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Walter Boardman Kerr

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This article is about an American journalist, publisher and book author. For an American writer and Broadway theatre critic, see Walter Kerr.
Walter Boardman Kerr
Kerr in 1944 (family archive photo)
Born(1911-11-18)November 18, 1911
Syracuse, New York, U.S.
DiedJanuary 10, 2003(2003-01-10) (aged 91)
White Plains, New York
Occupation(s)Journalist, publisher, book author
Years active1932-1982
Known forForeign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune (1937-1956)
Notable workThe Russian Army: Its Men, Its Leaders, and Its Battles (1944)

Walter Boardman Kerr (November 18, 1911 – January 10, 2003) was an American journalist, publisher and book author.

Early life and education

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Walter Boardman Kerr was born on November 18, 1911, in Syracuse, New York.[1]

He entered Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in 1925, and finished the school in 1930.[1] From 1930 until 1931, he studied at Yale University.[2]

Career as a journalist and author

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Kerr started his career in journalism in 1932 at The Post-Standard and joined the New York Herald Tribune in 1934.[3] He joined its European staff as a foreign correspondent in 1937.[3] In 1938 Kerr was in Prague during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia,[4][5] and in 1939 he was reporting from Finland, during the Winter War.[6] In June 1940, he was in Paris, when the German army entered the city.[5][7] Kerr had to move to Lisbon to send his censor-free report on the Paris occupation, which made it to the newspaper's front page.[8] In 1940, he was appointed chief correspondent for South America, but a year later was dispatched to Europe again.[9]

Walter Boardman Kerr at his Tribune desk
Walter Boardman Kerr at his Herald-Tribune desk

From November 1941 until April 1943, he worked as a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Moscow.[10][2] He was a true field reporter, being on the frontline and interviewing guerilla leaders.[11] In 1943, he visited Stalingrad and interviewed Lieutenant general Rodion Malinovsky and captured Nazi officers about the Battle of Stalingrad.[12][13] In 1943, he resigned from The Herald Tribune, joined the US Army and then the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency.[14][15] He spent his last six Army months collecting documents in Berlin for use in the Nuremberg trials.[15]

In 1944, he published his first book The Russian Army: Its Men, Its Leaders, and Its Battles (21 editions), which was a factual description of the Soviet Army during the war, covering in detail the Battle of Moscow and the Battle of Stalingrad, and contained a chapter on Soviet-Japanese relations.[16][17] It received a warm welcome in the Soviet Union.[18] In this book, he first explored the question of how the Soviet Army managed to stop the German invasion, first in Moscow and next in Stalingrad.[19]

In 1946, he returned to The Herald Tribune as a diplomatic correspondent and covered all the major post-war conferences.[20] In 1947 he became chief of the Herald Tribune's Paris Bureau.[20] In 1947, Kerr joined a four-man team of Herald Tribune reporters who spent ten weeks behind the Iron Curtain, covering life in the occupied Eastern European countries.[21] According to The Post-Standard, in 1948 he was awarded the Legion of Honour award from the French government.[20] In late 1948 he was recalled to New York to become foreign editor of the Herald Tribune.[20] As of 1949, he was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[22] In 1950, Kerr returned to Paris to become editor for both the Paris and the European editions. In 1954 he was appointed Washington bureau chief.[20] Kerr left The Herald Tribune in March 1956.[9]

From 1956 to 1961, together with his wife he published The American Abroad Magazine in Zürich.[3] From 1962 to 1965 he was the general manager of The New York Times International edition in Paris.[5][3] On June 1, 1967, Kerr was elected the president of The New Mexican, publisher for The Santa Fe New Mexican and several other newspapers.[3] He knew Robert M. McKinney, The Santa Fe New Mexican owner, since the days when he was an Ambassador to Switzerland under John F. Kennedy.[23] Having moved to Santa Fe, he also became a political adviser to Republican Governor David Cargo.[23] He left Santa Fe in 1990.[23]

In the 70s, Kerr started to work on a book about the Battle of Stalingrad and made several visits to the Soviet Union to gather information.[24][25] He was granted access to previously classified Soviet documents and came to the conclusion that Stalin had millions of troops concealed both from Hitler's generals and from the Allies, but deliberately chose not to use this resource at once.[26] Kerr published his finding in 1977 in a book titled The Secret of Stalingrad (15 editions). It gained good press in the United States, but it was poorly received in the Soviet Union where it was labeled as "imperialist propaganda".[27][28][10][2]

In 1982, he published his last book The Shabunin Affair: An Episode in the Life of Leo Tolstoy (7 editions) and visited the Soviet Union one more time the next year.[29]

Personal life

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Vivianne Lovell and Walter Boardman Kerr (family archive photo)

On July 8, 1947, Kerr married Vivianne Lovell, a correspondent for Agence France-Presse in Washington, D.C., where she covered the White House and the United States Department of State.[30][31] She was a daughter of Walter Howland Lovell, a World War I volunteer pilot and an American serviceman.[32] They had two children, Philip Alan Kerr (born in 1948), and Cynthia Boardman Kerr (born in 1950).[33][34][31]

Books

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  • Kerr, Walter Boardman (1944). The Russian Army: Its Men, Its Leaders, and Its Battles. New York: Knopf.
  • Kerr, Walter Boardman (1978). The Secret of Stalingrad. Doubleday. ISBN 0385134592.
  • Kerr, Walter Boardman (1982). The Shabunin Affair: An Episode in the Life of Leo Tolstoy. Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801414619.

Bibliography

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  • William L. Shirer (1940). Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent. Knopf. pp. 121, 126, 129, 411, 428.
  • Gilenson, Boris (1985). Дорога на Смоленск: американские писатели и журналисты о Великой Отечественной войне советского народа 1941-1945 [Smolensk road: American writers and journalist on the Great Partiotic War of the Soviet people 1941-1945] (in Russian). Progress Publishers.
  • Kluger, Richard (1986). The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune (1st ed.). Knopf. ISBN 978-0394508771.
  • Mashtakova, Klara (2009). Легенды и были Кремля. Записки [The legends and tales of Kremlin] (in Russian). AST. ISBN 978-5-17-058056-9.

References

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  1. ^ a b "Pot Pourri Yearbook". Phillips Academy. 1930. p. 77. Archived from the original on 2021-11-03. Retrieved 2021-11-03.
  2. ^ a b c Gilenson 1985, p. 463.
  3. ^ a b c d e "W.B. Kerr to Head Newspaper Group". The Post-Standard. 1967-05-24. p. 16. Retrieved 2021-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  4. ^ Sheean, Vincent (2011-10-02). "Praha, září 1938" [Prague, September 1938]. Respekt (in Czech). Retrieved 2021-11-03.(subscription required)
  5. ^ a b c "Walter Kerr, 91, Former General Manager of The Times's International Edition". The New York Times. 2003-01-15. Archived from the original on 2020-10-24. Retrieved 2021-11-03.(subscription required)
  6. ^ Kluger 1986, p. 305.
  7. ^ Kluger 1986, p. 306.
  8. ^ Kluger 1986, p. 307.
  9. ^ a b "Kerr, Former P-S Staffer, Quites Herald Tribune Post". The Post-Standard. 1956-03-07. p. 42. Retrieved 2021-11-04 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  10. ^ a b Volkogonov, D.A. (1983). Подрывные действия империализма в области общественного сознания [Psychological warfare: Destructive acts of imperialism in the field of public awareness] (in Russian). Voenizdat. p. 51.
  11. ^ "World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF RUSSIA: The People's Avengers". TIME. 1942-03-09. Archived from the original on 2021-11-04. Retrieved 2021-11-04.
  12. ^ "World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF RUSSIA: The Ice-Cold Hand". TIME. 1943-02-01. Archived from the original on 2021-11-04. Retrieved 2021-11-04.
  13. ^ "Nazi officers praise Russian leadership". Daily Mercury. 1943-02-16. p. 1. Retrieved 2021-11-05 – via Trove.
  14. ^ "Obituaries in the News". Associated Press. 2003-01-16. Archived from the original on 2021-11-03. Retrieved 2021-11-03.
  15. ^ a b "Drummond Wins Columnist Favor". Valley Times. 1954-12-21. Retrieved 2021-11-04 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  16. ^ Zausmer, Otto (1944-02-09). "The Phenomenal Army Russia Has developed". The Boston Globe. p. 15. Retrieved 2021-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  17. ^ Hepner, Arthur W. (1944-02-24). "How the Russian Army Fights: A Correspondent's Fine Report". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. p. 2B. Retrieved 2021-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  18. ^ Bolkhovitinov, Nikolai; Gilenson, Boris; Maslin, Mikhail (1987). Взаимодействие культур СССР и США XVIII-XX вв [Cultural interaction between the USSR and the United States of America XVIII-XX вв.] (in Russian). Nauka. p. 53.
  19. ^ Overy, Richard (2021). Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945. Penguin Books. p. 344. ISBN 9780141927831 – via Google Books.
  20. ^ a b c d e "Walter (Bo) Kerr Herald's Tribune Washington Chief". The Post-Standard. 1954-12-09. p. 7. Retrieved 2021-11-04 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  21. ^ "The Press: Lifting the Curtain". TIME. 1947-10-20. Archived from the original on 2021-11-04. Retrieved 2021-11-04.
  22. ^ Josephson, Emanuel (1952). Rockefeller "Internationalist": The Man Who Misrules the World. Chedney Press. p. 250. ISBN 9781588403049.
  23. ^ a b c Heil, Diana (2003-01-14). "Walter Kerr dies at 91". The Santa Fe New Mexican. p. B1, B3. Retrieved 2021-11-04 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  24. ^ Wilson, Victor (1978-05-09). "Stalin's WWII reserves were hidden from Allies, Germans". Fort Worth Star-Telegram. p. 8b. Retrieved 2021-11-05 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  25. ^ Janowsky, Jack (1978-05-21). "Santa Fe Claims One Walter Kerr Journalist". Albuquerque Journal. p. E3. Retrieved 2021-11-05 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  26. ^ Verdon, Rachel (2011). Lyme Disease and the SS Elbrus. Elderberry Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-934956-43-4 – via Google Books.
  27. ^ Levins, Harry (1978-05-02). "The Secret of Stalingrad". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. p. 3C. Retrieved 2021-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  28. ^ Cray, Ed (1978-05-22). "The lessons of Stalingrad". Los Angeles Times. p. 2. Retrieved 2021-11-05 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  29. ^ Mashtakova 2009, p. 130.
  30. ^ "Walter B. Kerr, Jr., Marries Miss Lovell; to Live in Paris". The Post-Standard. 1967-05-24. p. 16. Retrieved 2021-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  31. ^ a b "Cynthia Kerr Bride Of Mark E. Shannon, A Graduate Student". The New York Times. 1978-03-19. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
  32. ^ "Walter Lovell". MyHeritage. 2021-11-05. Archived from the original on 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
  33. ^ "Son born to Kerrs". The Boston Globe. 1948-02-12. p. 9. Retrieved 2021-11-05 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
  34. ^ "SOCIETY: Travel Film and Fair Features at Duxbury This Week". The Boston Globe. 1950-07-31. p. 11. Retrieved 2021-11-05 – via Newspapers.com.(subscription required)
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