Life
He had 12 years of classical schooling at Breslau, Silesia. In 1934 he moved to Oxford and studied Economics and Political science. After Oxford, Arndt moved to Warsaw, Poland for graduate study, where he learned Polish and, later, Russian. In 1939, after Hitler's invasion of Poland, he renounced his German citizenship, joined the Polish army, was captured by the Germans and, after escaping from a German POW camp, spent a year in the Polish underground, eventually making his way to Istanbul. From 1942 to 1945, Arndt was active in intelligence work on behalf of allied forces. He worked for the Office of Strategic Services (now the CIA), and the Office of War Information where he forged Nazi documents and passes until the end of the war. It was in Istanbul that he met and married Miriam Bach and had 2 sons (Robert and David) while teaching and studying at Robert College where he received a degree in mechanical engineering.
He worked in U.N. refugee resettlement between 1944 and 1949 until he was able to arrange emigration to the United States with his family. They lived in Tennessee, then North Carolina where their 2 daughters were born (Prudence and Corinne). In 1956 he received his doctorate in comparative linguistics and classics from UNC. He taught classics and modern languages at Guilford College and then the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 1966 he accepted the chairmanship of the Russian department at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Semi-retired since 1986, he continued to write well into his 93rd year. His final published work, an elaboration of his earlier version of his memoirs published as "A Picaro in Hitler's Europe," was completed in 2003.
Arndt, 94, died on February 15, 2011. He was survived by his wife, his 4 children, 8 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren.
Arndt is an accomplished polyglot, possessing near-native fluency in Russian, English and Polish in addition to his native German. He is also known to have a command of Latin, Greek, French and Czech.
Read more about this topic: Walter W. Arndt
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