John Steinbeck Goes to War: The Moon is Down as Propaganda

1. Publication and American Reception

X I I Steinbeck's optimism was not widely shared during the dark winter days of 1942, when the Japanese were still advancing in the Pacific and the Germans, having already marched through much ofEurope, continued on the offensive in Russia and in North Africa. In fact, his faith seemed dangerously naive to some influential American critics who were convinced that Steinbeck's message was bad propaganda because it made an Allied victory seem inevitable. These critics, who were led by Clifton Fadiman and James Thurber, believed that a superior propagandistic ploy would have been to present the bitterprospect that the war could very easily still be lost. Steinbeck's detractors also objected to his depiction of the N azilike invaders in his tale. He had done something unusual for a propagandist of this period . He had presented the enemy not as demons but as thoughtful and intelligent human beings committing evil. Steinbeck believed that the customary propagandistic hype would be ineffective among Europeans who were experiencing the occupation firsthand and who would know therefore that not all Germans were monsters . His critics, on the other hand, claimed that those Europeans would be baffled and even demoralized by such "idealized" Nazis. To be sure, Steinbeck had his defenders during the months inwhichthe debate over The Moon Is Down was played out in American journals and popularmagazines. PREFACE Among them were sympathetic literary critics as well as interested readers and foreign and domestic observers whowere confidentthatSteinbeck's effortwould inspire hope and stiffen resolve in occupied Europe. Not until after the war, however, did we know how the novel had actually been received there. Letters written to Steinbeck by former members of the resistance, along with the accounts of several European scholars and writers and the commendations accompanying an award given to Steinbeck by an appreciative Norwegian government in 1946, all suggest that The Moon Is Down was indeed popular reading as well as effective propaganda in much of Nazi-occupied Europe. But during the nearly half century since the end of the war, almost nothing has been added to the record about what actually happened to the novel in countries under German control-about how it was smuggled past the Nazis, translated into various languages, and illegally printed and distributed. Nor have we learned much about why it was popular in occupied countries, or, in fact, about just how popular it actually was. This study attempts to supply the missing details, as vital to our appreciation of Steinbeck the writer as they are to our understanding of propagandistic techniques and of the anti-Nazi resistanceinwestern Europe. Thosedetails are provided mostly through letters and personal interviews of people who were directly involved. XIV I have incurred numerous debts during my research and writing. The earliest is to the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Program, for giving me the opportunity to spend the summer of 1979 at Stanford University attending Ian Watt's seminar "The Historical and Sociological Criticism of Literature." I am grateful to Mr. Watt for his guidance of my major seminar project, later expanded into the present book, and for his comments on the completed manuscript. For early financial support I thank the South Central Modern Languages Association. Its overseas research award defrayed the cost of the European travel necessary for most of my interviews. For information about Steinbeck's work in government agencies at the time he conceived the idea for The Moon Is Down, I am indebted to John Houseman, Geoffrey M. T. Jones, Richard Helms, Archibald MacLeish, Thomas Troy, Kermit Roosevelt, Donald Morris, C. Brooks Peters, Joseph Persico, Norman Cousins, Pascal Covici, Jr., Richard Dunlop, David Schoenbrun, Alan Williams, Theodore White, Charles MacDonald, Richard Sommers, Larry R. Strawderman, and Roberta S. Knapp. A number of individuals assisted me in locating former members of the resistance and others with firsthand information about the translation, printing, distribution , and reception of The Moon Is Down in Nazi- PREFACE occupied Denmark, Norway, Holland, and France and in wartime Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, and China. I am most appreciative of their time-consuming efforts. They include Per Hasselgarde, Gordon H0lmebakk, Magne Skodvin, Geert Liibberhuizen, Mogens Knudsen, S0ren Baggesen, B. Munk Olsen,J0rgenErikNielsen, Antonio Carrelli, Giovanna Bernau, G. Debusscher, Henning Gehrs, Henrik Lundbak, Svein Johs Ottesen, Otto Lindhardt, Alan Williams, Charles MacDonald, JeanPierre Rosselli, Pierre Rosselli, Ingebj0rg Nesheim, Kristin Brudevoll, P. J. Riis, Carl Wandel, A. F. M. van cler...