William Randolph Hearst's oft-quoted remark that “News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising” may seem to be never more apposite than in time of war.Footnote 1 However, it may be that the immediate years prior to the outbreak of hostilities are just as worthy of study, if not more so. It should therefore be little surprise that the work of journalists in the 1930s is such a rich seam for historians. Deborah Cohen's Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War does just that and more, as it follows the careers of a band of American journalists who charted the collapse of democracies and the ascendance of totalitarian regimes across Europe from the Balkans to Germany. The book often reads like an adventure story, but one very much based in reality, or at least the reality of a close-knit group of journalists who existed in a world that at times manages to seem both far removed from our digital present and yet disturbingly pertinent to contemporary Europe (and beyond).
The book combines the adventure and derring-do of a thriller, with a biographical account of a number of historical figures. While this could potentially be problematic—and serious historians might balk at the writing style—it may be that the form of the book is driven less by authorial intent than by the lives led by the journalists it covers. Whether intentional or not, the writing style also helps shine a light on a number of people who have somehow vanished from view into the dark and largely forgotten corners of twentieth-century history. Take, for example, John Gunther, a regular presence on the American bestseller lists, whose books proved to be highly successful and popular between the 1930s and the 1950s (he had more American bestsellers in this period than anyone bar Daphne du Maurier) yet is largely forgotten today. Cohen's book aims to rectify this; indeed, on reading her narrative it strikes us that the surprise is not that the book was written, but that it took so long for these characters to be reappraised. And characters they were, both in the sense of professional lives—Gunther worked in every European county except Portugal and spent World War II as a war correspondent—but also in the lives they led. Hard-drinking and hardworking, Cohen's subjects can seem almost a cliché of journalism, yet it is a cliché very much based in fact. Working against a prevailing attitude of appeasement in the decade before war finally broke out, he and his peers worked to highlight not just what was happening in Europe, but where this might (and of course did) lead. The success of this can be easily measured in the fact that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, identified the work of fellow reporters such as H.R. Knickerbocker as a real threat to the Third Reich's plans, to the extent that Nazi spies followed the journalists across much of prewar Europe. As Cohen notes, “They began the decade by reporting the story, but by 1939 they were the story” (xxiv).
This is where the book is most successful. It traces Knickerbocker, Gunther, and his wife, the foreign correspondent Frances Gunther, along with another two other journalists (the so-called inner circle), plus a cast of orbiting characters, including the London writers Rebecca West and Edward Sackville-West, as their paths intertwine both professionally and socially. Not only did they sound an early warning alarm about the rise of dictators, but they also lived a life that the modern journalist can only imagine, often left to their own devices by their respective newspapers.
One of the most interesting elements of the book, and arguably one of its most pertinent for today, is also one of its most surprising. Despite the oft-heard idea that the best journalism should champion impartiality, the book illustrates the ways in which its key protagonists embraced subjectivity. It raises a number of key questions for contemporary journalism scholars, including whether in focusing on questions of impartiality, it may be more enlightening to consider if part of a journalist's role, especially in times of conflict, is to forgo objectivity for a more opinionated and even interventionist approach to reporting. Just as British journalist James Cameron would do during the Vietnam War, Cohen's subjects use subjectivity as a tool in their armor, if not to counter the rise of fascism, then at least to bring it to the attention of a world often still smothered in appeasement narratives.
Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is an engaging read for experts and non-experts alike, as well as being an example of what continues to remain an untapped resource for both journalism and (social) history scholars. For far too long the likes of John and Frances Gunther, along with their peers, have been largely forgotten due to the métier in which they worked and the mistaken assumption that in some way topical contemporary work has less relevance to our study of the past. Cohen's book is a much needed, and very enjoyable, argument that we need to rethink our relationship with the work of history's correspondents.
