page_title: Archibald MacLeish
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Archibald MacLeish / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982)
context_page_description: Archibald MacLeish was an American poet and writer who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. MacLeish studied English at Yale University and law at Harvard University. He enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris in the 1920s. On returning to the United States, he contributed to Henry Luce's magazine Fortune from 1929 to 1938. For five years MacLeish was Librarian of Congress, a post he accepted at the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1949 to 1962, he was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.
context_section_description: Archibald MacLeish also assisted with the development of the new "Research and Analysis Branch" of the  Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. "These operations were overseen by the distinguished Harvard University historian William L. Langer, who, with the assistance of the American Council of Learned Societies and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, set out immediately to recruit a professional staff drawn from across the social sciences. Over the next twelve months academic specialists from fields ranging from geography to classical philology descended upon Washington, bringing with them their most promising graduate students, and set up shop in the headquarters of the Research and Analysis (R&A) Branch at Twenty-third and E Streets, and in the new annex to the Library of Congress."
  During World War II MacLeish also served as director of the War Department's Office of Facts and Figures and as the assistant director of the Office of War Information. These jobs were heavily involved with propaganda, which was well-suited to MacLeish's talents; he had written quite a bit of politically motivated work in the previous decade. He spent a year as the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and a further year representing the U.S. at the creation of UNESCO. After this, he retired from public service and returned to academia.
caption: MacLeish in 1944
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