Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) covered many of the biggest conflicts of the 20th century. Throughout her 6-decade long career, she was a fearless, fast-talking journalist and novelist who did whatever it took to get the story.
All month, we're revisiting our favorite episodes. Tune in to hear the highlights of Womannicans past!
Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know -- but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Leading Ladies, Activists, STEMinists, Local Legends, and many more. Encyclopedia Womannica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.
Encyclopedia Womannica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Liz Smith, Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard and Lindsey Kratochwill. Special thanks to Shira Atkins, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Ale Tejeda, and Sundus Hassan.
We are offering free ad space on Wonder Media Network shows to organizations working towards social justice. For more information, please email Jenny at jenny@wondermedianetwork.com.
Follow Wonder Media Network:
Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today we are talking about a woman who covered many of the biggest conflicts of the 20th century. Throughout her 6-decade long career, she was a fearless, fast-talking journalist and novelist who did whatever it took to get the story. Her approach of centering everyday people, rather than the elite, provided a missing and much needed take on the news. Let’s talk about Martha Gellhorn!
Martha Gellhorn was born in St. Louis, Missouri on November 8, 1908, to Edna and George Gellhorn. Her mother was an outspoken suffragist and her father a gynecologist. As the daughter of progressive parents, Martha was exposed to activism from a young age. When she was 7 years old, her mother brought her to “The Golden Lane” demonstration, a women’s suffrage rally at the 1916 Democratic National Convention in St. Louis.
Her parents also emphasized fact and candor, so much so that her father pulled her out of a convent school she was attending when he discovered the nuns were covering up educational pictures of the female body in anatomy textbooks. Martha was then enrolled at a much more liberal private school that her mother co-founded. She graduated in 1926.
Following in her mother’s footsteps, Martha attended Bryn Mawr College. She studied French for a year before leaving in 1927 to pursue her passion - a career in journalism. Martha first put her talents to work at The New Republic magazine and then became a crime reporter in Albany, New York.
In 1930, Martha took her talents abroad. She secured a spot on the Holland American Ship Line destined for Europe by writing a brochure for the company. She traveled throughout the continent working odd jobs here and there to finance her adventures.
While in Paris, Martha met French philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel. He was in the midst of a divorce so the two never officially married, but they presented as husband and wife. He returned to St. Louis with her in 1932 and accompanied her across the American Southwest in her role as a reporter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
Martha’s love of writing extended into fiction. At age 25 she published her first novel, What Mad Pursuit. It tells the story of three friends who leave college prematurely to explore the meaning of life. In their travels, they find themselves in the middle of many sexual affairs. Although the book fell flat among critics, the story can be used as a quasi accurate account of Martha’s life before she was an acclaimed war correspondent.
It was around that same time that Martha was hired by Harry Hopkins, a top official in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, as the youngest of 16 reporters to document the impact of the Great Depression. Her candid findings told the stories of Americans across the South experiencing extreme poverty, sickness, and malnutrition. Martha’s profound writing earned her an invite to the White House from Eleanor Roosevelt. The two became fast friends. Martha temporarily resided at the White House serving as the first lady’s confidante and advisor on the first lady’s correspondence duties.
In 1936, two years after her separation from Bertrand, Martha met one of her literary heroes, Ernest Hemingway at a bar in Key West, Florida. Martha and Hemingway immediately hit it off and the couple traveled to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War for Collier’s Weekly. With only a backpack and 50 dollars in her pocket, her reporting on the war accelerated her journalism career. After her exposure to fascism during her 1934 trip to Nazi Germany, Martha aligned fervently with the democratically elected Republican government in opposition to Francisco Franco’s fascist party. She was deeply affected by the Republican’s loss in 1939.
Martha and Hemingway married in November of 1940 and spent their years together covering war stories with brief respites at a villa in Cuba. The marriage was contentious as Hemingway wanted a demure, dutiful wife and Martha was a brazen maverick who sought adventure. During their years together, Martha covered the rise of Hitler, Russia’s war against Finland, the German bombing of London, and China’s retreat from the Japanese invasion.
Martha’s journalism embodied her belief that “journalism equaled truth and the truth would inspire people”. She felt it her responsibility to limit her reporting strictly to what she observed and she was not going to miss out on any opportunity to do so. In 1944, the Collier Weekly hired only Hemingway to cover the arrival of American, British, and Canadian forces on the Normandy beaches on D-Day. Despite the snub, Martha hid in a hospital ship bathroom and impersonated a stretcher-bearer in order to reach the action. She was the only woman to land on the beach that day.
Martha’s writing was distinctive; she wrote about how the war affected the average soldier, instead of profiling the lieutenants and generals. One of Martha’s most notable pieces of journalism is her firsthand account of the Allies’ liberation of Dachau concentration camp prisoners. It would become one of the most searing reports of the Nazi extermination camps.
Martha and Hemingway’s relationship was tumultuous. She left him in 1945 after a heated argument in a London Hotel. She was the only one of his 4 wives to divorce him.
Martha was determined that her status as Hemingway’s wife should not receive more recognition than her journalistic accomplishments. She did not want to be a footnote in his life, but rather the protagonist of her own.
Following their split and the conclusion of World War II, Martha traveled around the world. She had decided she could no longer live in the U.S. because she viewed her native country as unnecessarily exerting domineering power over others. In 1949, Martha adopted a son from Italy, who she named George Alexander Gellhorn. She raised George as a single mother using the money she earned writing articles for various women’s magazines. Martha married again in 1954, this time to T.S. Matthews, a former Time magazine editor. The two lived together in London but traveled often and eventually divorced in 1963. Married life was not for Martha; it bored her.
Well into her 50s and 60s, Martha reported for the Atlantic Monthly and the London Guardian, covering the Vietnam War, the Nicaraguan contras, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1966, she flew to Vietnam to cover the war and her criticism of the American use of force resulted in the South Vietnamese government banning her from returning to the country.
In failing health, at the age of 81, Martha covered the U.S. invasion of Panama. Due to a defective cataract operation, her eyesight was restricted and she could no longer see the keys on her typewriter. Even so, she felt called to continue covering issues she felt were most important. When she was 87, she brought attention to the poverty homeless children in Brazil.
In 1995, Martha retired. She spent her remaining years in London and Wales.
Martha took her own life at the age of 89 on February 15, 1998, after battling years of liver and ovarian cancer.
Martha pioneered a spot on the front lines for generations of female writers. She acted without fear and demanded equal treatment in the field. Martha combined the skills of a journalist and novelist to vividly and remarkably portray the news of the 20th century.
All month, we’re talking about journalists.
For more on why we’re doing what we’re doing, check out our newsletter Womannica Weekly.
Follow us on facebook and instagram @encyclopediawomannica.
Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
Talk to you tomorrow!