World War II Oral History
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Contents
Oral History During The War
The use of oral history in the study of World War II goes as far back as the war itself. The first instances of oral history being collected, used, and written are seen in the combat interviews preformed by the U.S. Army’s Historical Section. Most of the combat interviews took place directly after, or very shortly after, campaigns in Japan and Germany. The main purpose or the use of the interviews was to reconstruct what had previously happened during the battle, as often times assaults turned into chaos. 1
While the first use of oral history concerning soldiers was for government and military purposes, World War II Oral History was later used to produce books. One of the first substantial uses of oral history was Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day, which was published not long after the war in 1959. Forrest C. Pogue, a notable oral historian who had been a combat interviewer as well as the founder and president of the Oral History Association, viewed Ryan’s research process on The Longest Day with a critical eye. 2
Ryan’s The Longest Day is a work of oral history as well as a historical work using primary sources. Ryan questioned the validity of oral history as a source and focused on the use of primary documents to complete his work. It was only after he had researched the primary sources that he decided to track down D-Day survivors. His book notes that he placed ads in newspapers and magazines in order to find men who had fought in the battle. Of three thousand men who answered his ads, Ryan interviewed around seven hundred, and used 383 interviews in the book.3
A dispute arose between Ryan and Pogue soon after the publication of The Longest Day. Pogue doubted Ryan’s assessment the combat historian interviews were not credible sources. Pogue brought up the example of the 1967 Colloquium on Oral History in New York when Ryan presented an example of his assessment. Almost ten years removed from The Longest Day, Ryan pointed out that out of 6,000 men he had interacted with, not one could tell him the temperature of the water upon the storming of Normandy’s beaches. 4 Pogue responded:
Combat historians, knowing that they would have journals, after action reports, and daily summaries supplemented by combat photographs and official art, were trying to fill in the part of the story that official records did not always provide. And we tried to get this information as soon as possible after the action so that we could actually inspect some of the area of combat or elicit from fighting men their immediate impressions of what had happened in their own small areas. 5
Because official records, such as weather patterns that could help determine the temperature of the water, combat historians were not necessarily looking for that sort of information. Thus Pogue’s assessment is very reflective of the present state of World War II oral history. He goes on to state that the combat historian's role, although very valuable to the study of oral history, often did not include a tremendous amount of areas to question and record. 6
The two men held very different views on the use of the oral history as already noted. While Ryan “rejected at least 90 percent of the testimony” that he received, Pogue’s view is the one that has been historically popular. Pogue believed that oral history acquired from these regular men, although they may contain factual errors, can be used by historians to reconstruct the events. However, it should not be said that Ryan totally disdained oral history accounts. In his acknowledgement of The Longest Day, he refers to the interviews from the veterans several times; however he does put a lot of emphasis on the documents that the veterans lent him for the work. 7
New Questions/ Directions
Another new direction that has arisen in the oral history field of World War II veterans is the question of homosexuality. Studs Terkle’s The Good War briefly touches upon the topic, however, in-depth reviews of homosexual soldiers during the war have for the most part been ignored.
Steve Estes, an associate professor at Sonoma State University, along with the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, has attempted to add to the historical record. Estes used more than fifty interviews with homosexual veterans to produce his book Ask & Tell: Gay & Lesbian Veterans Speak Out. Part of the purpose of his work is to advocate against the "Don’t ask Don’t tell" policy enacted during the Clinton Administration. 8
It has become very popular to use oral history as a learning tool. Service learning advocate Michael Spivey, a professor at University of North Carolina at Pembroke, notes the positive aspects of using oral history as a learning tool. He notes that World War II Veterans are “ripe for service learning through oral history projects.” This reflects the trend of having students and non-professional oral historians capture the stories of veterans. The ultimate question will concern the quality of the interviews and the overall product. 9
Related Pages
California State Military Museum
Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II
References
1 Roger Horowitz, “Oral History and the story of America and World War II,” The Journal of American History September 1995, http://www.ebscoehost.com, (accessed May 24, 2009), 618.
2 Horowitz, Oral History WWII, 618.
3 Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: June 6, 1944 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), Back cover, 332.
4 Alice M. Hoffman, and Howard S. Hoffman, Archives of Memory: A Soldier Recalls World War II (Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), ix.
5 Hoffman, Archives of Memories, x.
6 Ibid, x.
7 Horowitz, Oral History WWII, 619, Ryan, The Longest Day, 332.
8 Ian Lekus, “Ask & Tell: Gay & Lesbian Veterans Speak Out Book Review,” Oral History Review (2009), http://ohr.oxfordjournals.org/ (accessed June 2, 2009) 128-130.
9 Michael Spivey, “What’s New in Service Learning: Service through Oral History Projects,” Clearing House, Nov/Dec 2005, http://www.ebscohost.com (accessed June 2, 2009), 69-70.
