One of the many unfortunate realities of World War II was the censorship of so many letters to and from soldiers serving in the army. In December of 1941, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985 stating that from that day until August of 1945, all U.S. mail was subject to being opened and potentially censored. U.S. mail was censored so that if any letters got into enemy hands, they would not be able to discern any pertinent information regarding the war from those letters. Another purpose of censorship was to maintain morale back home. The United States didn’t want civilians to know how bad the actual situation was in battle. There was major concern that, should the public know how bad the war really was, the people would pressure the government to pull out of the war. Although censorship may have prevented information from getting to the enemy, it ultimately caused harm to the home front because no one knew how their loved ones in battle were doing.
Oddly enough, the role of censor was considered a fairly unimportant job. It was usually designated to a dentist or a chaplain. We are very fortunate that we have letters from a former student at Muhlenberg, Kermit Kistler, who had been a censor aboard his ship in 1944. Kistler did not write very much about this job aboard the ship. He was quite preoccupied with his other duties including chief medical officer, decoder, and librarian. We have a letter from the school to him that says, “it will be great to hear your stories when your duties as censor don’t conflict with what you might like to tell us.” (November 20, 1944)
Even though we do not have Kistler’s letter that prompted this response, we can still see the major issue with censorship. Kistler could not tell those he cared about what was really happening in war. Soldiers would often write something along the lines of, “I can’t say much or the censors will cut it out.” In some cases, the soldiers’ letters might not be sent at all. More often than not the soldiers would not be informed that their letters were not being sent. This was especially difficult for soldiers writing in languages besides English. There are records of letters written by Italian or Polish soldiers that were never sent because there was no one who could translate them for censoring.
Occasionally, the soldiers were informed if their letters had been censored. These young men away from home were desperate to write home to their families, but they didn’t know what would get censored. Sgt. Donald K. Kibbe, an American volunteer with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941, had whole blocks of his letters cut out. The Royal Air Force enclosed a message in one of these letters stating the following:
The recipients of these cut up letters were unsurprisingly unhappy with the lack of information they were receiving from their boys on the battlefield. In a country that values freedom of speech as much as the United States does, the choice to withhold the truth from the public made many people upset, especially since letters were not the only thing being censored at the time. The radio, the cinema, and television broadcasts were all heavily censored.
Newspapers were also heavily censored. John Steinbeck, a reporter during the war, commented that “…the truth about anything was automatically secret and that to trifle with it was to interfere with the War Effort.” Steinbeck and other reporters felt a responsibility for the moral of the homefront. The government relied on them to convey only the positive side of war.
Some people believed in total censorship of all forms of media. This was the first time a war had been broadcasted on the radio. Some people, like Robert E. Summers in his book Wartime Censorship of Press and Radio believed that there should not only be “censorship at the source” but also “voluntary censorship.” Summers wanted radio shows to actively make the choice to limit the information they were sharing with the public. As history shows, that was not always the case with the radio. Many times over the course of the war, both sides utilized the radio to spread propaganda or send coded messages.
Despite the fact that so many people were unhappy with the liberal use of propaganda during the war, others were grateful. For over two years, the public was not to be shown any negative photographs of war. The first time an article was printed with a photograph of a dead body was in LIFE magazine in the fall of 1943, featuring a photograph that had been taken ten months before. While these photographs were certainly upsetting, we will never know what the effect could have been if the public had been exposed to them earlier. Perhaps, if the public were more aware of the horrible atrocities taking place in Europe, it would have encouraged more people to support the government’s efforts in the war. Perhaps if we had entered the war before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the war could have ended two years earlier, saving millions of lives. Unfortunately, we will never know what the outcome could have been. Censorship of all kinds was used liberally throughout World War Two and caused frustration and emotional turmoil to all parties involved. While there may have been a benefit to the removal of certain aspects regarding location or number of battalions, was it worth forcing soldiers to not be able to share their feelings and stories to connect with their loved ones?
Citations
Communication: News and Censorship; Ken Burns, PBS https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-war/communication-news-censorship
Censorship! | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
Fiset, Louise, Return to Sender | National Archives; October 13 2023; Spring 2001; Vol. 33, No. 1
Kistler, Kermit; November 11, 1944; Muhlenberg Collection
Fister Gordon; November 20, 1944; Muhlenberg Collection
Letters Home: Wartime Correspondence from the Natale Bellantoni Papers; Hoover Institution Library & Archives; October 13, 2023 https://histories.hoover.org/letters-home/#:~:text=%2C%201944%E2%80%931945.-,Censorship,hands%20should%20mail%20be%20intercepted
Letters – The Muhlenberg Memories Project
http://www.muhlenbergmemoriesproject.com/chapters/the-forties/letters/
Martin, Susan; Censorship During Wartime | Beehive; October 13, 2023; February 19, 2014
Tuttle, John; Media Censorship During World War II | Starting Points; October 13, 2023; April 27, 2020
