered little opposition so far. We drove beyond the farthest points where civilian and military reception committees had been organized to await the Germans. This part of the country is so unwarlike that one or two German soldiers in each town suffice for submission. This appears to contradict the report of a Norwegian iron ring tightening around Oslo. Considerable numbers of men of military age from Oslo have been leaving the city through the woods by skis in order to join the Government forces. Many succeed in getting through, others were stopped. Yesterday in town I saw about 500 Norwegian prisoners, some in uniform, others in civilian clothes, all with knapsacks and suitcases who apparently were caught in such an attempt. When Will British Come? In Oslo the majority of the city population accepted the situation calmly but on all sides you heard the remark: “When are the British coming?” This shows where their sympathies lie. However, the people of Oslo do not display any fierce hatred for the Germans. On the contrary the crowd watched the German soldiers with inexhaustible curiosity. Whenever a German military car drives up in front of some building it becomes the center of a cluster of onlookers. I commented on this fact to one Norwegian friend. He explained, “You see Norway was always a small quiet country where nothing ever happened and now for the first time we are getting

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some real excitement. But don’t you worry. Our people are slow at being aroused but once they are aroused they can fight as well as anybody.” A source of irritation has been the searching of private houses where all food supplies for more than three days of food are confiscated. The Germans have requisitioned a large proportion of the transport facilities, including private cars, taxis, and motorbuses. I have seen people halted on the street by the police or the German military authorities and forced to abandon their cars which were taken over and added to the column of requisitioned cars parked in a neighboring street. Once I saw an autobus halted and the passengers politely but firmly requested to dismount. Confusion Over Finances Much financial confusion is caused by the Norwegians’ refusal to honor the Reichskredit-kaszenscheine—the paper certificates which they must take in payment from the German soldiers. In one country store we saw an elderly woman who had sold her butter and eggs to the Germans for the certificates which the storekeeper refused to accept from her in payment for groceries demanding cash. In general, however, the German military’s behavior toward civilians is fairly courteous, but acts of sabotage are punished according to the stern rules of Standrecht—summary execution. Reds Side With Germans About half of them were chauffeurs of requisitioned cars who flatly refused to drive the German troops attacking the Norwegians. A few days ago Oslo papers published a touching appeal to the German command against such executions. A strange sidelight of the present situation in Oslo is the attitude of the Communist Party toward the German occupation. The Communist newspaper Arbeiderer continues to appear unhindered. Editorially it calls resistance to the Germans a “provocation” and appeals to the workers to co-operate with discipline with the German command. This contrasts with the other papers which, while they submit to the censorship, refrain from any editorial exhortations of this type. The German and military authorities have taken over all telephone and telegraph communications and not even the Legations, including the American, are allowed to send telegrams or use the telephone.

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[Only fragmentary news dispatches from Oslo, and those apparently under rigorous German censorship, have been received from the Norwegian capital through the established news agency channels.] Axis Espionage Rampant in Cairo Activities in the Middle East of spies, “fifth columnists,” and idle chatterers, who innocently give away important military information, are described vividly in the following article by Mr. Stevens, recently returned from Cairo and North Africa. By Edmund Stevens Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor who recently returned from a year’s tour of duty with the British Eighth Army A correspondent accredited to the Royal Navy stationed in Alexandria, Egypt, received a long-distance telephone call from a woman friend in Cairo one afternoon last October: “I called up to find out if you were going on the Tobruk raid the Navy is making.” “On the what?” the correspondent gasped. “Why, don’t you know? There’s going to be a raid on Tobruk, a combined and naval and Commando operation next—–,” “Stop where you are,” the correspondent shouted into the mouthpiece. “Don’t you realize this is a civil phone line and almost anyone might be listening? You could be charged with divulging information to the enemy.” “But I was only trying to help you,” came the injured voice from the other end. “Besides I don’t see what’s so secret about it, everyone else knows.” Naval Office Aghast Changing his tone, the reporter persuaded her not to mention the subject to anyone until he reached Cairo on the evening train. Meanwhile, he went over to the Naval Intelligence Office to check up. People there were aghast when they found this most confidential information had leaked out. In Cairo, the correspondent questioned the woman. Her explanation was simple. She had been lunching at the Hermitage, one of Cairo’s popular restaurants, and seated close by at another table two well-known

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high officers were discussing the subject of the coming expedition loudly and in detail. In fact, the woman had overheard the whole plan including the date and what naval units and ground forces were participating. Amazed at this flagrant disregard of elementary security rules, the correspondent reported the matter in detail to military authorities. A few days later the expedition set forth according to schedule. Results, suppressed at the time for military reasons, since have been divulged. The entire force walked into a well-prepared trap. Naval units were allowed to get well inshore, then the harbor boom was raised behind them and shore batteries opened a withering fire at almost point-blank range. Two thirds of the naval units participating were sunk and all but a few hundred of the 2,000 shock troops that landed were killed or captured. Among the prisoners was the Associated Press correspondent Larry Allen. He was aboard a destroyer disabled by enemy fire. Another ship tried to tow a damaged vessel out of the harbor but a chance shell severed the tow rope. The man who got the telephone call from Cairo? That correspondent stayed at home. Other Operations Failed Tobruk was not the only surprise operation which failed because the enemy got wind of plans nor were the aforementioned indiscreet senior officers necessarily responsible for this. The cosmopolite, polyglot populations of Cairo and Alexandria include the residues of every conceivable nationality plus a sprinkling of pro-Axis natives and large wellestablished Italian colonies. Doubtful elements were far too numerous to be completely rounded up or watched even by the surprisingly efficient, but overworked British Field Security aided by the English Chief of Cairo Police, Russell Pasha. All this provided a fertile field for Axis espionage. War-related offices and bureaus, both military and civil, required secretaries, typists, and switchboard operators. An American organization appeared on the scene and began to expand swiftly. Every time I went to Cairo, the United States Army Headquarters seemed to have rented an additional building and the Cairo branch of the Office of War Information to have increased its floor space. Each added office naturally had to have at least one typewriter with a typist to run it. Wages were raised, standards were lowered. At first, each applicant was investigated carefully and hard-and-fast rules were laid down

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excluding neutral, former citizens of enemy countries, or persons of doubtful antecedents from certain categories of employment. But then, as available woman power dwindled, the law of supply and demand began to operate. Despite warning from posters, everyone talked shop in restaurants, amusement places and over the telephones so that Axis agents, by eavesdropping, could piece together an enormous amount of war information. Indeed, Cairo was a terrific sounding board of war information— sound and unsound. In fact, the chief problem confronting Axis agents was not a lack of information but its superabundance, which made it almost impossible to sift the true from the false. This was especially the case after British Security authorities adopted the clever practice of deliberately spreading false reports and planting bogus information for the purpose of misleading the enemy intelligence. Eventually, this proved to be far the most effective antidote for espionage. By last October Axis forces thus were completely fooled as to the imminence of a British offensive and Gen. Sir Bernard Montgomery’s actual attack at El Alamein caught General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel well off base in Berlin. Nazis Employ Tricks In transmitting messages, Axis spies conformed to the rules of thriller fiction. There were the usual letters written with invisible ink sent through a go-between in a neutral country, which in this instance meant Turkey. Tricky codes and ciphers also were used. However, British security authorities had a long nose for such things. Cairo and Alexandria boasted more than their fair quota of professional and semiprofessional women spies—frequenting the Balcony of Shepherds and other fashionable haunts and consorted preferably with Army officers of high rank. Aside from liking expensive food, they displayed an inordinate interest in and a knowledge of military affairs which made them agreeable conversational companions for Army men. The chief candidate for the title of Egyptian Mata Hari is a famous Cairo nightclub danseuse who in prewar times associated a good deal with members of the German Legation. Soon after the outbreak of war, many of her closest friends were arrested as Axis agents, but she remained at liberty, though presumably under close watch. Several prominent persons I know assert she culti-

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vated their attentions and tried to obtain information. Indeed it was so widely assumed and accepted that she was a spy that it enhanced her drawing power. Like the Pyramids or the Sphinx, she became one of the points of interest to be pointed out to newcomers and visiting firemen as “the glamour spy.” Despite this reputation, or because of it, she continued to circulate all through the summer when Marshal Rommel’s close approach failed to subdue the gaiety of Cairo’s high spots. This apparent immunity was puzzling. Obviously the British Security knew all about her. The only explanation seemed to be that perhaps they preferred leaving alone spies whom they knew and could watch rather than to have them replaced by spies whom they didn’t know. Or perhaps she was a good decoy, or maybe she was working for our side all along. Subsequently, she vanished for a time, but according to the latest reports, she is back on the job and has been spared the fate of the original Mata Hari. Pulitzer Prize–Winning Dispatches Tuesday, October 18, 1949 This Is Russia Uncensored Exit of a Reporter: Suspicion Closes In Fresh from more than a decade of close observation of Russian affairs from both sides of the Iron Curtain, Edmund Stevens today begins a series of uncensored, exclusive articles which will calmly but penetratingly reveal the Soviet Union as it is in 1949. Though a native-born American, Mr. Stevens long has had a fluent and colloquial command of Russian and wide-ranging contacts among the Russian people and officialdom. By Edmund Stevens Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Berlin—An ever-widening gap divided us from Soviet soil as the good ship Byeloostrov cast off. While Leningrad slipped astern, our immediate feelings were of unrestrained relief. After years of hope and frustration, our final memory of the U.S.S.R. was a three-hour bout with customs officials that left us angry and

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exhausted. Every carefully packed article was dragged out and scrutinized. A dydee doll of my daughter’s that squeaked when squeezed roused special suspicion. Only at the end of a fruitless quest did we learn what they were looking for. At this point the chief inspector accused me of having sold our automobile illegally for gold to a Soviet citizen! I was able to furnish written refutation of this charge—the car in question had been legally transferred to a foreign diplomat—so the officials, looking somewhat crestfallen, permitted us to cram our effects back into trunks and go aboard. This parting episode was final proof that our move was timely. Of late we had sensed imponderable walls closing in upon us. The air itself was clotted with hate and suspicion. The press attacks on everything American grew in violence and vituperation. Closer to home, no week passed without American correspondents being pilloried as spies. The anti-American campaign penetrated even to the child world. Our son and daughter were taunted by their neighborhood playmates as “Amerikantsi,” by now a term of opprobrium. Soviet Contacts Disintegrate Small wonder our last contacts with Soviet life around us disintegrated rapidly. Even the press department of the Foreign Ministry, through which all our official relations were funneled, now virtually ignored us. Our least request was ignored, our requests for appointments refused. All this was bearable as long as it remained impersonal. But early last spring we suddenly discovered that we were constantly being spied upon. Whenever someone entered or left the garden gate in front of our one-story log house a curtain in a window opposite was raised slightly. Young men, too well dressed for loiterers, lounged on nearby corners or strolled back and forth outside. Friends who dropped in were followed home, and in due course called in for questioning. Our next-door neighbors, too, were grilled, and though we had known them for years, they took to avoiding us utterly. Soon we noted that not only was the house watched but we ourselves were shadowed whenever we went. If my wife and I left the house separately by car or taxi, each of us was tailed by a little black German BMW car with four men inside. They tried to be inconspicuous, ducking behind trucks or trolley busses, and

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whenever we halted they, too, would pull up at a respectable distance, preferably just behind a corner. Grim Game With Shadows We soon learned their techniques, and one of our favorite sports was to lead them into a blind street then make a “u” turn that brought us alongside. This seemed to embarrass them to no end, and they would try to crouch down out of sight. The moment we got out of the car, they promptly deployed to strategic street corners or doorways, when they could watch our moves. They also followed us if we took the Metro or streetcar, and unless through a series of complex maneuvers we managed to shake them for a bit, they were on our trail from morning until we turned in. It long has been commonly assumed that all telephones serving foreigners are connected to a central listening post—and on more than one occasion we had evidence that our line was carefully checked. However, there had not been, so we thought, any further penetration of the privacy of our home. Then one day, we caught Nastia rifling our personal desk drawers and collecting note pads and address books. Nastia had come to work for us back in 1946 as an apple-cheeked peasant girl fresh from the village. After one year, during which my wife trained her as a tolerable housemaid, she left to marry a policeman. Servant Returns—To Spy We next heard from her last spring when she called up and asked for her job back. Since nobody wanted to work for Americans and servants were hard to get, my wife agreed to take her on. With the address book incident, we realized that Nastia, no longer an apple-cheeked peasant girl, had been assigned to us. We also found that she was in the habit of cross-examining our daughter, age seven, who has that childish knack of total recall for grown-up conversations overheard—drawing her out with the gift of some trivial toy. Before these troubles, we had lived in Moscow as peacefully and unmolested as anywhere else in the world. Though we saw few Russian friends, we took part in the social life of the closely-knit foreign colony, which can provide a nightly party for those thus inclined. We enjoyed to the full the splendid theaters, concerts and other cultural advantages of Moscow. But we had trouble keeping art, music, and dancing teachers for the children. There were plenty available, well

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qualified and reasonable. But the moment they discovered we were Americans—usually after the second or third lesson, we could not keep daughter from coming out with it—they bowed out on some pretext. At the same time, we were far better off than most foreign residents who had no contacts with the Russians and who lived in drab flats or hotel rooms. We had a home of our own furnished and equipped like an American house, with everything including the kitchen sink and a small but attractive garden. Timed to Gubichev Case We could only guess as to why we suddenly had become the objects of so much organized interest. But the timing suggested that the Gubichev case might have had some bearing. The Soviets, who claimed diplomatic immunity for this Russian United Nations employee arrested for espionage, said plainly in print that reprisals might be expected against Americans in Moscow. The number of candidates for such reprisals was uncomfortably small, and of these the correspondents were the likeliest. The Gubichev case had provided a new and dangerous precedent. Whereas some American reporters had simply been shipped out of Russia, any future cases probably would be held for trial as long as Gubichev, perhaps even longer. The Russians believe in precedents. These were the implications that made our intensive shadowing seem especially sinister and speeded our departure. A strange climax for an assignment undertaken with the conviction that the world’s future depends on understanding and friendship between the United States and Russia. But I hold this conviction now more than ever! Thursday, October 20, 1949 This Is Russia Uncensored ‘Forbidden Zone’: Red Elite Live Here After telling in his first article of the closing curtain of suspicion and surveillance which made fruitful journalistic work in Moscow impossible, Edmund Stevens today turns to the “big bosses”—the privileged rulers of the Soviet Union who live in the “Forbidden Zone.” Thus he applies his

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nearly 15 years of observation and study of the Russian nation to present a calm but graphic picture of actual conditions. This is the second of some 40 articles to appear exclusively in “The Christian Science Monitor” on alternate days. By Edmund Stevens Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Berlin—A sudden hush has settled on Moscow’s busy Arbat Street. The sleek asphalt roadway, emptied of its traffic, threads between two lines of white-uniformed, white-gloved police spaced at 10-meter intervals along either curb. The police are on tenterhooks, their eyes strained toward the far end of the street. One of them darts out, bodily lifts up an old peasant woman who has strayed into the road, and deposits her back on the sidewalk. The tension rises to its climax. With a sudden swoosh a shiny black sedan flashes down the fairway, then an open car full of bodyguards follows in close pursuit. The tension is over in a trice, and the Arbat returns to noisy normal. Bystanders exchange knowing nods: “Hozyain proyekhal” (There went the boss.) But the black sedan was curtained too heavily and went by too fast for anyone to identify the rear-seat passengers. And the bosses who thus speed between their offices and dachas (country houses) twice daily during the summer are not one but numerous. In a matter of minutes they are rolling along the smooth Uspenskoye Chaussee highway through charming country. It is like an enchanted land out of a Russian fairy tale. The log-built peasant izbas (cottages) are trim, with brightly painted roofs and pretty flowerbeds behind neat fences. The borders of the highway are carefully landscaped, and even the side roads are tarmacked. Immaculate policemen just like those along the Arbat stand at every intersection. Woe to Unwary Trespasser! The dachas, too, have an air of enchantment. White walls and shining gabled roofs glisten through the dark evergreen foliage along the side of the Moskva River. But woe to the person who treads too nigh these magic dwellings without the proper MVD (secret police) credentials. He finds himself in major trouble.

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Once, while out for a drive the summer before last, we took a wrong turn and ended up at a tall green gate. There was nobody in sight, but realizing our mistake, we made a quick turnabout. A figure in an MVD blue cap suddenly materialized from the bushes, waving his arms, red-faced and furious. As I pulled up he demanded to know where we were going. Having heard our explanation and apparently impressed by our car, he warned, “Don’t let me ever see you around here again.” This whole area along the Moskva River west of the capital is officially designated as the “Forbidden Zone.” Only person with special MVD clearance may reside there—and no foreigners, under any circumstances! Last year we still could drive along the main roads, and the diplomatic corps often picnicked and bathed in the area. Now, however, all foreign cars are turned back at the city limits. The Great and Near-Great Many of the Soviet great and near-great, from Prime Minister Joseph Stalin down, have their dachas in the Forbidden Zone. Besides top government and party chiefs, cabinet minister and leaders of the armed services, they include factory directors, members of the Academy of Sciences, prominent authors, artists and stage celebrities. These privileged groups comprise the cream of Soviet society. Not that the Russians have even a remote counterpart of western social life. There are no country clubs in the Forbidden Zone. Neighbors seldom call—in fact, they usually do not even know one another unless their work brings them into contact. There are two main factors tending to discourage free social contact within Soviet high officialdom. The first is fear. Such contact is frowned on by the ever-suspicious, ever-vigilant MVD. Moreover, personal friends are potentially dangerous. If they know too much, they may denounce you—or if they get into trouble, your ties with them may incriminate you. During the great purges many persons were undone by their own family relationships. A prudent Russian today hesitates to confide in even his wife too fully. Soviet Bigwigs Work Like Soviets The second fact that circumscribes the cultural as well as social life of the high Soviet official is work. Few persons work harder and longer hours than those in responsible Soviet positions. The average workday

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of a Soviet official begins around 11 o’clock in the morning when, after a hasty breakfast, he heads for his office. There he works through steadily until after midnight, with brief time out at 4 and again at 9 o’clock for a bit in the buffet or dining room. “Reception hours” in most government offices and ministries run from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., and during this time the official must be on deck just in case the Kremlin telephones or one of his superiors drops by with a query. He gets home about 2 in the morning, when his faithful wife has dinner ready—and so to bed. After a week of this routine, when Sunday rolls around, rare is the husband with strength or inclination for anything beyond a brief round of shopping. Nor does the wife of such a Soviet functionary have much independent existence of her own. With rare exceptions, such as Mme. Molotov, wife of Vyacheslav M. Molotov and twice a commissar in her own right under maiden name, the ordinary Soviet official’s wife is not a career woman. Though she be married to a member of the mighty Politburo, the public probably has never seen her picture or even her name in print. The Soviet press does not go in for either society or gossip columns. Elite Extras Go With Elite Job The official’s wife goes to the ballet, the theater, or a concert only on those rare occasions when her husband can get off to escort her, though she may take in a motion picture from time to time unescorted. Ordinarily, the Soviet official’s dacha, town flat, and his automobile all go with his job, so if demoted or dismissed he stands to lose much. At the same time, the charges he pays for these facilities are almost nominal. His salary, with allowances, may range up to 8,000 or 10,000 rubles monthly (about $1,940). Academy members, who are in a class by themselves, draw a total of 25,000 rubles a month (about $4,800). In addition, their regular incomes are supplemented from time to time by cash bonuses, especially in the case of factory directors. Such is life among the upper Soviet official and managerial classes at or near the apex of the Soviet social pyramid. Essentially they belong to the same social category and live by the same book of party rules. For leading citizens of a revolutionary new society, their behavior patterns are surprisingly conservative and con-

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ventional. Indeed, they are more restricted and inhibited than their counterparts in western “bourgeois” countries. Saturday, October 22, 1949 This is Russia Uncensored Art For Soviet Sake, Plus American Cars Continuing his colorful, fact-packed analysis of conditions behind the Iron Curtain, Edmund Stevens, veteran Moscow correspondent now in Germany, tells of the great artists who can do as they wish—as long as they echo the party line. And he writes of the less successful—the mere white-collar workers, who have trouble making ends meet. This is the third of a comprehensive series of such articles appearing exclusively in “The Christian Science Monitor” on alternate days. By Edmund Stevens Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Berlin—The most pampered group in Soviet society consists of the leading lights in “art”—in Russian a generic term that covers letters, music, stage, and screen as well as the graphic arts. Successful authors, musicians, painters, and, preeminently, playwrights and theatrical celebrities enjoy a degree of personal liberty and exemption from restraint far beyond any other category. Unlike the official and managerial class, they may mingle socially with their own kind and with others—foreigners now excepted. This is partly because their work is not of a confidential nature and involves no knowledge of state secrets. Furthermore, social contacts are considered a legitimate and essential part of their creative endeavors. The impact of party ideology on the country’s intellectual and cultural life will be dealt with separately. For the present purposes of economic and social comparison, it is enough to point out that even under the present doctrinaire compulsions on his work the artist is freer than the state official. Provided he has a keen nose for the Communist Party line, he need have few qualms for the future. And there are no limits to

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the earning opportunities of the Soviet author or composer who can write what the party wants. Simonov Has ‘Open Bank Account’ Constantine Simonov, most affluent and prolific of the post-war authors, usually has several plays running simultaneously in hundreds of theaters all over the Soviet Union, and he is entitled to royalties on each performance. To simplify bookkeeping, the government now has given Simonov an “open bank account.” This means he can draw any amount whenever he wishes. This makes him one of the first individuals to practice the principle of full-fledged communism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Reportedly, Simonov finds that this arrangement rather cramps his style, since he is more reticent now about drawing large sums than when he had a definite amount credited to his balance. The artist also is in a better position to accumulate tangible wealth. He may purchase or build his own dacha (country house), designed and decorated to his own taste. This has obvious advantages in case one encounters reverses. Thus the humorist Zoschenko, when he fell from grace in 1946, retired to his dacha near Leningrad and quietly raised poultry. The artist likewise may acquire a city flat of his own in one of the writers’ or artists’ cooperatives. He also can have a private car of his own. Bigwigs Ride in American Cars Simonov has a Cadillac, Ehrenburg a Buick, as befits their respective stations. Nor is this preference regarded as inconsistent with the party line. After all, Stalin still rides in a Packard in preference to a ZIS. It is a tremendous drop from the exalted status of the leading artists to the level of less successful but aspiring colleagues. Economically, the latter merge with the general mass of the Soviet intelligentsia—the professors, doctors, lawyers, technicians, heads of department, lesser functionaries and skilled workers who comprise the middle class of Soviet urban society. These are the people who earn from 1,000 to 3,000 rubles ($194 to $582) a month, plus occasional bonuses. They are well housed by Soviet standards, with one or two rooms for themselves and family, have three square meals a day, are adequately clothed, and still can afford theater tickets three or four times a month. They work a regular eight-hour day and make the most of their leisure time.

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In summer, if they are fortunate, they may obtain a dacha at low rental from the organization employing them. Otherwise, they can rent a room in a peasant izba (cottage) in a village near Moscow. Lacking automobile transportation, the majority park their families in the country for the summer and go out by train for weekends, taking with them food supplies and kerosene. White Collars Fit a Bit Tightly Immediately below in the social scale come the white-collar office employees and industrial workers. After the various deductions for state loan subscriptions, trade-union dues, insurance, and such, the cash income in this category is somewhere between 1,000 and 500 rubles ($194 and $97) a month. A majority of wives, as well as husbands, work, less because they want to take advantage of equal opportunities for women than because one pay envelope is not enough to make ends meet. Persons at this level get enough to eat, though the diet is a bit unbalanced and monotonous, with too much bread and potatoes and not much meat and fruit. Most of the earnings, in fact, go for food, especially when there are children, on a rather elementary hand-to-mouth basis. Clothing is a constant, acute problem, and seldom is there money left over for incidentals or even for things which in Western countries are looked on as essentials. Not many families in this category—which comprises the overwhelming majority of the Soviet urban population—can, at present writing, boast even a small set of matching dishes or cutlery. If a relative or friend drops in for dinner, more often than not an extra plate, cup, knife, fork and spoon must be borrowed from the neighbors. Such lack of household equipment is largely an aftermath of the war, when most persons were shunted about and things got lost or broken in the process. The condition of the white-collar and factory worker has improved markedly in the two years since the currency reform. Some Relief in Prospect Though housing conditions still are bad for many workers, with entire families crowded into single rooms, relief is in prospect. Moreover, the Soviet employee or worker pays far less out of his earnings for rent, heat, light, and other communal services than does the wage earner in western countries.

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Tuesday, October 25, 1949 This is Russia Uncensored Peasant Is Squeezed ’Twixt Quota and Cow Turning from his analysis of the life of Soviet intellectuals and bosses, Edmund Stevens today describes the daily routine of a Russian peasant woman who sells her one cow’s milk in Moscow early in the morning and then does a full day’s work on the collective farm. “Auntie” Dasha’s problems are discussed in detail—a clear sketch of peasant life behind the Iron Curtain emerges from the experienced pen of a veteran Moscow correspondent, now in Germany. This is the fourth of some 40 articles to appear exclusively in “The Christian Science Monitor” on alternate days. By Edmund Stevens Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Berlin—Ever since her husband went off to war, never to return, “Auntie” Dasha’s whole economy revolved around her cow. Each morning at 4 she milked the patient animal, trudged two miles to the railway station with her two cans of milk, and caught the 5:30. Arriving in Moscow at 6:15 she delivered by streetcar to her five steady customers, caught the 7:15 back from town, hurried home with her empty cans, helped herself to some boiled-potato mash from a big black pot on the cold stove, and after some hasty instructions to son Grisha, age eight, was out of the house in time to report at 9 o’clock for the day’s field work on the collective farm. At 1 o’clock Auntie Dasha came home, lit the samovar, built just enough fire in the stove to warm the pot. After that she and Grisha had their main meal of the day, consisting of warmed up boiled-potato mash and generous chunks of black rye bread, washed down with a hot drink brewed from dried raspberry leaves. By 3 o’clock she was back in the field, where she worked until 6, getting home just as the cows, back from grazing, ambled through the village, mooing lustily, while the little cowherd brought up the rear, cracking his long rope whip.

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Auntie Dasha Has a Cow . . . Each cow, including Auntie Dasha’s, turned in at its own yard without prompting. While the cow waited for her in the shed, Auntie Dasha went off to inspect her large potato patch, just to check up on Grisha’s hoeing. When Sunday came she would tend it herself. After the evening milking, followed by a supper of cold potato mash and black bread, Auntie Dasha would sit down to do her sums. She could neither read nor write, but necessity had taught her figures. Laboriously she multiplied the day’s yield of milk in liters by the day’s market price in rubles. Next she subtracted her train fare, then her streetcar fare, then the cost of a kilo of black break and any incidental purchases, such as matches, a candle, or some salt. She checked the remainder against the cash knotted in her kerchief before she deposited it in her mattress. With the market price of milk fluctuating seasonally between 3 and 7 rubles (60 cents to $1.40) a quart and her cow giving about 800 quarts a year, Auntie Dasha grossed around 3,500 rubles ($760) a year. She spent about 500 rubles ($100) on black bread (at one ruble 75 kopeks a kilo), and other incidentals. Transportation, with the new fare increases, added up to more than 600 rubles ($120). This left a balance of something under 2,700 rubles ($540). The State Has Quota Regulations . . . At this point, the figuring became more involved. As the owner of a private cow and with half a hectare of land for her private use, Auntie Dasha had obligations to the state. She had a state delivery quota of 30 kilos of butter a year, but in lieu of butter she was permitted to pay a cash equivalent of 1,500 rubles ($300). Though she kept no chickens, she had an annual delivery quota of 500 eggs annually. In place of these, she paid a cash equivalent of 500 rubles. After meeting all these obligations last year, she still had more than 600 rubles left with which to buy fodder for the winter. Auntie Dasha met her remaining obligations to the state in kind. She filled her meat quota by slaughtering the calf which her cow bore regularly each January. Her private potato patch yielded her 600 kilograms of potatoes. After delivering her quota of 300 kilos to the state, this left her with 300 kilos, which was just enough to take care of herself and Grisha through the coming year.

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In the fall, she received a load of hay and a large bag of turnips from the collective farm as payment for her workdays. The collective farm chairman, whose house had a new tin roof, had explained at members’ meeting just why that year the collective farm was in no position to pay off in grain or cash. But his arithmetic was way over Aunti Dasha’s head, and anyway she was thankful for the hay. Now What to Do?—Sell Bossy? All in all, it had been a fairly good year. She had rented the front part of her izba (cottage) to my family for the summer for 800 rubles. Even after paying the 50 percent tax on “unearned” revenue, this would give her money for shoes for the winter. That was in 1948. When we saw Auntie Dasha again this spring, she had just been notified that under the newly decreed scale, all her delivery quotas had been raised. Sadly, she had about decided to sell the cow and buy chickens with the proceeds. She still would have to fill her egg, meat, and potato quotas, but with no cow her butter quota would be cut. With no calf to slaughter, she would discharge her meat quota with cash. But with fresh eggs bringing as high as 15 or even 16 rubles (about $3) for ten on the open market, she thought she still might do better if she shifted from a dairy to a poultry economy. Trotsky once loftily described the peasant as the pack animal of civilization. He wanted to express his appreciation of the peasant’s economic role, plus his contempt for the docility with which the peasant allowed himself to be exploited under the old regime. That’s the Plight of Many Peasants Since then the whole structure of society has been transformed. But the new regime has evolved techniques for squeezing the peasant far more thoroughly than those of the old-time landlords. Save in certain pampered areas, like the Georgian citrus groves or the rich wheat lands of the Kuban Cossack country, the peasant has yet to reap most of the benefits enjoyed by the urban intellectual and working classes. The money the peasantry collected from high food prices in wartime was canceled by the currency reform. Their obligations to the state in kind and money have been upped from year to year. Consumer goods, abundant in the cities, have yet to reach most rural areas, and prices to the peasant are higher.

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It is hard to generalize about living standards of the peasantry in such an enormous country. Conditions vary with the texture of the soil and the resourcefulness of the people. Economic changes, too, including changes for the better, can take place in the Soviet Union with dramatic suddenness. One day the government may unexpectedly relax the pressure on the peasantry. Till then there will be millions of Auntie Dashas pondering whether to trade their cows for chickens or vice versa.

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Bassow, Whitman. The Moscow Correspondents: Reporting on Russia from the Revolution to Glasnost. New York: William Morrow, 1988. Canham, Erwin D. Commitment to Freedom: The Story of the Christian Science Monitor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. ———. Man’s Great Future. New York: Longmans, Green, 1959. Chew, Allen F. The White Death: The Epic of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1971. Desmond, Robert W. Crisis and Conflict: World News Reporting between Two World Wars, 1920–1940. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, l982. ———. The Press and World Affairs. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1937. ———. Tides of War: World News Reporting 1931–1945. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1984. Emery, Michael. On the Front Lines: Following America’s Foreign Correspondents across the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: American University Press, 1995. Emery, Michael, and Edwin Emery. The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media. 7th ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1992. The First Eighty Years: The Christian Science Monitor, 1908–1988. Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1988. 281

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Fischer, Heinz-Dietrich, ed. International Reporting, 1928–1985: From the Activities of the League of Nations to Present-Day Global Problems. Munich: K. G. Saur, 1987. Foster, William Z. History of the Communist Party of the United States. New York: International Publishers, 1952. Gans, Herbert J. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979. Gleason, Abbott, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites. Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Hill, Russell. Struggle for Germany. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947. Hynes, Samuel. “Introduction.” In Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938–1945. New York: Library of America, 1995. Kaplan, Richard L. Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Klehr, Harvey, and John Earl Haynes. The American Communist Movement: Storming Heaven Itself. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. Knox, MacGregor. Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Koht, Halvdan. Norway: Neutral and Invaded. New York: Macmillan Company, 1941. Lewis, Flora. Europe: Road To Unity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. Mathews, Joseph J. Reporting The Wars. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957. Moore, Barrington, Jr. Soviet Politics—The Dilemma of Power: The Role of Ideas in Social Change. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950. Nation, R. Craig. Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917–1991. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Orlov, Alexander. The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes. New York: Random House, 1953. Ransome, Arthur. Crisis in Russia. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1921. Rees, Tim, and Andrew Thorpe. International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–1943. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1998.

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Stalin, Joseph. Stalin’s Speeches on the American Communist Party. Delivered in the American Commission of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, May 6 1929, and in the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International on the American Question, May 14, 1929. New York: Central Committee, Communisty Party, U.S.A., [1931]. Stevens, Edmund. This Is Russia Uncensored. New York: Didier, 1950. Stowe, Leland. No Other Road to Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941 Sykes, Christopher. Orde Wingate: A Biography. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1959. Von Geldern, James, and Richard Stites. Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917–1953. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Watts, Larry L. Romanian Cassandra: Ion Antonescu and the Struggle for Reform, 1916–1941. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1993.

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“Abyssinia: Bastion of Victory and Justice,” 161 “AEF-British Desert Rendezvous Nears,” 220 “Africa’s Sand: Foe of Both Sides,” 176 “Alert Greece Depending on British Navy,” 110 Alexander, General Sir Harold, 206, 207 Allen, Larry, 265 “Allied Air Might Gains in Mid-East; Japan Racing Monsoons to Mandalay,” 175 “Allied Air Power Slows Rommel Drive,” 213 “Allied Leaders Failed to Take Advantage of Initial Gains, What Nazi Success Means,” 183 “Allied Warship off Arctic Russia; Sweden’s Action Cuts Tie to Finland,” 83–84 “Allies and Nazis Battling in Bizert,” 220 American Communist Party, 1, 36 American Expeditionary Force, 220 “America to Hear a Lot Soon about Air Force Almost Ready to Fight in Western Desert,” 188 “Americans in Egypt Cooperate with Allies, ‘Let’s Get Job Done’ Is Goal,” 211

American-Soviet Chamber of Commerce, 8, 55 “Analytical Journalist,” 18–20 Anders, General Wladyslaw, 200 Arbeider, 263 “Armies Poised for Egyptian Showdown,” 187 Associated Press, 141, 265 Auchinleck, Field Marshal Sir Claude, 24, 169, 185–86 Avling, Barbro, 75 “Axis Burns Vast Stores before Quitting Bengasi,” 223 “Axis Due to Stand on Road to Tripoli,” 222 “Baltic Epic Written by Exodus of Germans,” 73 Baltics, x, 9, 11, 12, 13, 22, 23, 70, 71–74 “Baltic States Electrified by Russia’s Strategic Plays,” 73 Baranovsky, Piotr, 35 Barnes, Joe, 59–60 Beatty, Edward W., 75 Beaufort, John, 13 Bohlen, Charles, 59 Bolsheviks, 1, 9, 29, 56 “Bombing Destroys Albanian City,” 118–19

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British Broadcast Corporation, 227 “British Bomb German Bases; Gain in Troop Race to Norway,” 93–94 British Eighth Army, 151, 172–90, 209, 211–13, 218–26, 231, 264 “British Navy Blasts Way into Skagerrak,” 90–91 “British Note from Libya: Thanks for the U.S. Tanks,” 180 “British Riddle Italian Empire,” 139, 149–50 “British Skim Desert Sands as Rommel Flees in Mist,” 224 “British Win Egyptian ‘Battle of the Marne,’” 186 Browder, Earl, 1, 6, 36 “Bulgaria Aloof on Axis-Greek Clash; Salonika, Old Roman Goal, Again Periled,” 112–14 Browne, Mallory, 13, 70, 72 Bullitt, William C., 61 “Can Hitler and Reich Be Separated?” 74 Carie, Rachel, x “Carol Cancels Festivities as Rumania Speeds Defense,” 102–3 Cathedral of Christ the Savior, 34 Chamberlain, William Henry, 8, 10, 71, 95, 201 Chicago Daily News, 78, 86, 87, 113, 123 Christian Science Monitor, xi, x, xi, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 26, 70, 72, 79, 86, 93, 96, 101, 108, 109, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 138, 144, 146, 147, 156, 161, 163, 166, 170, 171, 173, 175, 176, 178, 184, 193, 207, 211, 217, 223, 225, 226, 229, 231, 255, 256, 257, 259, 264, 267, 271, 274, 277; founding and early history, 13; instructions to World War II correspondents, 15. See also specific articles Cholerton, Alfred, 34 Churchill, Winston, 23, 63, 191, 193–210, 211, 231, 232, 233 Church of Basil the Blessed, 35 Cincinnati Rotary Club, ix Clark-Kerr, Ambassador Sir Archibald, 206

Index Columbia Spectator, 4, 10 Columbia University, 1, 4, 5 “‘Columnists’ Lack Strength in Greece,” 110 Communist International (Comintern), 1, 8, 29–30, 35–36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 47, 51, 57, 69, 96 Communist Party Central Committee, 45 Corriere Della Sera, 92 Corrieri Di Tripoli, 226 Cowles, Virginia, 75 “Credit Red Tape Handicaps Finns; Loan Hope Fades,” 83 “Crete: A British Army Outpost,” 121 Crusader, 227 Cunard–White Star Line, 59, 62, 63, 68, 69 Cunningham, Lt. Gen. Alan, 160 Daily Express, 219 Danilov Monastery, 35 Davies, Joseph, 59, 61, 63, 96 Debra Marcos, battle for, 157–61 De Maitre, Edmund, 73 “Desert Army’s Plea: ‘Give Us Guns,’” 184 Duranty, Walter, 8, 9–10 Eddy, Mary Baker, 13 “Egypt Clings to Nonbelligerent Farce,” 163 Ehrenburg, Ilya, 38, 39, 205, 275 Eighth Army News, 227 El Alamein, Battle for, 26, 186–88, 209, 211–13, 218–26, 266 “Epic in Ethiopia: Men against the Jungle, An,” 146, 147–48 Ethiopian Fight for Freedom, 138–60 Evening News of London, 25 “Factory Workers’ Cars Impress Wife of Soviet Ambassador on First American Trip,” 167–68 Feinberg, Bram, 36–37 Feinberg, Joe, 36–37 Finland, fall of, 84–85 “Finns Found Understating Resistance to Russians,” 83

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“Finns Get Reds’ New Guns and Tanks,” 82 “Finns Prefer No Pact to Poor Pact,” 77 “Finns Victorious,” 78 Five-Year Plan, 31, 33 Forest, Wilbur, 78 “Four War Criminals Pay Price of Crime in Soviet,” 252 “From inside Russia, a Human Document,” 80 Gellhorn, Martha, 165, 168, 256 “‘General Grant’ Playing Important Part in British Victory over Rommel Columns,” 180 Gerard, Lt. Sumner, 194, 198 “German Aim for Speedy and Total Control of Norway Ran into a Surprise Snag,” 92–93 German Afrika Korps, 174–90, 213, 218–26 German invasion of Latvia, 71–72 German invasion of Lithuania, 71–72 German invasion of Poland, 71 German invasion of Romania, 102–8 “German Mobile Cannon Gives Rommel Superior Fire Power over U.S.-built Tanks,” 182 German-Russian Nonaggression Treaty. See Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact “Germans Crush Romanian Coup of Iron Guard,” 124, 125, 127 “Germans Tighten Grip upon Oslo,” 91 Gideon Force, 145, 147, 153–60 Gogol, Nikolai, 35 Greece, invaded by Italy, 108–22 “Greek Capture of Bases Major Rome Disaster; Italy Shifts Commands,” 117 “Greeks Invade Albania, British Naval Coup Believed Severe Blow to Fascist Power,” 115 “Greeks Pour into Albania in Rising Tide,” 117 “Greeks Push on as Nazis Mass Balkan Forces,” 120 “Greeks Repel Foe on Two Fronts; Raid by British,” 115

287

“Greeks Watch and Arm to Defend,” 108–9 Gyomroi, Andre, 5 Hackett, General Sir John, 173 “Haile Selassie Tells Plans for Ethiopia,” 156–57 Hailu, Prince Ras, 158–60 Hammer, Armand, 33 Hammer, Harry, 33 Hammer, Victor, 33 Harriman, W. Averell, 23, 193–210, 233 Harsch, Joseph C., 13 Hemingway, Ernest, 165 Hill, Russell, 103, 111, 113 Hitler, Adolf, 20, 59, 71, 72, 98, 101, 104, 106, 107, 109, 121, 123, 163–64, 172, 190, 195, 201, 205, 210, 212, 232, 248, 250, 254 “Hitler Declares War on Norway; What of Sweden?” 95 “How a Russian Major Obeyed Orders,” 13, 14 “How Finland Fell; A Final Tragic Day,” 84–85 “Huge Price Paid by Reich in Baltic for Soviet Aid,” 19 Huysmans, Martha, 75 “I Flew to Moscow with Churchill,” 209–10 “Il Duce Orders Greeks Crushed; Italians Retreat,” 115–16 “Infantry Plays Vital Role in Libya,” 180–81 Iron Guard, 104, 122–27 Irvin, Warren, 78, 84, 87 “Italian Fliers Bomb Undefended Greek City,” 117 Italian invasion of Ethiopia, 138–40 Italo-Greek War, x, 108–22 “Italy Admits Difficulties in War on Greece,” 114–15 Kaganovich, Lazar, 33, 34–35, 46 Kazan Cathedral, 34 Keating, Geoffrey, 224–25 Keren, Capture of, 144–45, 148–52 Kharkov, x, 24, 233, 246–54

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“Kharkov Rebuilds on Ruin Left by Nazis,” 252–54 Khrushchev, Nikita, x, 33, 35, 46 Kirov, Sergei, 39, 45–46 Koltsov, Mikhail, 38 Latvia, fall of, 70, 71–74 League of Nations, 138, 141–42, 194 LeBlanc, Col. Louis, 145, 154, 160 Lenin, Vladimir, 29, 30, 32, 36, 37, 43, 46, 50, 56, 58, 235 Leningrad University, 40 “Libyan Town Seized by Handful of Soldiers and Correspondents,” 220–22 Life, 25 Lithuania, fall of, 71–74 London Daily Herald, 55 London Daily Telegraph, 34 “Loss of Veteran Soldiers Real Blow of Tobruk’s Fall,” 183 Lumsden, Maj. Gen. Herbert, 207–8 Maillard Stead, Ronald, 13 “Major Defeat for Axis Indicated from Egypt,” 213 Malenkov, Georgy, 35, 46 Manchester Guardian, 8, 10, 11, 55, 57 Mannerheim, Carl, 24, 77, 257, 258 “Mannerheim, the Military Leader,” 77 Mannerheim Line, 83, 84 Marx, Karl, 6, 7 Maxwell, Maj. Gen. Russell L., 193, 197, 207 “Middle East: Aerial ‘Second Front’” 182 “Middle Eastern Front Still Fluid despite Reverses to British, More U.S. Aid,” 182–83 “Middle East Vital Base for Defense or Attack,” 173 Miller, Webb, 75 Mills, James A., 141 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 35, 46, 62, 71, 196, 202, 206, 273 Montanelli, Indro, ix, 12, 81, 85, 86, 87–88, 92, 103 Montgomery, Bernard L., 24, 210, 211–13, 218–26, 229, 266

Index “Morale Emerges as Weak Spot in Italian Armor in War,” 120 Moscow University, 40 “Mr. Willkie Captures Baghdad amid Setting of Arabian Nights,” 215–16 Munday, William, 226 Mussolini, Benito, 3, 109, 116, 138, 141, 221–22, 246 National Student League, 4 “Nazi Blitzkrieg Gains in Norway,” 94 “Nazi Captain in War Trial Boasts of Slaying and Cruelty,” 250 “Nazi Plane Raids on Convoy, Put British Navy ‘on Its Toes,’” 122 “Nazi Ships Pouring Troops into Norway,” 91 Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, 13, 14, 19–20, 71, 97, 255 “Nazis Again Admit Failure against Soviets,” 167 “Nazis Face Alternative of Breaking through Quickly or Retreat to Libyan Bases,” 186 “Nazis Push Drive from Oslo North to Rail Junction,” 94 “Nazis Seize Danish and Norse Capitals,” 89–90 NBC, 78, 84, 87 New Economic Policy (NEP), 30, 31, 32, 33 News Chronicle, 226 Newsday Magazine, 25 New York Herald Tribune, 59, 78, 103, 113 New York Times, 8, 87, 103 North Africa campaign, 172–90 “Norway Protests Mines of Allies and Navy Patrol,” 87–88 Operation Barbarossa, 163 Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza, 216–18 “Participant” journalist, 17–18 Pasternak, Boris, x Pearl Harbor bombing, 12, 15 Petit Parisienne, 73 Politburo, 31, 33, 46 Post, Marjorie Merriweather, 61

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Pravda, 38 Publishing Cooperative for Foreign Workers, 36, 47, 51, 52, 96 Pulitzer Prize, ix, 1, 8, 20, 22, 25, 43, 76, 87, 256 Pyle, Ernie, 12, 13, 14, 16, 165, 168, 256 Radek, Karl, 59 “RAF Drives Enemy Fliers from Air on Eritrean Front,” 150 Red Army, 14, 45, 101, 204, 239, 245 “Reds Press Finns in No-Limit War; US Loan Waited,” 83 “Reds Trapped Still Learning to Ski,” 81 Reed, John, 52 “Reporter ‘Tramps’ to South Africa,” 170–72 “Retribution Period Opens with Nazi Trial in Soviet,” 248 Ritchie, Gen. Neil, 181, 185–86 Robertson, Frank, 13 Romania, falls to Germany, 102–8 Rommel, Erwin, 169, 174–90, 211–13, 218–26, 231, 233, 266–67 Roosevelt, Franklin, 12, 193, 211, 213–15, 232 Royal Air Force, 116, 117–18, 119–20, 150, 153, 163, 175, 195, 220–21, 256 “Rugged Terrain Helps Italy to Hold British in Eritrea,” 144–45 “Rumania Bids for Axis Favor; Hitler Silent,” 106 “Rumania in Axis; R.A.F. Turns Tide by Aid to Greeks,” 116 “Rumanian Pro-Nazi Rule Viewed as Trial Balloon,” 105–6 “Rumanians Join Refugees; Reds Order Quick Move,” 104–5 “Rumania’s Pro-Nazi Shift Follows Berlin’s Pressure,” 104 “Russia: No Substitute for a Land Front,” 207–8 “Russia Demands Finnish Base,” 77 “Russian Prisoners Report Hardships,” 81 “Russians Look on Nazis as Foes despite Pact,” 100–101

289

“Russia on Guard against Nazi Hold,” 101 Russo-Finnish War, x, 11, 14, 22, 74–85, 86, 114, 257–58, 260 “Saga of the Skies: R.A.F. Aid to Greece, A,” 117 Sandford, Daniel, 155 Saturday Evening Post, 25 “Sea Lanes: U.S. Helps by Repair of Ships,” 164 Second Moscow Conference, 193 Selassie, Haile, 26, 63, 137–60 “Selassie’s Fighters: Brave but Primitive,” 151–52 Shelepin, Alexander, 46 Simonov, Constantine, 275 South African Air Force, 150 Soviet invasion of Poland, 71 Soviet press oppression, 9, 56 “Soviets Learn Price of Peace with Nazis,” 14 “Soviets, Finns Deadlocked,” 77 Spalding, Brig. Gen. Sidney, 193, 197, 207 Spanish Civil War, 37, 38, 40, 69, 201 SS Spartak, 239–45 Stalin, Josef, 14, 20, 21–22, 30, 31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 45, 46, 57, 75, 78, 83, 97, 164, 191, 193–210, 214, 232, 235, 255, 272, 275 “Stalin: Will He Fight, Abdicate, Yield?” 164 “Stalin Policy Seen Dictated by Fear,” 164 Stalin’s great purge, x, 6, 8, 14, 23, 45–47, 61, 69, 96 Standley, Adm. William Harrison, 198 “Steady Influx of Nazi Troops Holds Allies Back in Norway,” 95 Stevens, Edmund: account of German invasion of Oslo, 89–91, 92–95, 259–64; account of Iron Guard annihilation, 122–27; account of ItaloGreek War, 108–22; account of Romania’s fall, 102–8; account of Russo-Finnish War, 74–85, 257–58; analysis of Pearl Harbor, 15–16, 167–68; analysis of Soviet life and politics of 1940, 99–102; analytical

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writing style, 22; arrives in Moscow, 1, 5–6; birth, 2; birth of Son (Edmund Jr.), 49–50; bombing of Salonika, 112–14; childhood, 2–3; as a combatant in Ethiopia, 148–49; conflicted personal roles, 22, 24, 163; correspondence to Florence Stevens, 48, 49, 51, 53–54; early marriage, 47–49; early relationship with Christian Science Monitor, 13–14, 18; enters Columbia, 4; excerpts of Pulitzer Prize–winning dispatches, 267–80; fall of the Baltic States, 16, 72–74; in Ethiopia, 137–61; interviews Haile Selassie, 156–57; as a model for liberal arts education, 96; Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, 19–20; portrayal of Soviets, 14, 16, 79–81; threats against his family, 20–21 Stevens, Edmund Jr. (Vova), ix, x, 7, 8, 49–50, 62, 67, 68, 163, 178, 186, 256, 267–70 Stevens, Florence Ballance, 2, 3, 48, 49, 51 Stevens, Nina (Andreyevna Bondarenko), ix, x, 7, 8, 22, 25, 40–41, 45–63, 163, 165, 178, 186, 191, 199, 256, 267–70; memoir excerpts, 41–42, 47, 55, 67–68, 166–67, 168–70 Stevens, Shari, ix, 256 Stevens, Stasia, x, 186, 191, 267–70 Stone, Melville, 56 Stowe, Leland, 12, 14, 75, 76, 78, 85, 86, 87–88, 91, 103, 111–12, 113, 116–19; account of German invasion of Oslo, 89 Sudanese Camel Corps, 145–46 Sulzberger, Cy, 12, 103 Sunday Times of London, 25 “Sweden Clings to Neutrality but Watches for Parachutes,” 96 “Sweden Is Apprehensive at Hunt for New Front,” 85 Thayer, Charles, 50, 55, 61 Third International, 34 Third treason trial, 57–59

Index Thompson, C. V. R., 219 Time, 25 Times of London, 25 Tolishus, Otto, 87 Tolstoi, Alexei, 61, 250 “Tripoli Gets Real News in Place of Fascism,” 226–29 Tripoli Times, 226 Trotsky, Leon, 2, 40, 56 Trotskyites, 38, 45, 58 “United Nations Have Edge over Nazis in Tanks, Artillery and Troops in New Drive,” 219 “U.S. Tank Crews Arrive in Egypt,” 187 Voice of America, 73 “Volunteer Aid Gives Finland New Strength,” 82 Von Ribbentrop, Joachim, 14, 71 Walker, Gordon, 13 “War in Desert Enters New Phase,” 223–24 Wavell, Gen. Sir Archibald, 144, 154, 155, 193, 196 “Weather Foils Russians,” 78 Weekly Moscow News, 32 Weller, George, 12, 14, 123, 125–26 “What of Small States in ‘New Order’?” 109–10 “What Role Did Reich Play in Ruman Coup?” 127 “Why Rommel’s Desert ‘Blitz’ Failed,” 180 Williams, Spencer, 55 “Willkie Promises Mideast All-Out U.S. War Effort,” 214 “Willkie Takes Shah of Iran on First Air Ride,” 217 Willkie, Wendell, 213–18 Wingate, Lt. Col. Orde, x, 23, 139–61 “World Is Invited by U.S. to Join in Postwar Plans,” 84