Cornelius Ryan

Cornelius Ryan, 1966

Cornelius Ryan (born June 5, 1920 in Dublin , Ireland , † November 23, 1974 in New York City , USA ) was an Irish-American journalist and writer who became famous for his popular military historiography about the Second World War .

His two best-known books are The Longest Day (The Longest Day) (1959), tells the story of D-Day , the day of the Allied invasion of the Normandy told, and A Bridge Too Far (A Bridge Too Far) (1974 ). The latter describes Operation Market Garden : in September 1944 the Western Allies tried in vain to cross the Lower Rhine near Arnhem as part of a large airborne operation . Both books were filmed in 1962 and 1977 with a high budget and a large cast of stars.

Raised and educated in a school of the Catholic lay order Christian Brothers in Dublin, Ryan moved to London in 1940 , where he worked from 1941 as a war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph . First used in the air war in Europe , he flew with the Eighth and Ninth US Air Force on bombing missions. From 1944 he accompanied General George Patton's 3rd US Army and reported on its activities in Europe until the end of the war . He then reported on the Pacific War in 1945 and from Jerusalem in 1946 .

Ryan emigrated to the United States in 1947, where he wrote for Time Magazine and other magazines. After marrying Kathryn Morgan, he became a US citizen in 1950.

After the immediate success with The Longest Day , which he wrote from 1956, followed by other books, including The Last Battle ( The Last Battle ) (1966) about the Battle of Berlin in April / May 1945 with the Second World War in Europe ended.

Ryan was a member of the French Legion of Honor and honorary professor of literature at Ohio University , where the "Cornelius Ryan Collection" is located in the "Alden Library". Shortly after the publication of The Arnhem Bridge in 1974, Ryan died of prostate cancer while on a reading tour promoting the book.

Publications

• The Longest Day: 6 June 1944 D-Day. Fawcett Publications 1959, ISBN 0-671-62228-5 .
  • The longest day. Normandy June 6th 1944 . Sigbert Mohn Verlag , Gütersloh 1959.
• The Last Battle . Collins , London 1966.
  • The last fight . Knaur , Munich / Zurich 1966.
• A Bridge Too Far . Simon & Schuster 1974, ISBN 0-671-21792-5 .
  • Cornelius Ryan (Author), Emil Bastuk (Translator): The Arnhem Bridge. Publisher: Fischer, 1975, ISBN 978-3100688019
• A Private Battle (posthumously with Kathryn Morgan Ryan). Simon & Schuster 1979, ISBN 0-671-22594-4 .

Web links

• The Cornelius Ryan collection and biography at Ohio University
• Cornelius Ryan Collection of World War II Papers at Ohio University Cornelius Ryan Collection of World War II Papers | OHIO University Libraries
• Literature by and about Cornelius Ryan in the catalog of the German National Library
• Cornelius Ryan in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Cornelius Ryan in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)