Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley

fourth in all Europe. Both organizations—UP and CBS—were betting that war was imminent and were trying to snap up hot-to-trot journalists for the impending blanket radio coverage.
    On September 1, 1939, the German army rolled into Poland, an overt act of aggression that seemed to demand a response from the rest of the world. Murrow waited impatiently for the next two days for Britain, or France, or any leading power to come to the defense of Poland. Everyone in free Europe was waiting for the same thing, and yet nothing was happening. Murrow, making daily broadcasts from London over CBS Radio, tried to reflect the defiant feeling on the street. He concluded his September 3 broadcast: “The general attitude seems to be, ‘We are ready, let’s quit this stalling and get on with it,’ ” he said. “As a result, I think that we’ll have a decision before this time tomorrow. On the evidence produced so far, it would seem that that decision will be war. But those of us who’ve watched this story unroll at close range have lost the ability to be surprised.”
    Shortly after that Murrow broadcast, Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand declared war on Germany. Americans, proclaiming neutrality for the time being, were desperate for raw, hour-by-hour news reports from Europe. Cronkite had become a compulsive listener to CBS World News Roundup , with reporters broadcasting live from London (Ed Murrow), Vienna, Paris, Berlin (William Shirer and Pierre Huss), and Rome (Frank Gervasi). Walter Cronkite and Betsy Maxwell could no longer wait for the morning newspaper: They wanted to hear CBS over the radio from Europe in step-by-step real time. It was Murrow who made Cronkite realize that the days of stringers and passenger pigeons were over at UP. The wire service needed serious-minded and hard-boiled correspondents to cover every aspect of the gathering global conflagration. Cronkite fit the work-for-hire bill of the moment. In the United States alone, UP had more than 1,715 newspaper and radio clients, and nearly all of them would be running stories by Cronkite before long. (UP ended up sending 150 of its best reporters to cover World War II; five would be killed and over a dozen would be wounded, captured, or held as POWs in Germany, Italy, and Japan.)
    Cronkite had been working on the UP night desk in Kansas City when the news of Germany’s brutal invasion of Poland with tanks and Stuka dive bombers came across the wire that September morning. The regular night editor had gone home just before the alarming news from Europe came clickety-clacking through the Teletype machine. Cronkite had, as he later recalled, all the “excitement” of Hitler’s blitzkrieg to himself.

C HAPTER F IVE
    Gearing Up for Europe
    MARRYING BETSY MAXWELL—THE NEWLYWEDS—WIRELESS LISTENERS—POOR ROTTERDAM—COLOR BLINDNESS—EDWARD R. MURROW LEAGUE—MR. PALEY’S CBS—TRANSFER TO THE BIG APPLE—DONNING THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT UNIFORM—CAREER AHEAD OF MARRIAGE—AT A BRITISH PORT—MISADVENTURES ON THE U.S.S. TEXAS —SLINKING HOME ACROSS THE ATLANTIC—LEARNING THE ROPES OF TRANSMISSION—CATCHING A BREAK AT THE UNITED PRESS
    W alter Cronkite married Betsy Maxwell on March 30, 1940, in a formal ceremony at the Grace and Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Kansas City. Up until the vows, they had been courting covertly for four years, in violation of Kansas City Journal-Post employee policy. Because Cronkite’s UP columns appeared in the newspaper, this strict standard applied to Betsy and him. So the Cronkite-Maxwell romance blossomed with an illicit edge to it. When Cronkite, not wanting to turn Betsy into a sexual outlaw, popped the big question, she said yes . . . with an engagement ring on her left hand . . . and a promise that they’d soon have a brood.
    Cronkite’s Kansas City wedding was very traditional. The church was bedecked in calla lilies and ferns, and the bride wore an old-fashioned white gown with a long