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xi Preface O ne thing leads to another. Researching a book on FDR’s Office of Government Reports (OGR), I often ran across references to OGR’s sister agency, the Division of Information (DOI) in the Office for Emergency Management. Both were within the new Executive Office of the President. Trying to keep my focus on the subject at hand, I skipped lightly over the references to DOI. Still, it kept popping up. The two agencies were largely complementary and worked closely together. OGR focused mostly on the civilian side of the executive branch, while DOI focused on the temporary agencies created to ramp up production of armaments for national defense and Lend-Lease. OGR had almost no media relations activities, distributing its information directly to individuals and groups. DOI, on the other hand, focused largely on disseminating information indirectly to the citizenry through the news media. The two agencies were often mentioned in the same political breath when conservatives criticized the unprecedented scale of FDR’s public relations activities. The close interrelationship between the work of OGR and DOI was confirmed when, in June 1942, FDR consolidated federal information agencies into the new Office of War Information (OWI). OGR and DOI were two of only three agencies that were wholly abolished in the reorganization. The short-lived Office of Facts and Figures (October 1941–June 1942), headed by Archibald MacLeish, was the third. OWI also received portions of the foreign broadcast activities of the Coordinator of Information agency (renamed the Office of Strategic Services, later still the CIA), which continued in existence. There seemed to be a gap in the literature, with book-length histories of OGR and OWI, but none on DOI.1 So, this study, something of a companion volume to my earlier examination of OGR, treats the second of the three agencies that were eliminated in their entirety to create OWI.2 Still interested in the history of government public relations after finishing the OGR book, I wrote a short piece a few years later about the World War II xii Preface public information work of Bruce Catton, who in the 1950s and 1960s was a best-selling and award-winning popular historian of the American Civil War.3 Catton’s first book (before he began writing about the Civil War) is a memoir of his service as an information officer in the federal government during the war. It is a paean to Robert W. Horton, Catton’s initial boss and head of DOI.4 Catton begins his book with a vivid and gripping description of a formal dinner in Washington, DC, just days before Pearl Harbor. (A reminder that at this point the war had been going on—without the United States as a combatant nation—for more than two years, beginning with Hitler’s and Stalin’s invasion of Poland in September 1939.) The dinner was hosted by Donald Nelson , then heading the prewar armament buildup that was partly for national defense purposes, partly for export through Lend-Lease. Before joining the government, Nelson had been executive vice president and vice chairman of the executive committee of the giant retailer Sears, Roebuck. The guest of honor at the dinner was Vice President Henry Wallace, also (typically) tasked by President Roosevelt to help in that production effort. Other pooh-bahs included Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and two other major figures in the arms production effort, William Knudsen (former president of General Motors ) and Edward Stettinius Jr. (former chairman of the board of U.S. Steel). Also present, but much lower on the totem pole, was Horton, the director of information for the defense production effort. When the meal was over, all the high-ranking men there were invited by the host to give short afterdinner talks. According to Catton (who never says if he was present or not; probably not),5 Knox was very reassuring in his comments, including saying: “But I want you all to know that no matter what happens, the United States Navy is ready! Every man is at his post, every ship is at its station. The Navy is ready. Whatever happens, the Navy is not going to be caught napping.”6 Horton, so junior in status compared to the other guests, was not scheduled to be one of the after-dinner speakers. According to Catton, after hearing Knox’s comments, Horton quietly asked Nelson, if he, too, could be called on to make a few remarks. Horton proceeded...

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