On November 8th, 1908, in St. Louis, Missouri, a future star was born. Martha Ellis Gellhorn was born to George and Edna Gellhorn. George was a prominent gynecologist and professor of medicine at Washington University, while Edna was a journalist, reformer, and suffragist who helped found the League of Women Voters.
Edna was incredibly involved in politics and activism, acting as an officer for nine years in both the St. Louis and Missouri State Equal Suffrage Leagues until the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1919.
During this time, she participated in a women's rights protest at the Democratic Party's national convention in 1916 named "The Golden Lane." Around 7,000 women attended, wearing white and gold sashes with the words "Votes for Women" written on them.
In the front row stood little Gellhorn, participating in politics at just 7 years old. This would become a hallmark of her career.
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| The Golden Lane protest on June 14, 1916. |
Gellhorn graduated from high school at John Burroughs School in 1926 before enrolling in Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a student there for two years before deciding to move to New York to become a journalist.
In New York, she worked at the progressive, political magazine New Republic and the Albany Times Union.
In 1930, Gellhorn headed for Paris, a popular destination for young American writers and artists, determined to become a correspondent. She left the United States with $75 and a typewriter before landing a job with the United Press news service.
She was eventually let go due to her report of sexual harassment against her by a man from the company. Unlike today, there was little to no protection for women in the workplace, especially from sexual harassment.
Over the next few years, Gellhorn traveled across Europe, writing for various publications, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Vogue. She wrote about her experiences during this period in her first book, What Mad Pursuit.
When she returned to the United States in the early 1930s, Gellhorn befriended First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, living with the Roosevelts for two months in the White House. There, she spent her evenings helping Roosevelt write correspondence and columns in Women's Home Companion.
"Martha Gellhorn has an understanding of many people and many situations and she can make them live for us. Let us be thankful she can, for we badly need her interpretation to help understand each other." - First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on Martha Gellhorn in her column, "My Day."
She was then hired by the trusted deputy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, to work as a field investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
She traveled with photojournalist Dorothea Lange throughout the country, documenting the effects of the Great Depression on everyday Americans. These reports later became part of the official government files for the Great Depression. It was this experience that led to her second novel, The Trouble I've Seen.
This was an opportunity that few women journalists were offered at this time, considering it was such a male-dominated field. This gave Gellhorn the chance to investigate tough topics before she landed a job in foreign correspondence.
Gellhorn met Hemingway while on a trip to Florida, and it was with Collier's Weekly where the pair decided to report together on the Spanish Civil War. She covered the bombings of Barcelona, the conditions of the civilians, and stories of soldiers in hospitals.
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| Chiang Kai-Shek, Ernest Hemingway, and Martha Gellhorn during the Sino-Japanese War. |
During this time, she also reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler before the war in Czechoslovakia.
As the Second World War began and intensified, she reported on the war from Finland, Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, and England.
"I followed the war wherever I could reach it. I had been sent to Europe to do my job, which was not to report the rears or the woman's angle." - Martha Gellhorn
In 1944, Gellhorn was determined to continue reporting on the war. The United States military did not want female correspondents reporting from the front lines, so Gellhorn snuck onto an American hospital ship.
When she landed, Gellhorn helped recover wounded soldiers and acted as a water ambulance, reporting on the everyday life of those affected by the war. On June 6th, 1944, she was one of the only women and journalists to land and report on D-Day, the first day of Operation Overlord.
After D-Day, she was arrested by British military police and stripped of her accreditation.
But this, of course, did not stop her.
She went on to cover major events such as the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, one of the first and longest running concentration camps built in Nazi Germany.
In her book, The Face of War, she observed the following about Dachau:
"Dachau seemed to me the most suitable place in Europe to hear the news of victory. For surely this war was made to abolish Dachau, and all the other places like Dachau, and everything that Dachau stood for, and to abolish it forever."
She later reported on the prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials.
TIME recognized Gellhorn as one of Collier's star reporters during World War II because of her spirit and commitment to telling the stories of ordinary people during the war.
Gellhorn continued to cover almost every war or military conflict following the war, including the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the Vietnam War, and the invasion of Panama.
"There has to be a better way to run the world, and we had better see that we get it." - Martha Gellhorn.
After a long battle with liver and ovarian cancer, near blindness, and frail health, Martha Ellis Gellhorn committed suicide on February 15th, 1998, in London.
Gellhorn was more than just Hemingway's wife; she was one of the first female war correspondents who documented some of the most influential events of the 20th century. She is a role model for aspiring and current female journalists and war correspondents who aim to follow in her footsteps.
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