Sigrid Schultz - Career

Career

At war's end, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, needed a correspondent fluent in both German and English. Among other things, McCormick wanted someone able with the ability to explain in detail the Battle of Jutland, the war's most significant naval battle, to Tribune readers. Schultz joined the Tribune in 1919 and, with fluency in several languages to her credit, became the chief for Central Europe in 1926. It is believed that Schultz was the first woman to ever hold such a position for a major news media organization.

Convinced by events that National Socialism would become a significant force in Germany, Schultz sought interviews with leading members of the Nazi movement, establishing at an early date an acquaintance with then-Captain Hermann Göring, who was later to become Nazi Germany's highest-ranking leader behind Adolf Hitler. Though personally repelled by Nazism, Schultz cultivated her connections with Göring and with other leading Nazis, strengthening her access to these authoritative news sources, as the Nazis gained control of Germany and, later, as Europe moved toward war. Schultz interviewed Adolf Hitler several times and her firsthand knowledge of Germany's leaders helped her to accurately report their intentions and goals, as Nazi Germany's ambitions posed an increasing threat to world peace.

Beginning in 1938, Schultz began to report for the Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS) network along with the Chicago Tribune. She was considered by some of her fellow reporters as only a fair writer but a superb investigator and reporter. Fellow Berlin correspondent William L. Shirer wrote that "No other American correspondent in Berlin knew so much of what was going on behind the scenes as did Sigrid Schultz."

Though Nazi German officials were often displeased with Schultz's reporting — which they deemed as critical of the regime, she had not been expelled from Germany as had other reporters deemed "hostile" to the nation's "revival" under Nazism. In order not to jeopardize her ability to work in Germany without imprisonment or expulsion, Schultz during 1938 and 1939 filed some of her dispatches under a pseudonym. Published in the Tribune's weekly magazine under the fictitious name "John Dickson," Schultz filed her dispatches from outside Germany — usually from Oslo or Copenhagen — with false datelines. These articles reported on the attacks the German government made on the nation's churches, exposed the concentration camps and the increasing persecution of Germany's Jews. In one of these dispatches, Dickson asserted that Germany was prepared for war and predicted the Munich Agreement that gave Hitler free rein to march in to Czechoslovakia.

On July 13, 1939, one of Dickson's articles received front-page billing in the Tribune. The dispatch forecast the non-aggression pact that took place between Germany and the Soviet Union five weeks later. Writing as Dickson, Schultz reported that "Supporters of the theory of Nazi-Soviet cooperation claim that plans for a new partition of Poland, dividing it between Germany and Russia, have been concluded."

It was Schultz who awoke CBS reporter William L. Shirer on the morning of the German invasion of Poland, September 1, 1939. Shirer's Berlin Diary recounts the events of that morning.

Berlin, September 1

At six a.m., Sigrid Schultz — bless her heart — phoned. She said: "It's happened." I was very sleepy — my body and mind numbed, paralyzed. I mumbled: "Thanks, Sigrid," and tumbled out of bed.

The war is on!

Schultz reported on the many military triumphs of the Wehrmacht during the first year of World War II, but was not permitted to travel to the front because she was a woman. She left Germany after being injured in an Allied air raid on Berlin. While in Spain, she developed typhus and returned to the United States in early 1941. What had been expected to be a brief leave developed into a three-year convalescence from the disease.

During this period, Schultz wrote a book about Germany titled Germany Will Try It Again and made a nationwide lecture tour about her quarter-century in Germany. Schultz accompanied the U.S. Army when it landed in Normandy in June 1944 and reported on the subsequent liberation of France, and on the advance of the Allied armies into Germany. Schultz was also one of the first journalists to visit Buchenwald and she reported on the Nuremberg Trial.

After the war, she continued her reporting and wrote several books. Schultz was working on a history of anti-semitism in Germany when she died in 1980.