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Who Goes Nazi? (Harper's, August 1941) (archive.org)
4 points by clubm8 11 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment



Written by Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961). From Wikipedia

“Thompson is regarded by some as the "First Lady of American Journalism" and was recognized by Time magazine in 1939 as equal in influence to Eleanor Roosevelt. Recordings of her NBC Radio commentary and analysis of the European situation and the start of World War II (from Aug. 23-Sept. 6, 1939) were selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2023, based on their "cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage."”

“Thompson's anti-Nazi journalism and, in particular, her depiction of Hitler in her book, I Saw Hitler, led to her becoming the first American journalist to be expelled from Germany. On August 25, 1934 she received the expulsion order, delivered by a Gestapo agent to her hotel room in the Hotel Adlon, Berlin. She was given 24 hours to leave the country. Thompson did so on August 26, taking the Etoile du Nord train from Berlin to Paris. Numerous journalists gathered to see her off at the station, who gave her bunches of American Beauty roses to show their solidarity.

Thompson's expulsion received extensive international attention, including a front page story on the New York Times. Her biographer, Peter Kurth, said "her expulsion from Berlin had turned her overnight into a kind of heroine – a celebrity of note, the dramatic embodiment of the nascent war against fascism."”

“After publishing a 1950 critique of American Zionism in Commentary that raised the specter of dual loyalty, that backlash only grew. This included accusations of anti-Semitism, which Thompson strongly rebuffed, after being warned that hostility toward Israel was, in the American press world, "almost a definition of professional suicide". She eventually concluded that Zionism was a recipe for perpetual war. As Thompson's distance from the Zionist movement grew, she became an advocate for Palestinian refugees.”




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