Dorothy Thompson
See also Dorothy Thompson (disambiguation)
Dorothy Thompson (9 July 1893, - January 30, 1961,) was an American journalist, who gained international recognition and celebrity when she became the first journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany n 1934. In 1939, Time magazine called her one of the two most influential women in America, second only to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
She is also remembered as the inspiration for Katharine Hepburn's character Tess Harding in the film Woman of the Year (1942).
Early Life
She was born in Lancaster, New York
Foreign Correspondent and Nazi Germany
Thompson had met and interviewed Hitler for the first time in 1931, in Munich, where she was so bowled over by his “utter insignificance” that she “considered taking smelling salts” to keep from fainting. [1]
Marriages
She married Sinclair Lewis in 1928, the second of her three marriages (her first was to Josef Bard). Their son, actor Michael Lewis, was born in 1930. She divorced Lewis in 1942.
The Grynszpan Affair
In 1938, Dorothy Thompson championed the cause of a 17-year old Polish-German immigrant to France, Herschel Grynszpan, who assassinated of a German diplomat, in a desperate reactionn to the treatment Jews were receiving in Nazi Germany. The event served as a catalyst for German propaganda and trigger the catastrophic events of the Kristallnacht the beginning of a major progrom to deport Jews to concentration camps.
Thompson's broadcast on NBC radio was heard by millions of listeners, and lead to an outpouring of sympathy for the young assassin. Under the banner of the Journalists' Defense Fund, over $40,000 USD was collected, enabling famed European lawyer Vincent de Moro-Giafferi to take up Grynszpan's case. The assassination inspired the composer Michael Tippett to write his oratorio A Child of Our Time as a plea for peace, and as a protest against the persecution of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
- Who is on trial in this case? I say we are all on trial. I say the men of Munich are on trial, who signed a pact without one word of protection for helpless minorities. Whether Herschel Grynszpan lives or not won't matter much to Herschel. He was prepared to die when he fired those shots.
- Therefore, we who are not Jews must speak, speak our sorrow and indignation and disgust in so many voices that they will be heard. This boy has become a symbol, and the responsibility for his deed must be shared by those who caused it.
End of Life
She died in Portugal.
Quotations
- As far as I can see, I was really put out of Germany for the crime of blasphemy. My offense was to think that Hitler was just an ordinary man, after all. That is a crime in the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people— an old Jewish idea. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I was merely sent to Paris. Worse things can happen. (1934)
- No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say "Heil" to him, nor will they call him "Führer" or "Duce." But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of "O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!" (1935)
- Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.
- It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.
External links
- American Cassandra: The Life Of Dorothy Thompson
- Brief bio
- Brief bio
- Radio broadcast on Hitler's invasion of Poland (3 September 1939)
Credits
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