 Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer, ca. 1945. Photo courtesy WSU Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections.
MH: He flew 25 combat missions. He was there at the
liberation of Buchenwald. He saw some of the most horrific visions
of war and genocide. What kind of mark did these things leave on
him?
BE: It was very clear in his Buchenwald broadcast, he was
very angry. And he didn't record it until three days later. He was
furious, and it really shows in the broadcast. In fact, he says, if
anything I have said about Buchenwald disturbs you, I'm not in the
least bit sorry. I think he was angry on several fronts, angry of
course at the Nazis for what they had done, but I think he was also
angry that we didn't know. He had had some hints of the Holocaust,
or the "final solution," as the Germans called it, a couple of
years earlier, and he had broadcast them. He was very skeptical. He
said these reports, if they're true, it just seems too horrific to
be true.
Liberating Buchenwald, he not only found out they were true, it
was even worse than you could conceive. The other thing was, in the
surrounding villages the people looked like they had not been at
war. The people were well fed, well clothed, they had suffered no
effects of this war so far. They were well inside Germany, and
here, just over the fence was the worst man can do to another human
being. That upset him, too.
As the armies liberated the camps one by one, the commanding
officers of the liberating troops would go round up the Germans in
the neighborhood and have them come to see. I think in some cases
they put them to work. But mostly they wanted them to see-look,
your country did this.
MH: Murrow was a political mover and shaker, not just a
reporter. It was like he gave testimony about the war over the
radio. Do you think he felt any guilt himself for not knowing?
BE: Yeah, I think that was it. This was hidden from
journalism somehow, and they were unable to know this until the
end. Yes, I'm sure he found that very upsetting.
MH: It was interesting to me, I enjoyed the book quite a
lot, I enjoyed re-reading some of the impact Murrow had.
Anschluss was a very interesting time. This was at a time
when Europe and Britain were not going to get involved in a war,
pretty much let Hitler march through Austria and annex the place.
Let's talk a little bit about how Murrow reacted to that. This was
a time when so many journalists were getting together. It was an
incredible time in the history of broadcasting. This was when
Murrow and Shirer got together.
BE: America was very isolationist at the time. It didn't
want any part of what it called "Europe's troubles," because we'd
done that, we'd gotten involved back in 1916, 1918, and we weren't
going to do that anymore. Let Europe take care of its own, that
kind of head-in-the-sand approach that Murrow knew was
ridiculous-that once war broke out in Europe, we would all be
involved ultimately. And Britain, of course, tried to appease
Hitler. . . that he would stop. And he didn't.
People like Murrow and Shirer, who were living in Europe,
understood what was going to happen, that indeed Hitler was bent on
taking over at least Europe, if not more, and that America should
know about this. They tried desperately to get CBS in New York to
pay attention. They couldn't even get their own bosses to come to
grips with the fact that Europe was about to explode. New York was
ordering Murrow to record boys' choirs and dance bands. In fact
they wanted to do a program called Europe Dances, and they
would have broadcasts from various European capitals, from
ballrooms. That was what New York wanted.
Murrow and Shirer were trying to tell them "Look, the world's
about to blow. Are you interested? Do you think your listeners
might want to know about this?" They had a very difficult time. It
took the annexation of Austria by Hitler to get New York to pay
attention.
MH: Shirer wrote something incredible, page 33 of the book.
He was already a pretty formidable character on his own, and he
found Murrow such an inspiring guy. How old was Murrow then,
27?
BE: Close to 30.
MH: Would you like to read that section?
BE: Sure. He wrote this in his diary. I found it in a later
memoir. He did a lot of memoirs. They were all fabulous. From
The Nightmare Years:
"Murrow had fired me with a feeling that we might go places in
this newfangled radio-broadcasting business. We would have to feel
our way. We might find a new dimension for reporting the news.
Instantaneous transmission of news from the reporter to the
listener, in his living room, of the event itself, so that the
listener could follow it just as it happened . . . was utterly new.
There was no time lag, no editing or rewriting as in a newspaper. A
listener got straight from a reporter, and instantly, what was
taking place. The sound of a riot in Paris, of the Pope bestowing
an Easter blessing in Rome, or of Hitler and Mussolini haranguing
their storm troopers might tell you more than all the written
descriptions a newspaper reporter could devise. Going over to
radio, I thought, was going to be challenging and exciting."
MH: Isn't that amazing. It makes the hair stand up on the
back of your neck. You know they were aware they were making
history. Maybe that's another one of Murrow's great strengths, that
he had the vision to understand the vision of his medium.
BE: Murrow wanted to get up to the rooftops in 1940, so you
could hear the Blitz. This was 1940. People had heard play war and
heard dramatic programs imitating war. I don't think too many
people had heard an actual war unless they had been in one
themselves. There were some live broadcasts from the Spanish Civil
War battlefields in the late '30s. But most people had not heard a
war. And Murrow took you up to the rooftops of London and opened
the microphone, and you heard bombs dropping, you heard the
antiaircraft fire, you heard the police sirens and the whistles of
the air wardens. Pretty dramatic stuff in 1940. That had to make a
real impression.
And that was another important function of Murrow. The British
government was going to deny him access to the rooftops, because
they thought the German planes could hone in on that radio signal
and make the broadcasting house, the BBC in London, make that a
target.
Churchill understood that having Murrow do live broadcasts of
the Blitz for an American audience-America, remember, was
neutral-Churchill desperately needed American help. He realized
this was the best propaganda he could possibly have, to have Murrow
broadcasting to the United States and having Americans realize what
their British brothers and sisters were going through.
And that's exactly what happened. Churchill cleared the way for
Murrow to go to the rooftops, and he later credited those
broadcasts with the Lend-Lease, the act by which America broke its
neutrality. Roosevelt started helping Britain with old ships and
other material, all of this of course prior to the United States
entering the war in 1941 after Pearl Harbor.
MH: At that point Europe wasn't a world away. It was just
as far as your radio.
BE: Murrow's very vivid reporting started waking people up.
NBC did a great job, too, and sometimes would beat CBS on a story.
But Murrow had everything going for him. There was much more
glamour about Murrow somehow.
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