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 Hôtel 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 hotels 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 wars 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 untilDecember 1, 1945, when theHôtel Scribewas officially vacated by the American military.

Ronald Weber is professor emeritus of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His books includeThe Lisbon Route,Hired Pens,Hemingways Art ofNonfiction,The Literature of Fact, andNews of Paris: American Journalists in the City of Light Between the Wars, which sets the stage forDatelineLiberated Paris. He has held research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Freedom Forum for Media Studies at Columbia University and has been a Fulbright lecturer in Europe. He lives in Valparaiso, Indiana.

Prologue A Hotel like No Other

Part I: Arriving

Chapter 1 The Canadian Connection

Chapter 2 Jeeping to Paris

Chapter 3 Mon Général

Chapter 4 PROs Move In

Part II: Staying

Chapter 5 Liberation Revels

Chapter 6 Good Quarters

Chapter 7 An American Crossroads

Chapter 8 The Hottest Noncombat Spot

Chapter 9 The Great Parisian Magnet

Chapter 10 Latecomers

Chapter 11 Upstairs

Chapter 12 Downstairs

Part III: Leaving

Chapter 13 Jeeping to Berlin

Chapter 14 Last Scrap of the Press

Chapter 15 The Guns Were Still

Chapter 16 Snafu Revisited

Epilogue A Hotel like Any Other

Acknowledgments

Notes

Sources

Index