Happy birthday, Ernst Jünger

It is the birthday of German writer Ernst Jünger (1895), who was a towering figure in German literature for more than half a century. Jünger self-published his first book, Storm of Steel (1920) when he was in his 20s. It is a memoir of his experiences as a German officer on the Western Front during World War I. Jünger was known for his right-wing views and his belief that war created a mystical experience for the soldier. As Adolph Hitler rose to power, Jünger kept his distance from the Nazi Party, though he didn't openly criticize it. He served as an officer in Paris during the occupation, where he met such artists as Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso. Jünger never retracted anything he wrote but in later years he said Germany's ideology of war before and after World War I was a mistake. His writing was very popular in France, and he drew admirers from around the world, including French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In 1987, at age 101, Jünger converted to Catholicism. Among his best known books are The Adventurous Heart (1929), On Nationalism and the Jewish Question (1930), The Worker (1932), On the Marble Cliffs (1939), Gardens and Streets (1942), The Peace (1947), Reflections (1948), The Glass Bees (1957), Approaches (1970), and Visit to Godenholm (1952). Jünger published on into the 1980s.

Shirer covered Hitler's rise in Nazi Germany

It is the birthday of journalist William L. Shirer (1904), who is best remembered for his history of Nazi Germany, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960). Shirer was a correspondent in Europe for the Chicago Tribune, then the International News Service. Edward R. Murrow hired him to help him cover Europe for CBS radio in the early days of broadcast journalism. Shirer remained in Germany during Adolph Hitler's rise to power and at the beginning of World War II, where he witnessed and reported on the growth of the Nazi dictatorship. After the war, Shirer advocated for a harsh treatment of Germany. He narrated this film of captured Nazi propaganda for the Army Navy Screen Magazine, a program that was shown to American soldiers overseas. The program was supervised by famed Hollywood director Frank Capra.

John Toland wrote of Hitler, WWII

John Toland

It is the birthday of author and historian John Toland (1912), whose book The Rising Sun, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971. Toland conducted interviews with Japanese government officials who had survived the war and pored over personal letters and official field reports from military commanders to construct a history of the Pacific war from the Japanese perspective. His was the first such effort in English.

Toland may be best known for his Adolph Hitler: The Definitive Biography (1976), an exhaustive study of the German dictator that reprinted texts of many of his speeches, including the earliest ones before he came to power. The book provided many previously unknown details about the man. Toland tried to provide an objective view of Hitler, an effort that drew criticism and accusations of being a Nazi.

Toland also wrote Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath (1982), in which he argued that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and top government officials knew in advance that Japan planned to attack the United States but did nothing about it because they wanted war with Japan. It was a position that drew much criticism from historians and journalists.

Toland once said he considered his histories to be drama and he tried to remove himself from the storytelling and let the characters act on their own. He traveled extensively to gather personal accounts and see the places where the history took place.

Toland wanted to become a playwright. When he was 14 years old, a playwright had  come to live in his family's home. He was greatly impressed and decided that would be his career. In his senior year in college, he managed a student book store and saved up more than $5,000 to go to Yale Drama School. While he was working he was offered a job by a man from Esso, the oil company (later Exxon), to become a junior executive with a good salary and go to the South Pacific. He refused the offer and the Esso man was incredulous. "What a waste of talent," he said.

Later Toland liked to tell people he made all that money so he could write, not because he liked to make money. "Otherwise, I might have eventually become head of Exxon. Wouldn't that be terrible?"

Toland's early career as a writer was dismal. He wrote 25 plays, six novels and 100 short stories. None of them was ever published. In 1954, he finally sold a short story to American Magazine for $165.

His first published book, Ships in the Sky (1957), was about dirigibles, including the ill-fated Hindenburg, the German passenger airship that caught fire and was destroyed at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. Toland interviewed survivors and presented a harrowing account of the accident in his book.