Journalism Career
Following the end of the war in 1918, Lochner moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to join the staff of the Milwaukee Free Press. He also edited for the International Labor News Service, a press agency of the day.
In 1924 Lochner was named to the Berlin bureau of the Associated Press. He would remain in that position until 1946. During the course of his career, Lochner twice interviewed Adolf Hitler, the first time in 1930 and the second time in 1933.
When World War II broke out with the German invasion of Poland in 1939 Lochner became the first foreign journalist to follow the German Army into battle. His bravery in remaining in Nazi Germany despite the outbreak of hostilities to provide objective and measured news coverage was rewarded with the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for correspondence.
He reported further on the German side of the war, accompanying the German Army on the Western Front in Holland, Belgium and France witnessing, the 1940 French surrender in Compiègne.
After the December 1941 declaration of war between Germany and the United States, the Berlin government imprisoned any Americans who remained in the Third Reich. Lochner was interned for nearly five months at Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt am Main, before being released in May 1942 as part of a prisoner exchange for interred German diplomats and correspondents.
Upon his release Lochner took eight months leave of absence for an extended lecture tour throughout North America, which he spent publicly attacking Nazism and warning of its dangers. It was in this interval that he wrote a book warning of the fascist menace, entitled What About Germany?
From 1942 to 1944, Lochner worked as a news analyst and radio commentator for the National Broadcasting Company. Thereafter he departed once again for Europe, working as a war correspondent until after the end of World War II.
Read more about this topic: Louis P. Lochner, Biography
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