Jay Cooke Allen Jr. (Seattle, 7 July 1900 Carmel, 20 December 1972) was an American journalist. He worked mostly for the Chicago Tribune, though his contributions appeared also in many other US newspapers, especially between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s. He is known mostly as a foreign correspondent active during the Spanish Civil War; his interview with Francisco Franco, report from Badajoz and interview with José Antonio Primo de Rivera are at times considered 3 most important journalistic accounts of the conflict and made enormous impact around the globe. His work as war correspondent is extremely controversial: some consider him a model of impartial, investigative journalism, and some think his work an exemplary case of ideologically motivated manipulation and fake news.
Early career (before 1936)
Infancy and youth
His father Jay Cooke Allen (1868–1948)Jay Cooke Allen, Sr., [in:] Geni [accessed March 15, 2022] was born in Kentucky but he settled in Seattle and practiced as an attorney;Maxine Block, Anna Herthe Rothe, Marjorie Dent Candee, Current Biography Yearbook vol. 2, New York 1961, p. 20 his mother Jeanne Maud Lynch (1876–1901)Jeanne Maud Allen, [in:] Geni [accessed March 15, 2022] was a first generation Irish-American. She died due to tuberculosis when Jay was 15-months old. The religion-motivated legal battle for custody over Jay ensued between Jeanne's Catholic relatives and the Methodist father, who eventually emerged victorious. Some authors speculate that the episode might have influenced later Allen's hostility towards the Catholic Church.Paul Preston, We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War, London 2012, ISBN 9781780337425, page unavailable, see chapter Talking with Franco, Trouble with Hitler: Jay Allen However, Allen's juvenile relations with his father were also tense, since Jay Allen Sr. became a violent alcohol addict.Preston 2012 Jay left home in his early teens and moved to the East Coast, where he became the boarder at the Pullman College in Washington. After graduation Jay Allen Jr. entered an unidentified faculty at the Harvard, where he received his master's degree in 1920.Vassar Miscellany News 01.03.1939 [accessed March 15, 2022] Afterwards in the early 1920s he was employed by The Portland Oregonian.New York Times 22.12.1972 [accessed March 15, 2022]
In Paris
In 1924 Allen married Ruth Myrtle Austin (1899–1990),some sources claim she died in 2002, Ruth Myrtle Allen, [in:] Geni [accessed March 15, 2022] a woman from Woodburn in Oregon;Descendants of Thomas (Bybby) Bybee, [in:] Genealogy [accessed March 15, 2022] on their honeymoon the couple went to France. When in Paris they befriended Ernest Hemingway, who tipped Allen off that he was about to resign his job with the Paris office of the Chicago Daily Tribune. Allen immediately applied for the vacancy and was successful. In 1925 he joined the paper's foreign service; Allen's first signed correspondence in Tribune is dated February 19, 1926.The Chicago Tribune 19.02.1926 [accessed March 15, 2022] His only son Jay Cooke Michael (later an Episcopal priest and dean of the Berkeley Divinity School) was born in Paris in 1927. Between 1924 and 1934 Allen remained formally based in France though he spent long spells abroad, especially in Geneva, where he reported from the League of Nations.compare his correspondence in Chicago Sunday Tribune 07.02.1932 [accessed March 15, 2022] At the time he covered events in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland and the Balkans. "Foreign correspondents in the Spanish Civil War" by Paul Preston. Instituto Cervantes in Spanish As foreign correspondent Allen travelled extensively across Europe and went as far as to the Polish-Lithuanian border.The Chicago Tribune 08.08.1928 [accessed March 15, 2022]
In Spain
Allen's job took him to Spain a few times in the late 1920s; he briefly resided in Madrid in 1930. The Allens became close friends to an aristocrat turned radical socialist Constancia de la Mora, who in turn introduced them to numerous left-wing activists. He settled in Madrid again in early 1934, this time with the intention to go on as a journalist but also to study the agrarian question. Allen resumed his personal contacts with radical left-wing journalists, intellectuals, artists and politicians. He forged friendship with Juan Negrín, Luis Araquistáin, Julio Álvarez del Vayo, Rodolfo Llopis, Luis Quintanilla and many others. Following the Asturian revolution he hosted in his apartment Amador Fernández, the leader of Asturian miners who went into hiding. In his correspondence to American press he remained highly sympathetic towards the revolutionaries; at one point he was arrested and interrogated by the police, but was soon set free. In the mid-1930s Allen settled in Torremolinos, in a hotel owned by a British friend.
Spanish Civil War (1936–1937) Interview with Franco
Following the news of the July Coup Allen immediately left Torremolinos and fled to Gibraltar; en route his car was mistakenly fired at – according to his own account – by "very nervous squad of Republican soldiers", who killed the driver.information of the incident was soon published in the press, see e.g. the Paris issue of International Herald Tribune 20.05.1936 [accessed March 15, 2022] In late July he shuttled between Gibraltar and the Spanish Morocco. As American press correspondent he gained access to the entourage of Francisco Franco and managed to securesome authors speculate that the incident with Republican militias firing at Allen's car a week earlier helped him to get access to Franco, as Luis Bolin, who managed Franco's PR at the time, assumed that Allen was a friendly pro-Nationalist correspondent what is often erroneouslyFranco was interviewed for Reuters on July 20 and for the French L'Intransigeant on July 24, Jorge Vilches, 18 de Julio: mentiras y propaganda, [in:] El Espanol 18.07.2016 [accessed March 15, 2022] referred to as the first interview with the general after the coup.Gannes, Harry & Repard, Theodore Spain in Revolt 1936 Left Book Club Edition, Victor Gollancz Ltd The conversation took place on July 27 in Tetuán, and the interview appeared in News Chronicle of July 29, 1936. Allen presented Franco in rather unsympathetic though prophetic terms as an excessively self-confident "midget who would be a dictator",Interview with Franco by Jay Allen in the 'News Chronicle, 29 July 1936, [in:] Bridgeman Images [accessed March 15, 2022] the person consumed by anti-Masonic and anti-Marxist obsession. According to Allen when asked whether he was ready to "shoot half Spain", Franco confirmed that he was prepared to save the country from Marxism "at whatever cost".this is exactly as printed in News Chronicle, see here. It is not clear what Franco said literally (assuming Allen's account is not faked), as it is not known in what language the conversation took place. Allen reportedly spoke good Spanish at the time, though the interview might have been taken also in French, spoken by Franco. There is no presence of an interpreter mentioned in the text This statement was also emphasized in the sub-title.Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez, Franco: The Biography of the Myth, London 2013, ISBN 9781134449491, p. 74
Badajoz
Allen's whereabouts between late July and mid-August are not clear, though he probably shuttled between Gibraltar, Spanish Morocco and the international zone of Tanger. At some time – the exact date remains disputed – he flew from Tanger to Lisbon and then drove to the border town of Elvas. According to his own claim, on August 23 he visited Badajoz, the city taken by the Nationalist troops on August 14.Southworth, Herbert R. El mito de la cruzada de Franco. [The Myth of Franco's Crusade] Random House Mondadori. Barcelona. 2008. In late August he was back in Tanger.Moíses Domínguez Núñez, Jay Allen, el ‘Gran Houdini’ del periodismo de guerra, [in:] Historia en Libertad 14.07.2014 [accessed March 15, 2022] On August 30, 1936 The Chicago Tribune published his correspondence, titled Slaughter of 4,000 at Badajoz, ‘City of Horrors’ and reportedly written in Elvas in the very early hours of August 25.the heading read "The dispatch was written on Aug. 25 and sent to the cable office at Tangier, International Zone, Morocco". The very text began with "This is the most painful story it has ever been my lot to handle. I write it at 4 o’clock in the morning, sick at heart and in body, in the stinking patio of the Pension Central, in one of the tortuous white streets of this steep fortress town." The article presented bestial atrocities of Nationalist troops, including machine-gunning of 1,800 Republican captives in the bull-ring. Other episodes, reportedly either witnessed by or referred to Allen, included executions of children, random killings on the streets and the organized action of burning the corpses.full text in Slaughter of 4,000 at Badajoz, ‘City of Horrors’, [in:] The Grand Archive [accessed March 15, 2022] The article immediately became a media scoop and was for weeks and months referred in various newspapers across the world.compare e.g. a Polish socialist daily Gazeta Robotnicza 22.07.1937 [accessed March 15, 2022]
Interview with José Antonio Primo de Rivera
Following at least one more visit to LisbonJonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Gerald Brenan: The Interior Castle: A Biography, London 2014, ISBN 9780571316816, p. lxviii some time in September 1936 Allen entered the Republican zone. Thanks to his friendship with Rodolfo Lópis, at the time sub-secretary in the newly formed Largo Caballero government, he managed to secure interview with José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the Falange leader imprisoned since March and held in the Alicante prison. The interview, in presence of anarchist militiamen, took place on October 3 in the prison premises; it was published in Chicago Daily Tribune on October 9, 1936.full text in La entrevista con Jay Allen en Alicante, [in:] Rumbos [accessed March 15, 2022] According to the publication, José Antonio expressed dismay that traditional interests of the Spanish establishment were taking precedence over Falange's aims of sweeping social change, though some scholars speculate that the prisoner exaggerated to curry favors with his jailers.Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge, London 2007, ISBN 9780393345827, page unavailable Allen thought his performance "a magnificent bluff".Stanley G. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977, Madison 1999, ISBN 9780299165642, p. 225 According to some, imprudent outbursts by José Antonio during the interview reinforced hostility of the anarchists and contributed to his later execution. Shortly before death Primo distanced himself from numerous statements attributed to him by Allen."until I was informed five or six days ago of the indictment, I knew nothing of the statements attributed to me since I was given no opportunity to see either the newspapers which had published them or any others. Reading them now, I must say that among the various paragraphs supposed to be mine, which interpret my thinking with varying degrees of accuracy, there is one I reject altogether: the one which reproaches my comrades of the Falange with having co-operated in the uprising with 'mercenaries brought from abroad'. I have never said anything of the sort, and though I certainly had nothing to gain thereby I made that quite clear in court yesterday. I am incapable of insulting the armed forces, which have served Spain so heroically in Africa", Jose Antonio Primo De Rivera. Selected Writings, London 1975, p. 267
American intermezzo (1937–1940) Ken