PEN Teaching Guides

International Human Rights Writers and Free Speech Writers in Exile / Global Refugees Writing the Cold War Writing World War II Digital Collections

Writing World War II

In an international war, military repercussions and the consequences of violence are inevitable. But world war takes a toll in many other ways, affecting not only military and strategic targets, but also cultural and creative leaders, thought leaders, artists, and ordinary citizens. As a relatively new international human rights organization, less than 20 years old by this time, and struggling against its charter to remain apolitical, PEN tried to intervene in a cultural struggle which grew as deadly as some military actions. From 1939 to 1945 as the war raged, PEN worked to secure asylum, to intervene on behalf of writers, to provide supplies and eventually to participate in government sponsored efforts to fight fascism and totalitarianism. As PEN tried to help writers across the globe, the organization was sometimes constrained by the legacies of imperialism that helped to create it.

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PEN and the Turn to Politics

Throughout the war, PEN responded using the traditional methods of protest via correspondence and activism through speeches and public comments. But some members aligned themselves with organized government efforts to fight the cause. Some efforts, such as the Writers' War Board, actively engaged in the war by producing material in the form of scripts for productions to be screened in schools and colleges. Their goal, overtly stated in their first report, was to "create a liaison between writers and government agencies to obtain written work that will directly or indirectly help to win the war." Some writers heartily engaged in these efforts. But others were more reluctant, and believed that some of the writer-produced items of war propaganda were not sufficiently anti-Nazi. They feared they would be judged over time for half-hearted or politically insufficient efforts. PEN joined the effort of many writers and artists who tried to find a way to link their work and access to a public platform to the war effort.

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Contributions to Hollywood – Film Industry Efforts during World War II

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PEN in South Africa

The effort to include South Africa within the activities of PEN was a move toward geographic diversity, and to resituate some of their activism on behalf of writers outside Europe. But because the South African centre was Afrikaans-speaking, the only writers included were white, and their work reflected the same Eurocentric influences of writers already included under the PEN umbrella. This reflected the societal structures and racial hierarchies of the 1940s, but it can also be interpreted as a lost opportunity for inclusion that PEN could have initiated.

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Legacies of the War

While the fight with Germany, Japan, and the other Axis powers against the rise of tyranny seems necessary to end the threat of fascism, the legacy of the war also prompted certain beginnings. PEN would take up new questions sparked by some resolved as well as unresolved issues after the war. As countries took sides in what became Cold War disputes, new questions emerged in eastern Europe, east versus west Germany, and in the Middle East.

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Aftermath of Exile

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Postwar Reconstruction

In the effort to both reorganize after World War II and to continue the work of advocating on behalf of writers around the world, PEN opened centres in Cuba and Egypt, and rebuilt the PEN Japan Centre.

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New Conflicts: Israel

Among other conflicts that PEN had to negotiate, new disputes erupted after the post-World War II organization of the globe. One example can be found in the division of geography in the Middle East, including the political questions surrounding the establishment of Israel and Palestine. In addition to conflicts that existed before and during the war, new post-war geopolitical actors introduced new situations that threatened the free expression of PEN writers. Using a combination of advocacy and diplomacy, PEN leaders waded into the complexity which became the protracted dispute about the state of Israel.

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