Weller's War: A Legendary Foreign Correspondent's Saga of World War II on Five Continents

by George Weller, Anthony Weller (Editor)

Walter Cronkite called him “one of our best war correspondents.” His stories from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific during World War II won him the Pulitzer Prize. Now, George Weller is immortalized in a collection of fearless, intrepid dispatches that crisscross a shattered globe. Edited by his son, Weller’s War provides an eyewitness look at modern history’s greatest upheaval, and also contains never-published reporting alongside excerpts from three books. From battlefront to beachhead, Weller incisively chronicles the heroism and humanity that still managed to triumph amid horrific events.

Following the Nazi seizure of Eastern Europe and his own “quarantine” in Greece by the Gestapo, George Weller accompanies Congolese troops freeing Ethiopia for Haile Selassie. He remains in doomed Singapore until the colony falls. On Java, he watches brave American fighter pilots delay the island’s collapse. Strafed by Japanese planes, he escapes by small boat to Australia. He covers the Pacific, from the Solomon Islands to the jungle hell of New Guinea. Back in Europe he sees a liberated Greece beset by civil war, then crosses the Middle East. In Burma, he risks guerrilla raids behind enemy lines. At the war’s close, he hurries from China to a defeated but uncowed Japan, where new horrors await.

And he struggles throughout against a tireless adversary—censorship. Vivid and heart-stopping, the dispatches of World War II reporter George Weller are as intimate, memorable, and relevant today as they were nearly seventy years ago—and demonstrate what it meant to be a foreign correspondent long before the era of satellite phones and the Internet.

Genres: History, World War II

656 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

George Anthony Weller was an American novelist, playwright, and journalist for The New York Times and Chicago Daily News. He won a 1943 Pulitzer Prize as a Daily News war correspondent.
Weller's reports from Nagasaki after its August 1945 nuclear bombing were censored by the U.S. military and not published in full until a book edited by his son in 2006.

Reviews

[Ted Mccormack · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at WW2 action in parts of the war about which not much is known: the fall of Greece, action by the Belgian colonial army in Ethiopia, the role of American pilots in the loss of the Dutch East Indies, etc. Much of Weller's reporting was never seen because of censorship, but some of that writing is in this book.

[Mark Fallon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a compilation of WWII dispatches from George Weller, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. Weller was covering the war in Europe and Africa before the US had entered the war. Then he followed the campaign in the South Pacific, while the Japanese were still advancing. He was with the partisans as they held of the Nazis and Japanese as long as they could. He saw the devastation as villages and towns were destroyed by the marauders.

What was amazing was Weller's criticism of how the war, and the victory, were being managed by senior leaders. We're often led to believe there was no dissent during WWII, but Weller surely did. As a result, many of his dispatched were censored, and he was denied access during key times.

Like many "embedded" journalists, Weller grew to love the men and women on the front lines. Soldiers, sailors and marines who risked, and often gave, their lives. He lived in the same lousy conditions, ate the same food, and went on bombing missions. Weller even volunteered for and completed airborne training, so he could follow the action wherever it went.

If you've read any of Ernie Pyle's works, you'll enjoy this book.