1943. U.S. Ambassador Harriman Takes Charge in Moscow

U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman Arrives in the Soviet Union

"President Truman talks with Ambassador W. Averell Harriman at the Gatow airport in Berlin, Germany, before boarding his plane to fly to England at the conclusion of the Potsdam Conference," August 2, 1945 (source)

From Newsweek, November 15, 1943, pp. 24-25:

Harriman's Broom

Bill Downs, Moscow correspondent for Newsweek and CBS, wirelessed this account of developments in the Soviet capital following the conference.

The American Embassy is getting that new-broom treatment extending from the lowliest clerk in the code room through the new military mission up to the Ambassador's office. The embassy staff had grown into a happy-go-lucky crowd, which more or less adopted a "nichevo" philosophy. The long time that Spaso House had been without an official hostess had turned the Ambassador's official residence into what was almost a super-luxurious fraternity house. The Mokhovaya House across the street from the Kremlin with embassy offices and apartments for military, naval, and Lend-Lease staffs was almost the same. No one had enough to do. Consequently the embassy military and naval staffs spent a lot of time chasing ballet and theater tickets.

However, in the two weeks of the Moscow conference them days has gone forever. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman is already piling into the embassy organization. Desks, chairs, and whole offices have been moved. Kathleen Harriman, the American Ambassador's daughter, who will act as his official hostess, already has taken a college atmosphere out of Spaso. Maj. Gen. John Deane, new head of the military mission, has already got the parade ground back into his wing in Mokhovaya. This diplomatic spring cleaning in the American diplomatic military organization simply means that representatives are going to have more work to do, and they are clearing the decks for action.

The new Ambassador held his first press conference in his office on Thursday. After expressing his gratification at the outcome of the talks, he said: "The conference opened up a number of subjects whereon it has been agreed that discussion should be continued between ourselves, the British, and the Soviet Union. This means I will be working closely on these matters with Molotoff and Sir Archibald Clark Kerr."

Harriman revealed one significant fact which indicated how the conferees were thinking when he said: "One matter I think deserves the greatest possible consideration at this time is the assistance the United States can give to the Soviet Union in the rehabilitation of devastated areas and the repairing of other dislocations caused by war. Here again war must have first priority in our use of American productive capacity and available shipping, but there is one thing we can do now without interfering with war production. We can work on the development of programs, plans, and detailed designs which will materially shorten the time when equipment needed from the United States can be made available. The American people have the greatest sympathy for the Russian people, who have suffered so much, and it is in their hearts to attempt to be of the greatest assistance. We will have plants to produce machinery and equipment needed by the Soviet Union and in so doing we will help our own people to convert from war to peace production."

Harriman also announced that Charles E. Bohlen who accompanied Hull and was formerly assistant chief of the European division of the State Department would remain as first secretary. Bohlen served former Ambassador Steinhardt and is extremely well liked by the Russians. He has perfect command of the language and served as Hull's interpreter during the conference.

For foreign correspondents the most important addition to the embassy staff which Harriman brought along is Sam Spewack, one of the nation's top playwrights now serving with the Office of War Information. Spewack, whom correspondents are already calling "Mister Secretary," has succeeded in starting a news-digest service for the embassy which was also made available to newsmen. He will investigate all fields of cultural exchange—news, photos, newsreels, feature films, the exchange of music, art, drama. He plans to set up an organization to match the excellent British cultural-relations section which publishes the only Russian-language weekly in the Soviet not owned or controlled by the government.

1943. Stalin Previews the Hollywood Film "Mission to Moscow"

A Film Screening for the Soviet Premier

Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (Manart Kippen) speaks with ambassador Joseph E. Davies (Walter Huston) in a scene from the film "Mission to Moscow" (1943)

From Newsweek, June 14, 1943, p. 88:

Giggles in Moscow

Since its release early last month, Warner Brothers and Joseph E. Davies's "Mission to Moscow" has thrived on controversy (Newsweek, May 10). Vociferously attacked on the one side as a whitewash of the Soviet regime, and just as staunchly defended on the other as a worthy tribute to a gallant ally, the film has currently split Hollywood leaders into two sharply divided camps on the advisability of making films with political implications. The following dispatch from Bill Downs, Newsweek correspondent in Moscow, survived a three-day delay at the censor's desk to add an international huff and a puff to the storm in a samovar.

The Russian premier of "Mission" was staged at the Kremlin, following a banquet for an international audience of diplomatic elect. Flanked on one side by a translator, and on the other by a beaming Joe Davies (then on his return engagement as missionary to Moscow), Stalin sat poker-faced throughout the two-hour tribute to his people and regime. The next night the print was loaned to the United States Embassy and run off for the staff and a group of newspaper correspondents.

In each case the audience reaction is best summed up in one word—squirm. And alternating with the squirming was the self-conscious tittering of those who had to sit in the Presence while an onscreen Joe Davies held forth on the subject of Joe Davies.

On occasion there were cinematic touches that provoked outright laughter. A bevy of Russian girls tricked out in ski-and-skating costumes looked just like what they were—Hollywood extras. Frieda Inescort, playing Madame Molotoff, attempted a spot of Russian dialogue that gave the Moscow natives a bad moment. And when the camera faded in on a Muscovite restaurant featuring the soulful strumming of a gypsy orchestra, several young army officers at the preview enthusiastically volunteered to withdraw on the off-chance of finding the place.

Stalin's poker face may have derived from the fact that the film's portrayal of the Soviet Premier was judged the least adequate in a roster of generally excellent characterizations. Playing Stalin for sweetness and light, Manart Kippen missed the strength and power and twinkling humor with which Stalin invariably impresses foreign visitors.

There was less of the dead-pan among members of the British diplomatic legation, with some officials pointedly hinting that the film's unfriendly, inept, and undiplomatic conception of His Majesty's representatives to Russia was ill-advised.

No one doubts that "Mission to Moscow" will be a sensational success in Russia, if only because the Soviets are anxious to see how they look to a foreign, though friendly, observer. At the same time, it was unanimously agreed that the Warner film was excellent propaganda for fostering better relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, although a number of changes are indicated if the film is to obviate a tendency of the realistic Russians to laugh out loud at the wrong places.

1951. "A Reporter Quotes His Sources" by William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer on "This I Believe"

William L. Shirer was one of the great pioneers of broadcast journalism. His work in print and on radio before and during World War II earned him wide renown. In 1940, he delivered an eyewitness report on Adolf Hitler's arrival at the Second Armistice at Compiègne Forest in France.

Shirer delivered this essay as part of Murrow's "This I Believe" radio program on November 26, 1951:

A Reporter Quotes His Sources

EDWARD R. MURROW: This I Believe. The more a reporter sees, the more he learns about life and about himself. William L. Shirer has seen a great lot of what has happened to the world and to the people in it in our time. His Berlin Diary was one of the first documents to impress on us the enormity of the plague inflicted on civilization by a man named Hitler.

Bill Shirer is a distinguished foreign correspondent, author, and lecturer, but he has another side: a simple homespun side springing from a boyhood in Illinois and college days in Iowa. This is the background against which he states his convictions.

WILLIAM L. SHIRER: It's rather difficult in these noisy, confusing, nerve-wracking days to achieve the peace of mind in which to pause for a moment to reflect on what you do believe in. Though it is a thing we live by, and without it, without beliefs, human existence today would hardly be bearable. In my own case, there were two experiences in particular which helped to shape my beliefs: years of life and work under a totalitarian regime, and a glimpse of war. There's so little time and opportunity to give it much thought—though it is the thing we live by; and without it, without beliefs, human existence today would hardly be bearable.

My own view of life, like everyone else's, is conditioned by personal experience. In my own case, there were two experiences, in particular, which helped to shape my beliefs: years of life and work under a totalitarian regime, and a glimpse of war.

Living in a totalitarian land taught me to value highly—and rather fiercely—the very things the dictators denied: tolerance, respect for others, and above all, the freedom of the human spirit. A glimpse of war filled me with wonder not only at man's courage and capacity for self-sacrifice, but at his stubborn, marvelous will to persevere, to endure, to prevail amidst the most incredible savagery and suffering.

When you saw people—civilians—who were bombed out, or worse, who had been hounded in the concentration camps or worked to a frazzle in the slave-labor gangs—when you saw them come out of those ordeals of horror and torture still intact as human beings with a will to go on, with a faith still in themselves, in their fellow man, and in God, you realized that man was indestructible. You appreciated, too, that despite the corruption and cruelty of life, man somehow managed to retain great virtues: love, honor, courage, self-sacrifice, compassion.

It filled you with a certain pride just to be a member of the human race. It renewed your belief in your fellow men.

Of course, there are many days in this age of anxiety when a human being feels awfully low and rather discouraged. I myself find consolation at such moments by two means: trying to develop a sense of history, and renewing the quest for an inner life.

I go back, for example, to reading Plutarch. He reminds you that even in the golden days of Greece and Rome, from which so much that is splendid in our own civilization derives, there was a great deal of what we find so loathsome in our life today: war, strife, corruption, treason, double-crossing, intolerance, tyranny, rabble-rousing. Reading history thus gives you perspective. It enables you to see your troubles relatively. You don't take them so seriously then.

Finally, I find that most true happiness comes from one's inner life; from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is difficult to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation; self-discipline. One must be honest with oneself, and that's not easy. You have to have patience and understanding. And when you can, seek God.

But the reward of having an inner life, which no outside storm or evil turn of fortune can touch is, it seems to me, a very great one.

MURROW: That was William L. Shirer, father of two children, Connecticut farmer, and a reporter recently turned novelist, but most of all a citizen of integrity who believes that even in these anxious times, men will not only survive but progress if they don't break faith with themselves.

1940. Edward R. Murrow's Beginnings

Murrow the Newsman

Edward R. Murrow (seated in center) at a French cafe with colleagues in the late 1930s (source)

From the Radio and Television Mirror, October, 1940, pp. 19, 68-69:

MURROW

By Norton Russell

After a blacked-out night, the thing light of dawn is creeping up over the land of England—over the hedgerows and sturdy oaks and grassy meadows of the countryside, over the smoke and grime of London and the huge industrial cities of the Midlands, over the gray, oily ripples of the Thames, over the Channel and over all the big, skyward-pointing guns. It is half-past three in England, and a slender, intense-looking man is sitting in front of a microphone in the Columbia Broadcasting System's London office, saying:

"Hello, America. This is Edward R. Murrow."

It's three-thirty in London. Across three thousand miles of tossing sea, it is ten-thirty in New York—along toward the end of the evening, nearly bed-time for all the folks who must be up and working the next morning. It's nearly bed-time for Ed Murrow too. But unlike his working compatriots in New York, he won't get eight hours of sleep. He'll be lucky if he gets four, and more likely it will be three or even two. Or maybe none at all, if something should happen.

The time when Ed Murrow worried about not getting enough sleep is past—long past. He's pretty well used to it now, and he has more important things on his mind. He might very easily worry about whether the office where he works or the apartment building where he lives will still be left standing, brick on brick, by the time another British dawn rolls around. As a matter of fact, he doesn't worry much about that, either.

Chiefly concerning him at the moment, and at all moments, is his job. For Ed Murrow is European Director for the Columbia Broadcasting System, and he must keep his finger on the pulse of all Europe. He must get the news, he must get it straight, he must write it, he must submit it to the censors, he must clear the time for broadcasting it to the United States, and he must talk it into a microphone. Of course he has assistants, but not as many as you'd expect. And anyway, he's the boss. Seeing that things run right is his responsibility, and no one else's.

It wasn't like this in the old days—away back in 1937 when Ed first went to London as CBS' European director. Then his job, while important enough, was a matter of arranging quaint broadcasts like an interview with a London cabby, or an on-the-spot show which was accurately titled, "Saturday Night in the Spread Eagle Pub at Little Barfield, Sussex." Or he would see to it that George Bernard Shaw or H. G. Wells or the current party whip in the House of Commons was persuaded to say a few well-chosen words for the benefit of American listeners.

No crises, you see, and not much lost sleep.

But although not many people in the world seemed to realize it, even in those days Ed Murrow, and the Columbia Broadcasting System, knew that crises were on their way. Ed knew it because he already had important sources of information in Europe, and CBS must have known it, because they chose Ed for the job.

Ed Murrow was born in North Carolina thirty-six years ago. His family moved westward when he was a boy, and he attended the University of Washington and Washington State University. After that, he went to Stanford and got a Master of Arts degree. He was elected president of the National Student Federation, and in 1932 he became assistant director of the Institute of International Education—a job that sent him traveling around the United States, visiting colleges and arranging debates, lectures, and exchange scholarships. Summers, still as assistant director of the Institute, he guided student tours through Europe, incidentally meeting and talking to foreign members and officials of the Institute.

Knowing all these intellectual and well-informed citizens of Europe made Ed Murrow an ideal representative for CBS. But knowing them turned out, also, to be one of Ed's great personal tragedies. As nation after nation disappeared under the tide of Hitlerism, many of Ed's friends disappeared too. Some of them he has never heard of since. Of others, months later, he has learned that they are dead, in concentration camps, or penniless fugitives.

In March, 1938, Ed was on his way to Latvia and Lithuania when word game to him in Warsaw that Hitler's Germany had finally effected its cherished "Anschluss" with Austria. Ed had to get to Vienna, of course, but the only transportation available was a 23-passenger airplane—so he chartered it and flew in it to Vienna, a lone passenger. At the Vienna airport he found that the German troops had commandeered all buses and taxis, so he made the last part of the journey on foot.

At that, he was lucky. Nowadays there wouldn't be a 23-passenger plane available. Before the war, Ed used to fly a great deal over Europe, co-ordinating CBS activities, but now, naturally, he remains in England.

Through the crisis years he watched communication between himself and his assistants in European key cities get more and more difficult. He always knew when a crisis of some kind was brewing, and where, because for a day or so ahead of time it would be impossible to get long-distance telephone calls through to that particular city. Frequently he had to resort to ridiculously roundabout methods to get instructions through to CBS men in the Axis countries—like sending a cable to Berlin by way of South America.

When you consider all the difficulties Ed Murrow must overcome in getting the news and broadcasting it to America, you're apt to conjure up a picture in your imagination of a hard-hitting, aggressive individual. On the contrary, Ed is very quiet and very diplomatic. When he talks to you he looks directly into your eyes and speaks in a rather hurried, low voice. He doesn't often smile, which is natural enough, but he never loses his temper, which is remarkable, in view of the extreme nervous tension under which he works and lives.

He's a good reporter, but he is mainly interested in the meaning of the facts he reports—likes to look past them to the underlying forces and trends to which they are clues. In the present world, he's like a man watching a volcano erupt—he sees the smoke and flame, but he's busy thinking about the greater chaos beneath the surface of the earth, and trying to decide what caused it, and where it will break out next.

In his broadcasts, though, he sticks to the facts, and almost never editorializes. He did make one blood-chilling remark, though, which becomes more frightening the more you ponder it. "I believe," he said, "that this war is for the control of men's minds."

Ed is married to a very pretty young American woman whose name is Janet, and they live in a flat across the street from the CBS offices and near the BBC building. Early this summer, when CBS made arrangements to evacuate the wives of its correspondents in European capitals, Janet refused to leave. They have no children, and Janet said that her only responsibility was to stay with Ed.

Janet furnished their flat herself, and though she didn't stick to any one period of decoration, she has excellent taste and created a charming home. There are a few New England antique pieces which she brought over with her from the United States, plus some modern furniture purchased in England. Ed's study is filled with American Indian rugs and pottery which he collected as a hobby in the days when he was traveling around the United States.

Janet is an accomplished pianist, and Ed is making a reporter out of her as well. Frequently he puts her on the air with stories about London's food supply or the evacuation of children.

The Murrows haven't much time now for entertaining, but they used to do a great deal. Janet, who does most of the cooking herself, would go to Selfridge's, the big London department store, and buy American ham or bacon, coffee, and maple syrup, and on Sunday mornings they would invite people in for real middle-western American breakfasts. The imported delicacies were expensive, but delicious, since no American living abroad ever gets used to English breakfasts. Ed has managed to cultivate a taste for English cigarettes, but not Janet—she still shops for the American kind.

Home life for Ed and Janet since Germany marched into Holland has been confined to brief meetings at odd moments, and occasionally to nods across the width of street which separates the windows of the Murrow apartment from those of the Murrow office. They are living in the same city and under the same roof, but the times are so far from normal that Janet sees almost as little of her husband as if he were in the army.

In a way, he is. For if you believe as he does, that the war is for control of men's minds, radio, with its command of so many millions of ears, is on the firing line.