Leland
Stowe was born in Southbury, United States,
on 10th November, 1899. After graduating
from Wesleyan University in 1921, Stowe began work on the Worcester
Telegram. The following year he joined the New
York Tribune and in 1926 became one of the paper's
foreign correspondents. Based in France,
Stowe won a Pulitzer Prize in 1930 for
his coverage of the Paris Reparations Conference.
In
the summer of 1933 Stowe visited Nazi
Germany. He was shocked by what he discovered and wrote a series
of articles where he argued that Adolf Hitler
would over the next few years would attempt to take control of "Austria
and large slices of Central Europe". Stowe warned that within
ten years Europe would be engulfed in a conflict that would be as
bad as the First World War.
The
editor of the New York Tribune
considered the articles too alarmist and decided not to publish them.
Stowe was determined to reveal what was going on in Germany
and published the articles in book form under the title Nazi
Germany Means War (1933). Only a couple of newspapers and
magazines reviewed the book and it sold badly in both Britain
and the United States.
On
the outbreak of the Second World War Stowe's
newspaper told him he was too old to serve as a war correspondent.
As he was only 39 he was able to persuade the Chicago
Daily News and the New York
Post to employ him. Over the next six years he reported the
war from forty-four countries on four continents. It is claimed that
Stowe's articles in Norway in May 1940
helped force Neville
Chamberlain from
office as prime minister.
After
the war Stowe was foreign editor of Reporter
magazine and director of Radio Free Europe's News and Information
Service. In 1955 he began teaching at the University of Michigan and
also worked as a staff writer for the
Reader's Digest. Leland Stowe
died on 16th January, 1994.
(1)
Leland Stowe, New
York Post (26th April
1940)
Here is the first and only eyewitness report on the opening chapter
of the British expeditionary troops' advance in Norway north of Trondheim.
It is a bitterly disillusioning and almost unbelievable story.
The
British force which was supposed to sweep down from Namsos consisted
of one battalion of Territorials and one battalion of the King's Own
Royal Light Infantry. These totaled fewer than 1,500 men. They were
dumped into Norway's deep snows and quagmires of April slush without
a single anti-aircraft gun, without one squadron of supporting airplanes,
without a single piece of field artillery.
They
were thrown into the snows and mud of 63 degrees north latitude to
fight crack German regulars - most of them veterans of the Polish
invasion - and to face the most destructive of modern weapons. The
great majority of these young Britishers averaged only one year of
military service. They have already paid a heavy price for a major
military blunder which was not committed by their immediate command,
but in London.
Unless
they receive large supplies of anti-air guns and adequate reinforcements
within a very few days, the remains of these two British battalions
will be cut to ribbons.
Here
is the astonishing story of what has happened to the gallant little
handful of British expeditionaries above Trondheim: After only four
days of fighting, nearly half of this initial BEF contingent has been
knocked out - either killed, wounded or captured. On Monday, these
comparatively inexperienced and incredibly under-armed British troops
were decisively defeated. They were driven back in precipitate disorder
from Vist, three miles south of the bomb-ravaged town of Steinkjer.
(2)
The University Record (24th January, 1994)
Reporting for the Chicago Daily News, and later ABC, he covered the
Russian invasion of Finland; revealed the collaboration of Norwegian
Vidkun Quisling in helping the Nazis seize Oslo without a shot; recounted
the British debacle at Trondheim, Norway, which helped to weaken the
government of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain; witnessed
other German conquests in the Balkans; uncovered the scheme of Chinese
leader Chiang Kai-Shek to use U.S. military supplies against Chinese
Communists rather than the Japanese; reported how the Greeks drove
Mussolini’s troops back into Albania, only to fall to Germany;
and covered the Russian army from combat zones not accessible to journalists.
In addition to the Pulitzer
Prize, Stowe’s honors included the Sigma Delta Chi medallion
and award for Norway reporting in 1940; the University of Missouri
Medal for outstanding foreign correspondence in 1941; France’s
Legion of Honor; the Military Cross of Greece; honorary M.A. from
Harvard University; honorary M.A. and LL.D. and the James L. McConaughty
Award from Wesleyan University; and LL.D. from Hobart College.
Available from Amazon Books
