A Single Wooden House Standing in Stalingrad: Alexander Werth’s ‘Russian Commentary’ on the BBC during the Second World War

Abstract

This article studies the reporting of Alexander Werth from the Soviet Union for the BBC during World War II. Werth’s despatches, broadcast mostly under the title ‘Russian Commentary’, sought to bring to life the struggles of an ideologically opposed nation that had become an ally against Nazi Germany. The article analyses Werth’s technique as a correspondent, situating it within the wider political and propaganda climate within which he was working. It assesses his work’s significance for the study of ideas of journalistic objectivity in wartime. It looks too at the optimism his reporting expressed as the tide of war began to turn in the allies’ favour—a change that Werth saw as a sign that the Soviet Union’s wartime alliance would endure beyond the end of the conflict—a hope that was crushed by the onset of the Cold War, and renewed enmity between Moscow and the West.