JF Ptak Science Books Post 2411
"I am the first woman to make a flight across London, in one of His Majesty's war machines; I am the first woman who has been presented by the War Office with a view of Hyde Park from an altitude of almost eight thousand feet."--Jane Anderson (1916)
I was somewhat surprised to see that this pamphlet was co-written by a woman—my
experience with WWI pamphlets is that it is vastly dominated by male writers, and I
would have expected it to stay so especially for this subject matter. Jane Anderson was an
interesting writer with a free style, and I can tell that she had a good time with her
experiences. She starts with this, and tells an unusual story in an easy way:
“Seven thousand feet above Hyde Park, an American Girl looked straight ahead and saw "the roof of the Sky" from
England's finest Warplane.”
An example of her writing on the sub: "When I looked at her lying with her exposed tubes shining in the sunlight and her bulkheads in strips of rusty
iron, it seemed incredible that she had been under the coast guns of the enemy, that she could have made
in her damaged condition a journey of three hundred miles, returning to a safe harbour with the information
she had been sent to obtain. And, added to this, was the fact that she had made the voyage in a high sea,
that for twenty hours, defenceless, she evaded the enemy patrols....”
The pamphlet really is worth a read, and it is available here for free via the Internet Archive.
The second part of this story is not so great--checking Ms. Anderson's biography
reveals an ugly twist and deep turn to the far and distant fascist/Nazi right. She was
certainly an adventurer, and at some point she winds up marrying nobility in Spain
and covers the Spanish Civil War--but she goes from journalism to propaganda
and begins to write and broadcast for the Fascist government. Her good works there
come to the attention of the Nazis, who pursue their interest in her. Anderson responds,
and goes to work in service of Adolf Hitler. She writes propaganda, and then is given her
own radio show. She seems to have been useful for a time, and then perhaps wasn't, but
she stayed in Germany until the end of the war, arrested after flight finally in 1947 in
Austria. She was charged with treason, but released for lack of evidence.
She survived herself, went to Spain, and lived to be 84, dying in 1972.
From Wiki, we have her wartime story:
"Anderson began broadcasts from Berlin on April 14, 1941 and when Nazi Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941 American citizens were repatriated from Germany but Anderson chose to stay there."
"Until March 6, 1942 she broadcast Nazi propaganda via short wave radio for the German State Radio's U.S.A. Zone, the Germans giving her the name ‘The Georgia Peach’. Her radio program was broadcast two or four times weekly and each broadcast began and ended with the slogan, "Always remember progressive Americans eat Kellogg's Corn Flakes and listen to both sides of the story," while a band played Scatterbrain. In her programs she heaped praise on Adolf Hitler and ran ‘exposés’ of the ‘communist domination’ of the Roosevelt and Churchill governments."
"She was removed from her position as a commentator when material in her March 6, 1942 broadcast was successfully used by U.S. counter-propaganda. She then appears to have been inactive until her return to her propaganda work in 1944 when she made a few broadcasts reporting the brutality of the Red Army on the Eastern Front."
"When Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945 Anderson hid out in various locations in Germany and Austria. Finally, on April 2, 1947 she was arrested in Salzburg, Austria and placed in US military custody."
Notes:
The specifics: "this pamphlet is composed of four articles, two by Jane Anderson; one on “Looping the Loop over
London”,[pp1-16] and the other on the “Submarine at Work”[17-22], the former published inthe Daily Mail"
and the New York Tribune, the latter in the Daily Mail and the New York Times. Also two by Gordon Bruce ; one on
the “Flying Corps” [pp 23-27], and one on “Mine Sweeping” [pp 28-36], which were published in the New York
Tribune, and in many newspapers of Great Britain."
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