Dateline-Liberated Paris: The Hotel Scribe and the Invasion of the Press

by Ronald Weber

Vividly capturing the heady times in the waning months of World War II, Ronald Weber follows the exploits of Allied reporters as they flooded into liberated Paris after four dark years of Nazi occupation. He traces the remarkable adventures of the men and women who lived, worked, and played in the legendary H�tel Scribe, set in a highly fashionable part of the largely undamaged city. Press jeeps and trailers packed the street outside, while inside the hotel was completely booked with hundreds of correspondents. The busiest spot was the dining area, where the clatter of typewriters combined with shouts of correspondents needing hot water to brew coffee from military powder. But the basement-level bar was the hotel's top attraction, where famed war correspondents like Ernie Pyle, Walter Cronkite, A. J. Liebling, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Janet Flanner, Lee Miller, Marguerite Higgins, Irwin Shaw, Edward Kennedy, Charles Collingwood, Robert Capa, and many others held court while in the company of military censors and top brass. Weber uncovers the struggles between correspondents and Allied officials over censorship and the release of information, the heated press chaos surrounding the war's end, and the drama of the second German surrender orchestrated by the Russians in shattered Berlin. The elation of total victory was mixed with the abrupt emptiness of a task finished. While work on the Continent remained for journalists, it now dealt with the slog of the occupation of Germany rather than the blood and glory of war. Yet Weber shows there were many reasons to carry on after VE Day in this delightfully entertaining account of the hotel where correspondents were regularly briefed on the war and its aftermath, wrote their stories, had them transmitted to international media outlets, and rarely neglected the pleasures of a Paris reborn until December 1, 1945, when the H�tel Scribe was officially vacated by the American military.

Genres: Nonfiction, World War II, History

232 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 2019

Reviews

[January Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

We often read about the Holocaust but we forget about what happened to people after they were Liberated. Very, very few were able to go back home, and even then things were not the same. Well written and informative.

[Brian Page · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Dateline – Liberated Paris: The Hotel Scribe and the Invasion of the Press, Ronald Weber uses the Hotel Scribe to tell the tale of Second World War journalism, the golden age of journalism, using the hotel and its idiosyncratic correspondent residents as the framework. The story is packed with details on the famous correspondents who called the hotel home during the Allied invasion of France in 1944 and the conquest of Germany through the end of the war. It’s not all gossip and innuendo. Weber details how Allied press operations functioned while sprinkling enough juicy tidbits that provide insight into the personalities of the hotel’s denizens. Somehow he’s able to remain objective on such characters as Hemmingway and Higgins. Anyway, if the names A. J. Liebling, Hanson Baldwin, Sylvia Beach, Harry Butcher, Robert Capa, Charles Collingwood, Virginia Cowles, Walter Cronkite, John Dos Passos, Janet Flanner, Helen Kirkpatrick, Ralph Morse, George Orwell, Lee Miller, Ernie Pyle, David Scherman, William Shirer, Howard K. Smith, and Mary Welsh mean anything to you, then this is the book for you. You’ll meet them and many others downstairs in the bar of the Hotel Scribe. And as a big plus, Weber devotes a whole chapter to the painting, Bar in Hotel Scribe by Floyd MacMillan Davis.

[KDWeber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well done. Fascinating stories of journalists and The Hotel Scribe

[KDWeber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read!