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Kupfer, Charles. We Felt the Flames: Hitler's Blitzkrieg, America's Story. Carlisle, Pa.: Sergeant Kirkland's Press, 2003. 225 pp. $18.95.
In the spring and summer of 1940, as the German blitzkrieg swept over Europe and then halted at the English Channel while the Luftwaffe pounded England with bombs, presumably in preparation for an upcoming invasion, a second battle for the hearts and minds of Americans was fought in broadcasting, in print, and, to a lesser degree, in photographs. Slowly but surely the interventionists triumphed over the isolationists in the United States as the country drifted closer to active involvement in World War II.
Charles Kupfer, an assistant professor of American studies and history at Pennsylvania State University-I Iarrisburg, examines the part that the media played in this pivotal period in the war in an absorbing and well researched book. "It was the summer of 1940 when the story of the war began to be told in an American context," he writes. 'Americans needed news and interpretations regarding the war, and they got them. That is the point of this study."
In examining die news, and in some cases propaganda,...