John Boll, professor, University of Wisconsin Library School, was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1921. His family left Germany in 1931, lived in Switzerland for five years, and immigrated to the United States in 1936. Boll joined the United States Army in January 1943. After basic training he volunteered for training as an interrogator which eventually resulted in his being promoted to technical sergeant and sent to England in April 1944 for further training in psychological warfare. Assigned to the 12th Army Group's Publicity and Psychological Warfare unit, his duties included acting as the unit's librarian and as a radio monitor and translator of German language news releases. Following the Normandy invasion Boll's unit was sent to France and gradually followed the “front” westward. After V-E Day the Publicity and Psychological Warfare unit became the Information Control Division which controlled the mass media in Germany through licensing people who in any small way might have affected news reporting. Control of the media by the Army was continued until civilian authority was reestablished. Boll was discharged from the Army in December 1945 but continued as a civilian employee of the Army attending the lesser Nuremberg trials until 1949. He came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a faculty member in 1956.
