The remarkable Martha Gellhorn: how the pioneering journalist reported on the Spanish Civil War
In this video clip from an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, Sarah Watling reveals how the pioneering journalist Martha Gellhorn – wife of Ernest Hemingway – used her platform to inform readers about the Spanish Civil War
Who was Martha Gellhorn – and what did she do during the Spanish Civil War?
Martha Gellhorn is famous, obviously, as being the only woman who reported on the D-Day landings or who was actually there.
She's sort of remembered for two things. One is her incredible career as a war correspondent, and the other, sadly, is her marriage to Ernest Hemingway. And both of those facets of her identity are cemented in Spain. She hadn't really been a journalist before she came to Spain.
And what she does so brilliantly is that she writes these long pieces of reportage. She has a very elegant, very emphatic voice in print. And she's not just reporting on the latest statistics or what the armies are doing, but she is zeroing in on individuals … she's writing in this literary style. She allows for sections of description.
So she's bringing these devices that fiction would normally use to her reporting. And what she's trying to do is bring what is happening in Spain home to readers, maybe in the US. She's writing for Collier's, which has a mass audience in the US, and making them recognise what's happening in Spain and recognise Spaniards as something not foreign to them, but something that has significance for them.
And there are these moments in her articles where she says it's like walking through New York, walking through Madrid, but then you suddenly stumble upon a barricade or a trench or something. She's trying to bring that home to people.
Because one of the stand-out things about the Spanish Civil War that’s so shocking to Europe at that time is that it's the first time when major European cities are being bombarded. This is before the Blitz. Nobody in Europe… I mean, it's happened in other parts of the world, but nobody in Europe has seen civilians being targeted in this way.
So you could sort of imagine… this is a moment where you can imagine possibly London could be bombed, or New York could be bombed.
So Martha is trying to kind of bring that home to readers. And she really believes that the reason why people don't protest things like that is because they don't know about it. When she first starts writing, she really thinks that if she just makes people realise what's happening, then it will naturally follow that there will be outrage that will make a difference.
Sarah Watling is the author of Tomorrow Perhaps the Future: Following Writers and Rebels in the Spanish Civil War (Vintage, 2023)
This is an extract from the HistoryExtra podcast episode: Fearless female voices of the Spanish Civil War
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