Sigrid schultz biography samples
The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler 9780300265552
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the newspaper axis Like many history buffs, history first caught my imagination through stories. One of my favorite things to do when I was small was curl up next to my grandmother and ask her, "What did you do when you were a little girl?" From there it was a short step to reading biographies about historical women who ignored social boundaries and accomplished things—the kind that are written with the intention of inspiring young girls. My grade school's revolving library owned a whole series of them. Every week a new one arrived and I snatched it before anyone else could get it, eager to read about Clara Barton, Madame Curie or Julia Ward Howe. By the time I was in high school, I was that nerdy kid who hung out at the local historical society and at Wilson Creek National Battlefield on the weekends and in the summer. (I even learned to shoot a muzzle-loading rifle—a skill I never expected to be useful on my resume. Life takes funny twists sometimes.) My life as a history buff took an unexpected turn when at the age of eight or nine I fell in love with Rudyard Kipling's Kim. (Did I mention the importance of stories?) Kipling's India put me on the path to a PhD in South Asia history. It wasn't a straight path. And it wasn't a short one. The first day of my PhD program at University of Chicago, my advisor said, “You know there are no jobs, right?” I knew, but I didn’t care. Without the promise (or perhaps the threat) of a teaching job at the end of the road, I kept wandering down fascinating by-ways. I still do, every chance I get. Today my goal is to write books about important historical topics that will engage history buffs and nerdy kids and the intelligent general reader. (That's you, right?) Accessible doesn't mean easy. The history I write often turns what we think we know about history inside out, or at least looks at the familiar from an unfamiliar angle. In doing so, I ask us to look at the world today from a slightly dif Publisher: Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook PART II Ambassador Dodd at his desk (photo credit p2.1) CHAPTER 6 In her first few days in Berlin, Martha fell ill with a cold. As she lay convalescing at the Esplanade she received a visitor, an American woman named Sigrid Schultz, who for the preceding fourteen years had been a correspondent in Berlin for Martha’s former employer, the Chicago Tribune, and was now its correspondent in chief for Central Europe. Schultz was forty years old, five foot three—the same height as Martha—with blond hair and blue eyes. “A little pudgy,” as Martha put it, with “an abundance of golden hair.” Despite her size and cherub’s gleam, Schultz was known to fellow correspondents and Nazi officials alike as being tenacious, outspoken, and utterly fearless. She made every diplomat’s invitation list and was a regular at parties thrown by Goebbels, Göring, and other Nazi leaders. Göring took a perverse delight in calling her “the dragon from Chicago.” Schultz and Martha chatted at first about innocuous things, but soon the conversation turned to the rapid transformation of Berlin during the six months since Hitler had become chancellor. Schultz told stories of violence against Jews, communists, and anyone the Nazis saw as unsympathetic to their revolution. In some cases the victims had been American citizens. Martha countered that Germany was in the midst of a historic rebirth. Those incidents that did occur surely were only inadvertent expressions of the wild enthusiasm that had gripped the country. In the few days since her arrival Martha had seen nothing at all to corroborate Schultz’s tales. But Schultz pressed on with stories of beatings and capricious imprisonments in the “wild” camps—ad hoc prisons that had sprung up throughout the country under the control of Nazi paramilitary forces—and in more formal prisons, known by no
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THE NEWSPAPER AXIS Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler
K AT H R Y N S . O L M S T E D
New Haven and London
Copyright © 2022 by Kathryn S. Olmsted. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Janson type by IDS Infotech Ltd. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021942672 ISBN 978-0-300-25642-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Eric
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION
1
1. The Good Haters 15 2. The Celebrity Strongman 35 3. The World’s Greatest Publisher 55 4. The Ordinary Joe 75 5. The Empire Crusader 88 6. The Lady Newspaperman 106 7. Undominated 122 8. “Hitler Agrees with the Daily Express” 142 9. Foreign Wars 159 10. The Dictator Bill 183 11. Which Side Are You On? 211 EPILOGUE
Notes 249 Index 301
236
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Acknowledgments
I AM GRATEFUL TO THE many archivists and librarians who helped me with this project, with special thanks to archivists Virginia Lewick at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Spencer Howard and Craig Wright at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, Eric Gillespie at Cantigny Park, and Anne T
Beacon Press
Release date: August 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780807063125
Release date: August 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780807063125
File size: 9262 KB
Release date: August 6, 2024House Hunting in the Third Reich