there's models like that at the you were saying get involved i think at the community level right there is many more opportunities to kind do some things here and that will actually matter. we kind of do things at the local level that if we stay up here, it's i think it's just to heart is we're too locked in. but i think at the local level there are still surprising ways. i think that if again, act with some goodwill and some and some faith, we actually can make some difference that i think hopefully will build up from bottom. i really think that's the only way we're going to do it is to build it from the bottom up ai'w new in the sense that it was actually published today here in the states. so this is actually public

election day, very pleased to have a copy here to you. this is the american and they chose to have a different subtitle, the book the book at war. it's called how reading shaped conflict and conflict shaped reading. and that, in a nutshell, describes what i'm trying do in this book. if we think about books at war at all, it's probably in this context. but books as victims. victims of bombing victims, of theft, looting and that is part of the story. and it's the story we told in our history of libraries when we had a chapter in that book called surviving the 20th century about how books were not about but i to point want to make to you today is that books

were not just victims of war but active agents of war books were essential for waging of war as macleish that in the director of the of congress made the point modern war. he said cannot be fought without most complete library resources of books played an part in scientific and essential war making. it played an important part in intelligence operations and of course, to topography is the essence of war fighting over borders, fighting over land as always, franklin d roosevelt in capsule8 at this in a telling phrase books are weapons in the war of ideas.

i also have to acknowledge that books played a large role in spreading the ideologies cause for in the first place, and that is both in the democracy cs and in the dictatorships dictatorships. so if people like franklin d roosevelt archibald macleish were so well aware of how important, what books would be in wartime, it's inevitable that the dictatorships stalin, hitler would be equally aware of the need to command print for their cause. we see in the second world war an enormous amount of looting. on the left we see a post with nazi officials sorting books have been taken. it says revolt, not fear. in fact, that's telling.

in in estonia. and so books were first of all in the first years of the war the states that the germans conquered. first of all poland. there was a great destruction of the intent to reduce poland to agricultural population with no elites. so education was to be largely and their books were all taken away. but then the policy changed. and because the nazi regime, germany was meant to be a force. and you're right, they thought it would be best to keep the books of all the adversary ideologies they were seeking to extinguish, so that if any point join thousand years, they needed know about socialism or judaism or free masonry, they'd have

books to hand. and here they plan to create ten libraries of 500,000 books each. this the the extent of the rapacity, the stealing of books, libraries in france and the netherlands and denmark. in poland, czechoslovakia was so in so enormous that most of them never got out of their packing cases. and this is the allied book of sorting center in frankfurt. we see on the other side with those packing cases of books which had been intended for these new enormous nazi libraries, but never got out of their cases. well, what i'm going to try do for you today is to move through a number of aspects of books in wartime by focusing on a whole

range of, people whose functions brought them into contact with books. the publishers are essential without publishers. there is no books. librarians are also an essential role and will be kind to them today because one of our our guests this evening, one of my former phd students is a librarian. so i know not to mess with librarians, a prisoner of war, a censor. censorship plays, an essential role in. wartime sources, the other hand, have a very difficult time war as we'll discover. and then a reader, a survivor. and lastly, a statesman. one of the extraordinary aspects of the second world war is that most of the leaders of the combatant combatant nations were themselves bestselling authors and that something will come on to. let's start then with the

publisher for wartime brings all sorts of new challenge for the publishers books. first of all they have of course the bombs then they lose as many of their staff to active service many also of authors also turn to work they have to deal with enhanced censorship and readers in particular want different sorts of books. the war creates new demand as people want to know, particularly about their soldiers, but they certainly want to know about the course of war, especially, i this accounts so many publishers have to change their program of publishing very very radically. they could up with all of that but what they resented at a time

when patient paper rationed and paper was short what they particularly resented was to see the government setting itself up as a competitor in the publishing business. here we see two, two publications by the government is stationery office and these became popular with the reading public. they started with a very much less lavish pamphlet on the battle of britain, which sold something like a million copies in its first year and helped define the controls of, the battle of britain as a heroic struggle. so it was a factual pamphlet which was extremely propaganda. and then we have work on all the branches, the services, the allied services, like the

australia troops, the canadian troops, even the dutch navy who had sailed over to join the allies and these sold for between sixpence two shillings each. i one of the things i did preparing for to write this jericho it it must be said was i read an awful lot of wartime diaries and i got to the diary of a lincoln a part of person who was going on a small train journey in lincolnshire, got into his carriage holding combined operations, which would last him for the journey and found all five of the passenger is in the carriage had this same pamphlet very, very popular, but publishers thought this wasn't quite playing fair because the government had access operational photography to

military bases so they could produce these incredibly. illustrated pamphlets books in a way which was much more difficult for commercial publishers. well, i'm going to focus in each case on one individual, and i'm going to start with the publisher. my is alan lane, who was the inventor and proprietor of penguin books. now penguins was revolution in publishing and came along right at the appropriate. in 1935, four years before the second world war broke. it was intended offer modern fiction in very editions. penguin books would be as against seven shillings and sixpence, which was the normal cost of. a hardback book of this type.

so you got 15 penguins for the price. one hardback book. but first, of course he had to buy the rights from the publishers who'd published the books in hardback and they could have strangled by birth if one of them hadn't broken ranks and given him the right to publish five of these books. and he was up and running and never looked back. in addition to these modern books of literature and fiction he also introduced an incredible, successful new series called the penguins. and these were small paperbacks about currents fairs. now, in the run up the war, they a few of them sold less than 100,000 copies. they were immense successful. and of course, because they were

so successful. this meant he had sold such a volume of books that when paper rationing came in during the war, he had a very generous ration by the end of the he had published upward 700 different titles. no normally he had a very good judge of judgment, what he should be publishing and how perhaps less so with this advertisement. i hope can see it clearly. it's an advertisement in the one of the inside desk for the penguin pen you could have for five shillings and sixpence and it's advertised by very jolly tommy with his bayonet piercing the backside of a german looks very look like adult hitler. now this went down quite well on the home front. but when these books were sold, a prisoner of war camps where they were re censored by the

germans. this didn't wasn't seen as funny all and for a long period in 1943 penguin books were banned prisoner of war camps as result. so penguin completely transformed forms the provision of books on the home front but also for and this was especially so with the second paperback venture and that was the famous america services editions. now this was extraordinarily in that the american services had a committee which chose which titles be published and then were published this strange tableau footnote. they used the reader's presses and they actually published two books together. and then guillotine in them separate. so you had to have books that are exactly the same length in order to achieve this mostly modern fiction, but also a lot

of classics some nonfiction texts as well. and they these were distributed free of charge to america service people wherever they were in the world. so as a pacific atoll, you were on cases of these books would arrive and they would and they were distributed to the troops. they were enormously popular and very influential. if we look at, for instance, at scott fitzgerald's great gatsby, that didn't sell well when it was first published, but reissued as one of the american services. it was introduced to a whole new audience and became the classical book, the classic as it now is. so that's publisher an important figure. let's move on now to libraries. now libraries is couldn't close in wartime they were so essential to the purposes of war

making and to recreational literature which was that traditional function but probably took a bit of a backseat in the war. this is the library at war it a central point of information one of these notices. the notice in the middle is for compulsory insurance and. this was the place you went to get regulations like air raid precautions. the pamphlet would be on display or new rules and regulations which tradespeople to follow during wartime. so also by providing room for the red cross, for meetings, the libraries playing an essential role in war. they also a very great deal of advice on cooking, keeping chickens and rabbits on growing

vegetables. when you think that in britain imports were down 30 to 30% of their pre-war levels, you can see that everybody was doing their very best to, contribute as much as they could to putting food on their own table. however, this compels pre-war insurance played an unexplained, active role when 6 million copies of the publisher's stock were destroyed in one catch a strategic raid. in december 1940. this wiped out backstop of about 15 different publishers. but this wasn't all bad because of course book is books are in warehouses because nobody had bought them. but they got the full value of this heavily. the written down stock from that

war insurance. and this brings us to a point which unwin they distinguished publisher made and that was the wartime publishers despite all the problems that i've just talked about publishers actually made lot of money because the factories with paper rationing being short output way down, new books, everything that they sold out and sold quickly. so well. unknown describes as greatest expense in publishing, which is publishers error. you put your money on a book succeeding you pay 5000 copies, 500 sell and then you are in trouble. you can only hope that the profit will come along and. you'll get the insurance back for. libraries. also played a more much more proactive role in both world

wars with these book drives as we see on the photographs clearly, a posed photograph of two young ladies in the second world war with some of the books which arrive and this other poster your money brings the books we need where we want it. this is the american library of associations campaign in the first world war. but these sort of drives didn't really work. they didn't work because many of the soldiers to whom they were destined were on the whole urban working class people, whereas most of the people giving the books, people like us rummaging around in their back cupboards for books that they no longer wanted, there was a total mismatch between donor and recipient. also, of course, these hardback books, particularly in the first world, will take up much more space that the american service

editions, which i described, the librarian i wanted to introduce you to was althea warren on this side by the. on the left, as you're looking, who was rector of the los angeles public. between 1933 and 1947, and she ran the victory books campaign she was very well respected, heidi efficient. it makes several points. one is that it brings to our attention the feminization of the american library profession, which was much more much earlier and more rapid than it was in europe at the beginning of the war. librarians in were almost exclusively male, particularly the higher ranked librarians, and also very, very

conservative. whereas in america we'd have leading librarians, leading libraries from the 1890s onwards. so a very different state of affairs. i've also since we're in new york at adding another character of some importance alice hudson who was the head of the new york map division, worked in it from 1970 to 2009, and she has been an important figure rather later than the war. but looking back on the role of the new york public library map division in the war, when the japanese attacked pearl harbor, america leaders realized that knew very little about many of the pacific islands that they were their troops were going to spend so much time fighting on. the situation was so that at that point they put out a call to americans to send in their

guidebooks holiday stamps in the hope that then they'd know a little bit more the marshall islands and they did however the funds of knowledge was really the neutral public which had a collection of hundred thousand maps which were now put to very good use in the war effort. the library of congress had point 4 million, but unfortunately non-american left maps hadn't been cataloged. so actually getting find anything was very and the army service set up cartography courses 57 different colleges around america and during the course of the war they turned out something like 500 million maps for the various that they had to fight. map in the center is to make another point and that is the importance map making in europe as a as an incitement to war

famously. woodrow wilson when he became the first president in office travel outside the western hemisphere. think of that to supervise the creation of 14 new countries that the at the this a peace process found himself down his hands and knees scrambling over maps a very great deal but the solutions of course were toxic to the germans who still claimed as this map shows that a large part of the central landmass of germany of europe should be part of a greater germany and the convention of german geographers. as early as 1921 passed a resolution that any maps and atlas is used in school should show these greater borders rather than the present borders

of germany. so that schoolchildren should not lose a sense of grievance about what had happened at the end of the first world war. you. want to come on now to prisoners of war who? of course, they ultimate captive audience for books and many of read incessantly my individual choice. here is second lieutenant francis, who was captured in june of 1940. so was a prisoner of war for almost five years now. many prisoners of war kept a journal. and in this francis stewart recorded everything that he was reading. and he says in the course of this time he read almost 350 books. but he said i'm a very slow reader. and he had a chum who had read a

thousand books. now, prisoners of war extremely well supplied this as this p.o.w. library makes clear they were supplied because camps, developed large libraries, but also because personal collections sent by friends and family were regarded almost as a as a collective resource as well. you were expected to land or swap or make available your books to and of course people read seriously. this was the sort of time when it was possible to sit down and read war and or the complete of art to the trollop was a great wartime favorite. you had plenty of time, but it was also a time for getting qualifications. and at the bodleian library in oxford there was a special unit charged with sending over a

textbook for the over 100 courses that they the prisoners of war took during the course of the second world war. now the lonely economy is something i was able to pursue, and i found a book with a facsimile of a handwritten cab newspaper paper during the war which somehow survived copies. this what happened was on the on the death march at the end of the war, the prison of the editor. this just when he found someone watching the prisoners go by, he just thrust these newspapers into this lady's hand and say, can you keep these for me? i'll come back to them some time. and she did. and he and so they survived astonish. she and his of the book advertisements, which appear on this manuscript, the newsletter

wanted on loan for a very short period. richardson's comment. pamela and clarissa and smollett's roderick ransom and humphrey clinker. if you want these books for a very short period, it is clear that they are for revision for an exam because they're not the sort books that you would read in a very short period wanted. norwegian grammar in return for cigarets cigarets of course where they were the currency of prisoner of war camps. so you happen to be a nonsmoker which very few people were in those days then you then you were rich because you had lots of money in your pocket which you were not going to smoke elementary spanish returned to german elementary grammar. now i think this is quite near the end of the war when people could see which way the wind was blowing so giving up that german and lost a copy of some of a salado by robert's service so he

was a british canadian poet then very success for the song of sardo it sold up to 3 million copies, but this is the dangers of personal ownership that you lend it to someone current of the who. and so have to put this sort of appeal. i do it all the time with my students it must be said a lot of them bought into my office a few weeks ago, handed me back a couple of and i said thank very much. but she did in fact graduated two years before and seemed to think nothing of it. so i should be grateful to get them back after time. now, at the end of the war, the prisoners all marched out of the camps westward, get away from the advancing russian armies and all of the were left behind. if they had if they carried out the scene, they carried food for this journey because they weren't going to get any food along the way. so none of these books survive

except this, which i hope, which is my most precious possession. it's a penguin book and you can see its life in nine stamps, nine official stamps, first of is of all, it was marked as censored by the despatch body. first, because there's no point sending books to germany. italy, which you knew wouldn't get through the german censorship. then on the right hand page see a triangular symbol of the y.m.c.a. in geneva. the book. and then it went on to a polish officer's camp in bavaria. and we see three stamps for that that. and then right at the last minute, it seems to have been withdrawn from the camp library. and you see that rather.

red stamp withdrawn, not permitted. but what has gone wrong? i think what's gone wrong is that one of the censors was actually doing their job properly and reading the text because william temple of canterbury was not a man of peace, he very much in the war and the british cause. and this becomes all too obvious if you read it so it was withdrawn probably put in the stores and that's why it's survived to be bought by me at york at the book for two years ago and while i show many of my books when i'm talking about this this subject to britain that stays safely at home. so let's now move on. censorship. all countries have censorship censorship is a sort of bu his word but it's practice in all

societies at all stages. but in wartime in wartime, the major victims of this were the newspapers, because the newspapers coming out every they want to share information, their army successes. and so occupational information of operational information of importance can easily be given away. so for that reason, newspapers bear the brunt of censorship. but it's still is attached to books now actually the difference between censors in the dictatorship and in democracies is much less and one might imagine that is because the publishers themselves are by nature patriotic they have no wish to rock the boat and in any case with paper being sure that in itself a discipline. if you want a paper route ration, you're not going to risk

publishing anything likely to get anybody into. one of the ways in which the countries did differentiate themselves is the different different attitudes taken by the germans to the books. winston churchill, the british to, the books of adolf hitler, winston churchill's books were in principle banned from prisoner of war comes, for instance, but he often signed himself as winston spencer churchill, and they got through in grounds. and the ones that then missed out were books by the american winston churchill, who found his books being banned from prisoner of war accounts for being somebody quite different. on the other hand in britain the reading of mein was positively encouraged.

the first full translation of hitler's mein kampf didn't come until 1939, after much earlier translation abridged, which didn't really show full danger and horror of what hitler was saying. and this full was published both as book form and in a magazine form in 18 x, and i found a full set of this at the book fair in september. i'd never seen it before and. they simply cut up the clause of the books and then put them in these covers. to the extent that. one. the second installment actually ends in mid-sentence, because it's just going on to the next page, which you'll find in issue number three. now this the insouciance of the

british authorities shows that the circulation of mein kampf is actually very remarkable, but not only was it freely, but it was recommended reading for army camp libraries, and they made sure a copy of mein camp was in all the british camp libraries because i think they thought that the more the serviceman read it the more they would want to destroy the force, which created it. well, representative censor is one of my favorite figures in the book frames. aiken frank aiken, who was the censor chief in the republic of ireland. that republic of ireland was a neutral country, also had very strict rules. is it a catholic country? so the censors were meant to remove books which were in that general tendency.

so most the british main publishers fell foul of this at some. but frank aiken was a member of. the edmund de villiers v in a foyle party, many of whom, if not german sympathy abuses, were distinctly anti british. so he had to very difficult balancing act to maintain neutrality. so he put people like frank king into high sounding jobs with probably weren't all that important. so he the chief censor and this meant that the irish times had to send all its book reviews to frank and many of them were disallowed or butchered. and this was particularly the case with this book by john of the biggles books, and this is

his female hero created the for the war time quarrels of the wife and this came back completely disallowed so the very pro-british of the times are in smiley biding his time and then submitted exactly the same review, but this time for book he claimed could have been written called lottie of the look fluffer and this sale through censorship without a problem which gave him the opportunity to kick up a tremendous fuss revealing the evil of frank aiken. let's come on to authors now wartime is a very difficult time for authors. what are they to do? should they go on writing fiction or should they join up the armed forces, which many of the younger did? or should they other war work like for instance, a thriller

writer dennis weekly did neville shoot? he was a trained scientist or someone like archie bates who wrote titles for right the text for some of those books i've shown you from the government issue that pamphlets but anonymously not to take credit for his work so wartime was a time when older authors like w.b. jordan's like the children's writer alice utley, were more likely to get published than the younger ones. this was particularly difficult time, it must be said, for women partly, because the magazines from which they made much of their income were many of them were closed down at the beginning of the war to save paper, but also because this was a point where most middle class households domestic help of one sort or another made a cook a

gardener, maybe even all three. and these were away to do better paid war work. so much of the leisure that authors had for writing now disappeared in a round of cooking clean, ing, chewing for food. and i share with you this plaintive. letter which the author wrote to. penguin books. i'll read it to you. i wondering if you'll be sending me a statement of my royalties soon. i will tell you i'm worrying about this domestic servants. can command a much higher wage and hitherto. and i'm in danger losing mine if i don't give a raise very soon, i want to able to say to my maid that i'm a certain i will raise her wages. if i lose her, there will be no more or lando's was a series of

this author was writing for the penguin children's series puffin books for i cannot possibly do without her and this is a happy ending story. a check was in the post by return and there were three more orlando shows by the end of the war. but for my representative all so i wanted to give you a new yorker better smith. now betty smith was the writer of this incredibly popular book a grows in brooklyn. her debut novel, published in 1943, which was an instant and it was adopted for the american services additions and became a troops favorite. they read it repeatedly. they read it over again. they read it. they were in a convalescence in hospital after being wounded. and many them wrote to betty to

tell them how much it meant to them. she received. she later calculated 1500 letters a year from troops and. she always replied, and often sent them a signed photograph of herself as here, so that was her work. let's come on now. reading once you that many people read more during wartime troops on detachment from home prisoners of war read most much war, but many people also much less nella last pictured here was a housewife in barrow in furness in cumbria, which was a major shipyard. so a major target bombing. she was an avid reader,

self-educated, but she read virtually during the war. but why? well, we know about nella because she was one of the early people to sign up to mass observation, which was a program where people were invited to keep a diary during the war, which they would send on a weekly or monthly basis mass observation headquarters. well, now it took this very seriously. she she wrote about a thousand words a day and 2 million words in all during the war. so she's one of the people from her social background we know most about during the war. we therefore that in addition to keeping the household going, bringing in food, looking after a vegetable garden, keeping chickens, she also in a restaurant in the center of barrow and opened his shop to

sell secondhand goods for the troops. so with that in writing her diary, she literally had no time to read. we have another witness philip walter, who left her husband's working in london to down to the family home in dorset and likewise living on a farm with most of the domestic staff having been let go. she too had virtually time to read. well, we're coming to the end of our personalities and we've got two more to deal with. firstly, survivor, a few years ago, this most remarkable diary, a woman in berlin came to light published. then anonymously, and it tells the story of the last weeks before the russians come to

berlin and. the consequences for young women like herself when. they did of occupy berlin. she is very interesting and lady a publisher very well traveled, spoke many languages and during the when the russians arrived she did the sensible thing and took a russian officer her protector. so avoided many of the sequential rapes that her fellow women. experience. but she was also very wry observer of collapse of the nazi regime. this her writing in april the cold does not go away. i see. i sit hunched on the stool in front our stove, which is barely kept burning with all sorts nazi

literature, assuming everyone is doing the same thing and they are mein kampf, or going back to being a rare book, a collector's item, as indeed has occurred occurred. another member, her flat block was a bookseller. and of course they all went down shelter for the bombs in the basement. he was the most fanatical of nazi in the building. they had to be a bit careful when he was around and his bookshop was destroyed the last weeks of the war. so imagine her surprise martyrs cries. but he then revealed he kept back a couple of cases large cases of books with which he was going to start a library. and despite his nazi convictions, filled this these cases with the books which were

banned by the nazis. so he was sort of just preparing in case things went wrong and now he was going start a library that these previously banned. but now desirable books. finally i want to talk about the statesman chairman mao almost all the major major leaders in the second world war. the successful authors. churchill lived from his wits, his journalism and his writing for 40 years before he became prime minister. hitler's mein kampf sold 9 million copies. the real intellectual among them turns out to be stalin, who, as a child read hugely and was a published poet by the 18 age of 18. had he become a revolutionary, he intended become an academic. imagine how the world would have

changed had that been the case. but of them were outpaced in their production by chairman mao and this famous little book the little red book. now, the older those of us may remember a time when the little red was distributed to anyone who would write a polite message to the to the chinese embassy. and i was a schoolboy boarding school then and many, many people because it was perceived as being rather a naughty thing to do. and so we had lots of these things lying around. but this was published in every language of the globe, just about of up to billion of copies. so this was by far the most influential book of the of the century, really, in of its reach. so helped create all sorts of

communist insurgencies all over the world. well, i just want start with a glance that he was also, i should say, librarian. so he's a only. only of them who who did this he as a young from the provinces. young country boy. he was found a in berlin in the beijing university library and was so snubbed and ignored that he never forgot it. this is from his own. later reminiscence. but if you're asking why the cultural revolution was as hard time for academic czechs, it may have been, but chairman mao is thinking back to these terrible slights he experienced. i won't go to end with a glance at ukraine. ukraine? in of weaponry as a very 21st century war. but it's very 20th century in its impact of of of all the

books all of the that we've witnessed in talk the destruction of libraries 300 libraries of already been destroyed in the ukraine. the way in which writers are weaponized. the russians prepared ground for this invasion by a series of anti ukraine year novels to prepare the russian to think of their ukrainian neighbors in a very different way as the russians arrived, people fled to the to the west, leaving behind their much loved personal collections, including this man, andrei kirchhoff, whose diary of the first year of the invasion. i very recommend to. libraries were also used for ukrainian classes. in the west you must remember that for a third of the citizens of ukraine, russian was their

first language. a beginning of the war and. lastly giving up books for pulping. this is a major aspect of the second world war. 60 million books were surrendered by citizens. so they could be pulped for the war effort and, reuse and happily the librarians were able to insert themselves into this process so they could rescue very valuable books which had never have been offered just for pulp. but this is a picture of ukrainian citizen giving up their books in russian so they can be repulsed to then do something in the effort against russia. and sadly kirchhoff himself has since writing this book been a victim of polarization, of opinion. he is a native russian ukrainian writing mostly particularly fiction. and in in russian and has

subsequently been shunned by many of the ukrainian authors. but to end on rather more cheery notes, one of the things we learn writing about is that the most significant libraries in the world are the libraries we own in our private. and this is what in fact makes library kabak's books in distress double with art. and there's been a lot of work on the damage to artworks during the war. and there and that looting the failure to have them return and artworks are themselves by nature unique. whereas books are published in of a thousand 5000, 10,000. so even if public actions are destroyed by action, the recreation of those collections

is very much plausible and roosevelt put it ideas live on. they cannot be destroyed, be destroyed by bombs. thank you very much. speaker, today got a ph.d. in history from cornell. in 1995. has is now associate professor of history at indiana university. her