1945. CBS' Robert Trout on the Death of President Roosevelt

"The Loss of One of the Key Architects of Victory"

"CBS wartime staff in London 1942: (left to right) Edward R. Murow, Paul Manning, John Daly, and Robert Trout" (source)

Robert Trout

Columbia Broadcasting System

Thursday, April 12, 1945

It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to analyze the news in the usual fashion tonight. The tragic news from Warm Springs has stunned the world so, with its shocking suddenness, that nations, and the men and women who make up the nations, must take time to catch their breath.

The tributes, the words of grief and affection and respect, are pouring out of the world's most important cities and into Washington. There are millions everywhere from whom no words are expected; millions whose names are not newsworthy and whose tribute of sorrow will be given in silence, away from the glare of public events. Those whose position makes fitting a public expression have found the words, or are finding them, tonight.

The shock has been sudden. But it is possible now to find the right words to say, and the right things to do. There has been time, during this long evening, to think of what the President's death means tonight. But there has not been time to think what it will mean in the days ahead.

Franklin Roosevelt was a battle casualty. He died during the war; and he died in the war. Even had he been spared to witness the great victory, to which he has given so much, his death—later, after the last shot had been fired—would still have been a war death. For he did give much of himself; he contributed immeasurably to the triumph that is coming, and in doing so he gave the most that any man can give.

Most battle casualties are sudden and shocking. They leave a space which seems particularly tragic because it was unforeseen. It is human nature, among the great and famous as well as the unknown, to avoid considering a terrible loss that may happen as long as there is a reasonable chance that it will not. It would be too much to expect that the President's colleagues among the Allied nations—such men as Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin—have planned the actions they must take, or have thought long and consistently of what the death of Franklin Roosevelt will mean. And it would be equally unwise to fear that, now that the blow has come, the responsible men will find it difficult to meet the situation that results from the loss of one of the key architects of victory and what is to come after victory. The Allied nations are strong, stronger than any who have dared stand against them. The Allied power comes from many sources, but most of all from the millions who were plunged into mourning late this afternoon.

The pause that has come—the hesitation—is an interval necessary when the mind has been shocked and the breath must be caught. There has not been time to think. The news is known but the brain does not quite grasp it. There is knowledge that, in the days to come, the loss will be felt often at various turns in the road. The mind knows that—for that is the way of death—but the mind does not wish to consider it in all its implications. Not yet. In the future, tomorrow; not tonight.

From strange countries faraway, and from our closer allies, and from the cities and villages of our own United States, the news tonight is the same, though it is written in different words. Everywhere, men at first say, "No, it is not true. I do not believe it. It could not happen now. Not now." That is the thought of men who drive taxicabs and sit in offices and teach in classrooms and farm the earth.

It is the thought, too, of reporters, who are supposed to be toughened against news of disaster and pain. There are many reporters who have been writing and speaking this news for more than five hours now, who have not had the leisure in which to stop and think. When this night's work has been done, to many the notion will come; it has not happened, it cannot be true.

The thoughts and feelings of reporters are not so different from the mental processes of the men who drive the taxicabs and the women who cook in kitchens. The minds of statesmen and generals also react in a similar fashion when confronted with tragedy.

It would be too much, then, to expect the men who are now responsible for the victory and what will come later to think deeply tonight of the meaning of April the twelfth, 1945. And it would be too little to expect anything less than the victorious alliance will roll on—in war and peace—on the battlefields and in the conference rooms at San Francisco. For a great man is dead, but the strength of the millions who mourn is enduring.

1942. Liquor Shortage in Britain

"And it isn't even good 'hooch'"

"Free French soldiers and sailors enjoy a pint of beer in a London pub, 1940. A young woman serves them their drinks," 1940 (source)

And it isn't even good 'hooch'

by BILL DOWNS

The following article is in light vein, but there is a warning in it that is serious. It is written by an American newspaperman now working in London who saw the results of Prohibition in his own country. Though the shortage of liquor in Britain cannot be classed with America's shortage in her "dry" days, its effects have already been seen in an increased sale of illicit spirits—"hooch" in the United States.

As an old taster of backyard brandy, synthetic Scotch and bathtub gin—a distinction gained through the many painful years of United States Prohibition—I can guarantee that the illegal liquor now being sold in Britain would have made any respectable American bootlegger give himself up to the police.

The hard and bitter truth is that most of the bootleg stuff you get in Britain to-day is what Americans call "plain old rot-gut."

Surprise bottle

It has more headaches than a nursing home and is just about as healthy. I bought a bottle of it in a London night club the other night—a beautiful bottle it was, too, when you consider all the time spent in corking, sealing, and labeling. I took the first drink and my stomach bounced up to my throat and said: "Why don't you get a bootlegger as good as Joe the Dope, who treated us so well in Kansas City?"

As soon as I caught my breath and drowned my stomach's small voice with a glass of water, I explained: "Give the British bootlegger a chance. He's just starting and hasn't yet the full knowledge and experience that 20 years of illicit liquor manufacture afforded Joe the Dope."

Despite what the authorities say or try to do about it, as long as there is any drink shortage in Britain there will be bootleggers of some sort. That should be the one thing that America's "noble experiment" proved to the world. The American bootlegger was the foremost figure of the palmy peace-time era of wonderful nonsense who built a billion-pound industry on the desire of United States citizens to have a drink.

Britain would face creation of a similar illicit industry if her supplies ever ran so low that the men and women fighting the war on the home front could not occasionally relax over a drink.

There are two kinds of bootleg—(1) bad; (2) worse. Remember there is no control over illicit manufacture. Mash for whisky might be made in a garbage pail. The bootlegger usually "needles" his products with raw alcohol—and sometimes not even he is sure when he is getting methyl alcohol or other poisonous stuff.

At the risk of making this piece sound like a temperance lecture, it might be well to recall that there are still lots of Americans walking on crutches as a result of liquor being sold throughout the Southern States which was made with poisonous Jamaica Ginger. Besides this epidemic of "Jake leg," there also were recurrent plagues of blindness from which some persons still have not recovered. You can't be too careful.

There's actually no way of telling whether bootleg liquor is poisonous without a laboratory test. For example, that perfectly awful night club Scotch that I had was harmless enough except that it carried a hangover which attacked with the fury of a blitzkrieg. In drinking bootleg, the only guide and defense you have is your stomach.

What holds true for whisky also applies to brandy. It's pretty hard to disguise bootleg brandy—but a good bootlegger can concoct a product which gives the proper illusion if mixed with lime juice or such.

Supplementing the bootlegger in the United States during Prohibition was the home liquor industry, wherein thousands of Americans made their own stuff as a safeguard against poisoning. Because of the difficulties of distilling, whisky and brandy were ignored. But many persons became so proficient in making a fake brand of gin that they bragged ad nauseum about their product. Ad nauseum would have been a good trade mark for some of it.

1933. Hitler Likens Nazi Germany's Immigration Policy to the United States

Hitler Denies Terror Against Jews in Germany

An SA member stands outside of a Tietz department store in front of a sign calling for the boycott of Jewish businesses. The sign reads "Germans defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!" April 1, 1933 (source)

This article is part of a series of posts on how newspapers, specifically The New York Times, covered the rise of fascism. In 1933, journalist Thomas Russell Ybarra interviewed Hitler for a Collier's magazine articled titled "The Hitler Jitters." The Times wrote about the interview soon after, noting Hitler's attempts to downplay persecution of Jews in Germany.

From The New York Times, June 23, 1933:

HITLER COMPARES HIS CURBS TO OURS

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Chancellor Says in Interview that United States Restricts Immigration of Jews

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

DENIES TERROR IN REICH

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

But T. R. Ybarra Asserts in Article There is No Sign of Cessation of Anti-Jewish Persecution

"There has been no terror in Germany," declared Chancellor Hitler of Germany in an interview published yesterday by Collier's Weekly, in which he defends his attitude on the Jewish question.

"You Americans, too, have an immigration problem," he continued. "You have made restrictions against immigrants of the sort you don't want in America. Why are not Americans fair enough to admit that we Germans have the same right?

"We don't want Jews from Eastern Europe. It is for us Germans to decide this matter. You Americans made similar restrictions. Why don't Americans show an understanding for questions of this kind?

Stresses Huge Election Vote

"How can any American believe, for instance, the tales told before the Reichstag election of the terrorizing of voters by the National Socialists, in view of the fact that 90 per cent of the Germans entitled to vote actually went to the polls? Under a reign of terror people don't go to the polls. They stay at home.

"Whatever violence there was is now past. Perfect calm reigns in Germany. Not a street has been destroyed, not a house.

"I tell you we have Communists here in Germany who would not be allowed for a moment in America. You in America wouldn't tolerate what we in Germany have been forced to endure from these Communists.

"Americans should view international problems from the viewpoint of other nations. I know this isn't easy, but only thus can understanding come.

"If only all Americans could come over here! They would look about and ask themselves where is this revolution, where is this terror, where is all the destruction and chaos I've heard about?"

Interviewer Sees Persecution

Nevertheless, says the interviewer, T. R. Ybarra, looking around Berlin after his talk with Chancellor Hitler, life in Berlin still resembles sitting on the edge of a volcano.

"At the time of my talk with Hitler," explains Mr. Ybarra, "there was no indication of a cessation of anti-Jewish persecution. Daily lists were being published of professors dismissed from universities, many of whom are Jews with nothing else against them.

"A big chain-store firm and other concerns were being obliged to close temporarily because their Nazi employees had struck against Jewish control. At the headquarters of a big publishing house, a procession of striking employees surged through all the corridors shouting: 'We want all Jewish bosses fired.' Here as elsewhere there was nothing to do but obey.

"Many Jews, being dismissed after years of faithful service, were now besieging the offices of Americans in business in Berlin, seeking work. The fruits of a lifetime of toil had been snatched from them—in many cases they faced destitution—and often men who formerly had held the most important and best-paid positions were telling Americans that they were willing to do anything for wages no better than an office boy's.

Hitler Discipline Doubted

"Some observers believe that the situation inside the Hitlerist ranks is another case of Frankenstein and his monster. They feel that because Hitler for years has been promising his adherents that Jews would be uprooted and opposition crushed, and that foreigners should be shown the temper of a new Germany, he was obliged to make good his violent promises.

"But sometimes it certainly seemed that Adolf Frankenstein Hitler's machine was running amuck. Many of us foreigners, sitting on the rim of the German volcano, occasionally wondered whether Hitler was boss of his own show any more."

1950s. Bill Downs and Edward R. Murrow on McCarthyism

The Age of McCarthyism

Bill Downs and Edward R. Murrow in Tokyo while covering the Korean War, 1950

The Murrow Boys were household names by the end World War II in Europe. Edward R. Murrow commanded enormous respect among listeners in the United States, and he took his role seriously. When Murrow's television news series See It Now debuted in 1951, Bill Downs urged him to use the new platform to take on Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The CBS news staff agreed that McCarthyism posed a threat to American institutions. Murrow himself believed that the senator's demagoguery had taken the form of a "Nazi-like mass movement," but he was concerned that he might abuse his role as a journalist by taking on McCarthy directly. He was also concerned that doing so could harm others, including those close to him. See It Now producer Fred Friendly maintained that it would be more effective to wait for the right time to act.

The news team worried about potential reprisal in an industry plagued by baseless accusations and blacklisting. In 1950, CBS reporters Howard K. Smith and Alexander Kendrick—both of them Murrow Boys—were among the 151 news and entertainment figures named in the infamous Red Channels list of alleged "Red Fascists and their sympathizers" in the entertainment industry. Later that year, CBS management required its employees to sign a loyalty oath affirming that they were not and never had been communists. Downs protested at first, but Murrow—at that point careful to pick his battles—told him: "If you don't want to sign the oath, there is no way I can protect you."

Downs, for his part, did not keep silent. Cartoonist Walt Kelly wrote in 1959: "Those of us who had reason to question the loyalty oath could not help but be cheered by a reverse side of the coin. Bill Downs made a blistering radio attack over CBS on the cloak-and-dagger activities on Capitol Hill. 'Things were just going too far,' he said to me. 'I couldn't take it anymore.'"

Downs also talked about the responsibility of journalists in the age of McCarthy in a 1953 essay entitled "The Armor of Cynicism," saying:

A news reporter, which I've been for half of my life, is required to be a cynic. The attitude is, in a sense, a scientific technique of our craft, since the job requires close observation of men in every conceivable position, disposition, and indisposition. Among other things, we are supposed to spot the toes of clay splaying out from under the pearl-gray spats, or the cloven hoof encased in the jackboot, before anyone else.

Cynicism also is the touchstone of a reporter's alchemy through which he hopes to discover that nonexistent load called "objectivity." For as a set of philosophers, the only true objective reporter is the dead one.

While Murrow was not the first to challenge McCarthy (Eric Sevareid noted Elmer Davis and Martin Agronsky as two who already had), he remains one of the most memorable. He covered the case of Milo Radulovich in October 1953 before finally addressing McCarthy directly.

On March 9, 1954, CBS aired the iconic episode of See It Now titled "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy." Murrow said that:

On one thing the senator has been consistent. Often operating as a one-man committee, he has traveled far; interviewed many; terrorized some; accused civilian and military leaders of the past administration of a great conspiracy to turn over the country to communism; investigated and substantially demoralized the present State Department; made varying charges of espionage at Fort Monmouth. The army says it has been unable to find anything relating to espionage there. He has interrogated a varied assortment of what he calls "Fifth Amendment Communists."

In his closing remarks Murrow stated:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. 

As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear. He merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

On April 6, 1954, CBS allotted McCarthy a full half hour on See It Now to respond. The senator lashed out at Murrow:

Now, of course, neither Joe McCarthy nor Edward R. Murrow is of any great importance as individuals. We are only important in our relation to the great struggle to preserve our American liberties. The Senate Investigating Committee has forced out of government, and out of important defense plants, communists engaged in the Soviet conspiracy. And you know, it's interesting to note that the viciousness of Murrow's attacks is in direct ratio to our success in digging out communists.

Now, ordinarily I would not take time out from the important work at hand to answer Murrow. However, in this case I feel justified in doing so because Murrow is a symbol, the leader, and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual communists and traitors . . .

Now, Mr. Murrow said on this program—and I quote—he said: "The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have given considerable comfort to the enemy." That is the language of our statute of treason—rather strong language.

If I am giving comfort to our enemies, I ought not to be in the Senate. If, on the other hand, Mr. Murrow is giving comfort to our enemies, he ought not to be brought into the homes of millions of Americans by the Columbia Broadcasting System.

A week before McCarthy's appearance, news director Ted Church wrote a letter to CBS foreign correspondents in Europe:

I had a short huddle with Ed this morning and something he said prompts me to write all of you. You all know how determined he has always been to keep each and every one of us out of trouble. Now he is very worried that McCarthy will have something to say about some of us that may hurt. I assured him vehemently that not a man on the staff would be really hurt regardless of what McCarthy said, and that, furthermore, being brought up to the firing line along side Ed would be an honor for any of us.

If McCarthy shows up (and there seems to be some doubt that he will) next Tuesday night, whatever he says will undoubtedly be carried where you are as well as here. I think it would be a good idea if each of you, after hearing what is said, sent Murrow some kind of appropriate cable to disabuse his mind of any worry about any harm he may have brought down on the heads of any of us. His action stems from this very fact—he thinks maybe his action in attacking McCarthy will be responsible for what McCarthy says about someone else.

Downs' role in the affair is recounted in several books.

From Murrow: His Life and Times by A.M. Sperber, pp. 403-404:

The atmosphere of Washington, between the hearings and the expanded loyalty review dragnet, was near manic. Bill Downs, reporting for CBS-TV, finding himself screaming and drinking too many martinis, begged for Murrow's help: "Ed, just get me out of here!"

"Nobody at the State Department would talk to him anymore," Roz Downs said later, "nobody in the Defense Department would talk to him anymore, nobody in government would talk to anybody—they weren't even talking to their own friends anymore, the things that were happening were so awful. It had just reached the point where everybody in Washington seemed stark, raving mad. Everybody was crazy—and frightened.

Downs, one of the media's angry men, kept after Murrow, one of the rising chorus intoning, Do something about McCarthy. Not one of these clever let-the-audience-decide numbers. Hit him head-on. Hard. Forget radio; everybody bitched about McCarthy on radio. It had to be TV, and only he, Murrow, had the access.

It was getting to be a leitmotif. Roz Downs later remembered an evening at the Murrow apartment, following their sitting in on the 7:45 news. Janet was out. Murrow was fixing drinks, fumbling unhappily with the ice bucket.

He said, "My God, don't we have any ice?"

I didn't know if he knew how to get the ice out of the refrigerator, so I said, "I'll get the ice," and Bill said, "Oh, for cryin' out loud, I'll get the ice."

So Bill starts out to the kitchen, and Murrow turns around to me and breathes this great sigh of relief because he could see Bill was just ready. "Make you a bet that it's gonna be two minutes before he mentions McCarthy to me and he's gonna say, 'Okay, Ed, when are you gonna take on McCarthy?'"

I looked at him and said "Ed, you are completely wrong. I'm surprised he went to get the ice out first. He's going to walk back through the door with the ice, and he's gonna say, 'Okay, Ed, when are you—'" and just then Bill walked back through the door.

Ed looked, said, "You won."

And Bill said, "Okay, Ed, now I've gotten the ice. When are you gonna stand up to McCarthy?"

They broke up. "It's not funny, goddammit! Do you know what that man is doing to the country?" Murrow grew serious. He knew Bill was covering this every day, he said, that he was close to the story. But Friendly just didn't feel it was time yet.

What did he mean, Friendly didn't think so? It was his, Murrow's, decision. Though obviously there were problems, they agreed, and yes, timing was important. Eisenhower had endorsed McCarthy only a few months ago. How did you attack McCarthy over something as powerful as nationwide TV when the President of the United States, the war hero, the landslide incumbent, had made him respectable?"

From Edward R. Murrow: An American Original by Joseph E. Persico:

To Ed Murrow, a man already inclined to pessimism and dark forebodings, the era of McCarthyism was a nightmare coming true. As a student leader in Europe, and later as a broadcaster, he had watched the Germans trade unruly Weimar democracy for Nazi order. He had witnessed home-grown Fascist movements in England, France, and Poland. He knew how the Fascists made their excesses palatable: anticommunism was the respectable cloak they wore. When Murrow and his wife, Janet, were flying home from England in 1946, as the American coast came into view, she recalled Ed saying, "We saw it happen in Europe. There's no reason to suppose it can't happen here." 

He had taken stands. He had spoken out against the circus-style anticommunism of the House Un-American Activities Committee. McCarthy's victim, Owen Lattimore, thanked Murrow for defending him on the air "even when the hysteria was at its height." Murrow helped save the careers of CBS colleagues who had been blacklisted.

Still, some of Murrow's friends had been asking aloud why he was not doing more, not using his unrivaled position, that bully pulpit of microphone and camera with its audience of millions, to challenge McCarthy head-on. Bill Downs, a gruff, much valued friend came up from CBS's Washington bureau to have dinner with the Murrows at their Park Avenue apartment. Afterward, over drinks, Downs warned, "You'd better do something about that guy."

Murrow hedged. "Fred Friendly says it isn't time yet," he said, referring to the co-producer of See It Now.

"It is time," Downs insisted. "The effect that McCarthy is having is nothing short of devastating."

From Key Readings in Journalism:
 
(In the immediate aftermath of Murrow's See It Now McCarthy broadcast on March 9, 1954):

. . . The highest praise came generally from those who had been in the fight the longest, from I.F. Stone's Weekly to the editorial writers of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, to cartoonist Walt Kelly, to Joe Alsop, who had immediately sent a cable (ONE OF THE GREAT ACTS OF POLITICAL COURAGE OF OUR TIME).

The reaction abroad, after word of the program hit the news wires, was "phenomenal," as a correspondent put it. "The European newspapers went crazy, they were delighted; it was like America coming into its own again."

The BBC ran a kinescope. In Rome Bill Downs, now bureau chief for CBS, ran nightly screenings at his home to packed houses and standing ovations, mostly from Americans in Rome. (His own reaction: "About time!") Said Roz Downs: "We were getting calls from the embassy, from the USIA, saying, 'We are desperate, we want to see this thing.' The State Department was overjoyed; they were terrified of what was going on. And the military attaches—after all, the Army was being attacked."