![Edgar Ansel Mowrer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Edgar_Ansel_Mowrer.jpg)
Edgar Ansel Mowrer (March 8, 1892 – March 2, 1977) was a
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
-winning American journalist and writer best known for his writings on international events.
Life and career
Born in
Bloomington, Illinois
Bloomington is a city and the county seat of McLean County, Illinois, United States. It is adjacent to the town of Normal, and is the more populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington–Normal metropolitan area. Bloomington ...
to Rufus and Nellie née Scott, Mowrer graduated from the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
in 1913. From his elder brother,
Paul Scott Mowrer
Paul Scott Mowrer (July 14, 1887 – April 7, 1971) was an American newspaper correspondent, born in Bloomington, Illinois. He studied at the University of Michigan and began his newspaper career as a reporter in Chicago, in 1905. He was a corre ...
, the editor of ''
Chicago Daily News
The ''Chicago Daily News'' was an afternoon daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, published between 1875 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.
History
The ''Daily News'' was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty ...
'', Mowrer received a job and in 1914 went to France as a
foreign correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is usually a journalist or commentator for a magazine, or an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, locati ...
. From there he reported on events throughout the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, including the Italians' defeat at the
Battle of Caporetto
The Battle of Caporetto (also known as the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, the Battle of Kobarid or the Battle of Karfreit) was a battle on the Italian front of World War I.
The battle was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Central ...
. In 1916, he married
Lilian Thomson; the two had a daughter, Diana, and would remain together until Mowrer's death 61 years later. In May 1915 he was assigned to the Rome office of the Chicago Daily News, and there he interviewed
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
, then a Socialist, who was urging Italy to enter the war on the side of the Allies. After his marriage in London in February 1916, Mowrer returned with his wife to Italy, where he covered the battlefronts and witnessed the Italian defeat at Caporetto in 1917.
Mowrer remained a correspondent in Europe throughout the 1920s and 1930s, living in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
for eight years until 1923, before moving to
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. In 1933, Mowrer won the
Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence
{{Pulitzer
The Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence was awarded from 1929 to 1947.
Winners
*1929: Paul Scott Mowrer of the ''Chicago Daily News'', for his coverage of international affairs including the Franco-British Naval Pact and Germany's campai ...
for his reporting on the rise of
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
in Germany, and was named president of the
Berlin Foreign Press Association. In his dispatches from Germany he had managed to cut below the patina of normalcy to capture events that challenged the belief that Germany's transformation was democratic and natural; he was therefore a target of Nazi ire. In addition to reporting for the ''Chicago Daily News'', Mowrer wrote a best-selling book,
Germany Puts the Clock Back'' published in 1933, which had angered Nazi officials to the point where Mowrer's friends believed he faced mortal danger.
The German government openly pressured him to leave the country, with Germany's ambassador to the United States notifying the State Department that because of the "people's righteous indignation" the government could no longer hope to keep Mowrer free from harm. When the ''Chicago Daily News'' learned about the threats,
Frank Knox
William Franklin Knox (January 1, 1874 – April 28, 1944) was an American politician, newspaper editor and publisher. He was also the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1936, and Secretary of the Navy under Franklin D. Roosevelt during ...
, the owner of the newspaper, offered Mowrer a position in the paper’s bureau in
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
. Mowrer, who did not want to leave Germany, agreed to leave before covering the annual Nazi Party spectacle in Nuremberg set to begin 1 September 1933. After American diplomatic missions to Germany refused to guarantee his and his family's safety, and after a futile personal appeal to newly appointed US ambassador to Germany
William Dodd, Mowrer agreed to depart immediately, in return for the release of
Paul Goldmann, an elderly Jewish correspondent for the Austrian newspaper ''
Neue Freie Presse
''Neue Freie Presse'' ("New Free Press") was a Viennese newspaper founded by Adolf Werthner together with the journalists Max Friedländer and Michael Etienne on 1 September 1864 after the staff had split from the newspaper ''Die Presse''. It ex ...
'', who was being held by the Gestapo for high treason.
A Nazi official, assigned to make sure Mowrer actually left Berlin, approached him as he was boarding the train and asked when he was coming back to Germany; Mowrer answered: "Why, when I can come back with about two million of my countrymen." Although he’d initially been given a post in Tokyo, upon leaving Berlin he went to Paris and took over as the
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
bureau chief for the ''Chicago Daily News'',
continuing to report on European affairs until France's defeat by German forces in 1940.
Upon his return to the United States Mowrer lectured for a time to American audiences, warning them of the burgeoning power of Fascism. Although he had expected to be sent to Tokyo, Mowrer was assigned in January 1934 to replace his brother as chief of the Paris bureau of the Chicago Daily News.
From this vantage the point he covered the events that led to the outbreak of World War II, and he acquired a growing distrust of plebiscites and treaties. In 1936 he covered the beginning of the civil war in Spain and visited the Soviet Union to report on the adoption of the new Soviet constitution.
Upon his return to France he witnessed the fall of the Popular Front government headed by his friend Leon Blum. He visited China for a few months in 1938 to gather material for his book The Dragon Wakes. A Report from China (Morrow, 1939) and then returned to Paris, where he remained until the fall of France in June 1940.
Assigned in August 1940 to Washington, D.C. as a correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, Mowrer collaborated with William J. Donovan on a series of articles on fifth-column activities in Europe. Several trips to the Far East in the next two years resulted in the book Global War: An Atlas of World Strategy (McClelland, 1942), which he wrote in co-operation with Marthe Rajchman.
From 1941 to 1943 he served as deputy director of the Office of Facts and Figures in the Office of War Information and broadcast news analyses from his post in Washington. In his postwar book The Nightmare of American Foreign Policy (Knopf, 1948) Mowrer criticized the foreign policy of the United States since 1918.
He expressed pessimism about the American love of the status quo and warned that the United States must choose between “world leadership and rapid decline.” He advocated a voluntary federation, strong enough to keep world order by the enforcement of world law. He maintained that the United Nations, which he described as “an unfinished bridge leading nowhere,” was inadequate to undertake this task.
W. Fox, writing in the New York Times (October 31, 1948), called the book “incomparably the best study of American foreign policy for this period that has yet been written.” Pursuing his ideas on international organization further in Challenge and Decision:
A Program for the Times of Crisis Ahead (McGraw, 1950), Mowrer urged the United States to take the lead in forming a “peace coalition” and the ultimate federation of non-Communist countries, with the aim of weakening the “expansionist bloc.” M. S. Watson noted in the Saturday Review of Literature (December 9, 1950) that Mowrer’s program resembled that of the United World Federalists.
In his A Good Time to be Alive (Duell, 1959), a collection of articles he wrote for the Saturday Review, Zionist Quarterly, Western World, and the New Leader, Mowrer surveyed the impact of world affairs upon the United States.
He suggested that Soviet successes were compelling Western peoples to “pull themselves together in a real effort to survive as free men,” and concluded that America’s pioneer spirit was “still warm beneath the ashes of self-indulgence.” Mowrer’s most recent book, An End to Make-Believe (Duell, 1961), analyzes the history of the cold war and its meaning to Americans.
In it he contrasts what he calls the “fanatical ambition of international Communism with the unshakeable complacency of most Americans,” and maintains that in “the sinister game of international poker forced on us by Moscow and Peiping” the West still “holds the aces” but needs “bolder, better players.”
Returning to the United States, Mowrer served as the Deputy Director, first of the Office of Facts and Figures, then, after the OFF's consolidation, of the
Office of War Information
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II. The OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other ...
, from 1942 until 1943. Upon his departure, he started his column "Edgar Mowrer on World Affairs," which he later supplemented with a column entitled "What's Your Question on World Affairs?" After the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Mowrer wrote a number of books and helped organize the
Americans for Democratic Action
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) is a liberal American political organization advocating progressive policies. ADA views itself as supporting social and economic justice through lobbying, grassroots organizing, research, and supporting prog ...
. In 1956, he took over as editor of ''
Western World
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and state (polity), states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania. '' magazine, a position he held for four years. In 1969, he moved to
Wonalancet, New Hampshire
Wonalancet is an unincorporated community in the northwestern corner of the town of Tamworth in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. Many popular hiking trails into the Sandwich Range of the White Mountains have trailheads in the area ...
and wrote a column for ''
The Union Leader
The ''New Hampshire Union Leader'' is a daily newspaper from Manchester, the largest city in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. On Sundays, it publishes as the ''New Hampshire Sunday News.''
Founded in 1863, the paper was best known for the conse ...
'' until 1976.
Works
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References
Further reading
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Grant Duff, Shiela, ''The Parting of Ways: A Personal Account of the Thirties''. Memoir by a British reporter who mentored under Mowrer
*
Kolnai, Aurel, ''
The War Against the West
''The War Against the West'' is a critical study of German National Socialism written by Aurel Kolnai and published in 1938. It describes German National Socialism as diametrically opposed to the lassicalliberal, democratic, Constitutional, and ...
''
Chapter 5 - Faith And Thought
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mowrer, Edgar Ansel
1892 births
1977 deaths
American male journalists
American expatriates in Germany
American expatriates in France
20th-century American journalists
Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence winners
University of Michigan alumni
Chicago Daily News people
Viennese interwar correspondents
People of the United States Office of War Information
American expatriates in Italy