Books for Warriors: The Story of Armed Services Editions

When many dads in my childhood neighborhood had fought in World War II, they rarely spoke of their experiences. My best friend’s father, an Air Force veteran in China, taught us to say “hot water” in Mandarin. Another dad burned his army uniform after the war. My dad, a Navy veteran, mentioned “funny paperbacks” associated with the war. Upon researching my book on The Great Gatsby, I discovered my father was one of millions who received books through a historic giveaway.

During World War II, there was a concerted effort to combat boredom among servicemen by providing them with books that were small and light enough to fit in their pockets. This endeavor was undertaken by the Council on Books in Wartime, composed of publishers, librarians, and booksellers. This distribution program contrasted sharply with Nazi book burnings that began in 1933. The Council’s motto, “Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas,” emphasized the importance of reading. America embraced a program to supply servicemen with books, affirming the freedom to read widely.

Col. Ray Trautman played a key role in this story. According to the upcoming book A Librarian’s War by Molly Guptill Manning, Trautman spearheaded the initiative not only to distribute books to troops but to produce them as well. The result was the Armed Services Editions (ASEs), those “funny paperbacks” my father had mentioned. Printed on pulp paper, ASEs began producing books in 1943; when the program concluded in 1947, around 123 million books had been disseminated to U.S. troops.

The greatest distribution occurred on the eve of D-Day. Soldiers carried ASEs in their pockets as they embarked on landing crafts. Among these titles, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith stood out as the favorite. The selection committee did not restrict choices to books they assumed troops would prefer. While there were cowboy stories, Tarzan tales, and suspense fiction, steamy novels like Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor proved popular. Among the 1,322 titles were classics like Moby Dick, biographies of Frederick Douglass and Queen Victoria, essays by Lincoln and Emerson, and poetry from Longfellow, Keats, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

It’s important to note that ASEs predominantly featured works by white authors. There were also attempts to ban certain books. Manning’s A Librarian’s War describes how ASEs seen as favoring President Roosevelt during the 1944 presidential election faced purges. Editorials and reader letters in newspapers protested these bannings. Troops themselves learned of the situation and opposed it. Manning quotes a soldier’s letter: “Mr. Hitler got his start by banning and burning books.” Ultimately, broad pushback ensured soldiers’ freedom to read continued.

If you’re eager to read more about Armed Services Editions, Manning’s earlier work, When Books Went to War, and a Library of Congress publication, Books in Action offer excellent insights. I visited the Library of Congress in 2012 to explore how The Great Gatsby, initially met with mixed reviews in 1925, rose from obscurity after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1940 death. A major reason was the ASE’s publication in 1945, when 155,000 copies reached servicemen.

The Library of Congress holds the only complete collection of Armed Services Editions. Anyone can request access. Holding one of these little books evokes the profound impact they had.