Century's Witness: The Extraordinary Life of Journalist Wallace Carroll
10Author Mary L McNeil speaks with Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy historian Steph Hinnershitz, PhD, to discuss the life and legacy of journalist Wallace Carrol.
Wallace Carroll, although largely unknown today, was one of the most intelligent and respected journalists of the 20th century. Beginning with his first piece covering the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929 through to the withdrawal of the United States from the Vietnam War in 1973, he was witness to most of the historic events of his time.
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A diplomatic reporter in Europe during the 1930s, Carroll covered the Spanish Civil War, and was appointed head of United Press’s office in London in 1939, charged with covering the upcoming conflict with Germany. After reporting on the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz, he made his way into the Soviet Union following the Nazi invasion in 1941, returning through Asia to land in Pearl Harbor just days after the Japanese attack. This made him one of the first correspondents to report on the devastation.
After his return from the Soviet Union, Carroll was recruited to head up European Operations for the U.S. Office of War information, tasked with “winning the hearts and minds” of those captured under the Nazi boot. His appointment made him the Allied counterpart of Josef Goebbels. Following the war he returned to journalism, becoming news editor for the Washington Bureau of The New York Times and then, shunning the national spotlight, editor and publisher of the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel. While there he covered the demise of the tobacco industry, the de-segregation of schools, the Vietnam War and the nascent environmental movement.
Universally revered in the newsroom, Carroll’s story is particularly relevant today, as the world faces the war in Ukraine and continued attacks on the truth. What the West failed to understand, Carroll wrote more than eighty years ago, was the power of Hitler’s propaganda, which the Allies never overcame. It had been enabled by more than ten years of lies and fear-mongering. Long-term exposure to such propaganda could cause a similar result elsewhere, warned Carroll, “the Hitler legend would bear watching.”
Mary Llewellyn McNeil is a former editor and writer for the Congressional Quarterly and the primary author of Environment and Health, Reagan’s First Year, and The Nuclear Age. She has worked as an editor at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy of Sciences, and as a journalist at the Winston-Salem Journal. During a twenty-eight year career at the World Bank she launched two global publications, The Urban Age and Development Outreach, and wrote Demanding Good Governance, Lessons from Social Accountability Initiatives in Africa. A graduate of Wake Forest University and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, she resides in Washington D.C. with her husband and three daughters. This is her first full-length biography.