George Steer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Lowther Steer (1909-1944) was a British journalist and war correspondent who reported on wars preceding World War II, especially the Spanish Civil War.

George Steer was born in South Africa in 1909 as a son of a newspaper manager. He studied classics in England, at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford. He later became a journalist and war correspondent.

In 1935 Steer covered the Italian invasion of Ethiopia for The Times and reported that Italian forces used mustard gas. He became acquainted with Emperor Haile Selassie; the Emperor later stood as godfather to Steer's son. In 1937 he was sent to report on the Spanish Civil War. He won prominence with his report on the bombing of Guernica on April 26, 1937. His telegram to London described the German bomb casings. Next he was dispatched to Finland to cover the Winter War.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Steer joined the British Army and led an Ethiopian Forward Propaganda unit when British troops began to fight Italian troops in the country. After the defeat of the Italians in Ethiopia in 1941, Steer was influential in restoring Haile Selassie to the throne.^[1] Later Steer was sent to India to lead a Field Propaganda Unit in Bengal. The unit tried to break Japanese morale by loudspeakers with speeches and sentimental music.

George Steer died in the crash of an Army Jeep, which he was driving, in Burma on December 25, 1944.