The Overseas Weekly was an English-language newspaper published in Frankfurt , Germany, from to Its primary audience was American military personnel stationed in Europe, especially enlisted men and especially in Germany, reaching a circulation of about 50, copies a week. Sister publications eventually included Overseas Family and Overseas Traveler , as well as a Pacific edition during the height of the Vietnam War.
Conflict with the U. The OW was founded by an American civilian, Marion von Rospach, and three male colleagues who were then completing their military service. Air Force and left Rospach to carry on alone. By focusing on stories too racy for the official military daily, Stars and Stripes , OW had a circulation of 15, by , when the military establishment banned it from base newsstands on the grounds of " sensationalism " and denied its use of the printing and circulation facilities of Stars and Stripes.
William F. Knowland and filed suit against the Secretary of Defense, Charles Erwin Wilson , actions that succeeded in lifting the ban and increasing its profile. Rospach rented offices in the Frankfurt Press Club, contracted with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to print the newspaper and hired a staff of German and expatriate civilians and former U. An early hire was a German-born ex-serviceman, John Dornberg , who became the paper's news editor and later a correspondent for Newsweek and author of books such as Schizophrenic Germany [ 3 ] and articles about Germany and Eastern Europe.
To the military it was known as the "Oversexed Weekly". In an OW reporter broke the story of the "pro-Blue" program sponsored by Maj. Edwin Walker , commander of the U. Army's 24th Infantry Division in Augsburg. In a front-page story, the newspaper accused Walker of brainwashing soldiers with right-wing materials from the John Birch Society [ 10 ] In return, Walker condemned the OW as "immoral, unscrupulous, corrupt and destructive.
Army that October. Curtis Daniell, a recently discharged serviceman, became the OW 's executive editor in , when the newspaper reached a weekly circulation of about 50, As the Vietnam War began to intensify, Daniell hoped to publish a Pacific edition but was refused space on military newsstands in South Vietnam. Nevertheless, in he sent reporter Ann Bryan to Saigon to establish a bureau there, and in time she won permission to publish a Pacific edition of the OW , printed in Hong Kong and flown to Saigon each week.
