Sigrid Schultz — “The Dragon from Chicago” with Pamela Toler

As Berlin bureau chief for The Chicago Tribune from 1925-1941, Sigrid Schultz deflected both sexism and danger to report the truth and speak truth to power. The Nazis dubbed her “that dragon from Chicago,” and her importance as an indomitable “newspaperman” (her term) telling Americans about the Third Reich's agenda can’t be understated. Amy speaks this week with Pamela Toler, the author of a new biography on Schultz’s life, work and lasting legacy.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Dragon From Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany by Pamela Toler

Women Warriors: An Unexpected History by Pamela Toler

Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War by Pamela Toler

The Chicago Tribune

McCall’s Magazine

Friederich Ebert

Hermann Goering

Joseph Goebbels

Hotel Adlon

Richard Henry Little, a.k.a. Dick Little 

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer

Erik Larson’s In The Garden of Beasts

Transcript

Episode 208: Sigrid Schultz with Pamela Toler

AMY HELMES: Hey, everyone! Welcome to a free-for-all Lost Ladies of Lit bonus episode! I’m your host, Amy Helmes, and while my co-host, Kim, and I are technically still enjoying our summer hiatus — we’ll both be back on the air together in a couple more weeks — today I’ll be guiding you through a special episode. As you know, this show is dedicated to dusting off the legacies of forgotten women writers — all kinds of writers. Which brings us to a pivotal “newspaperman” — yes, you heard me correctly. “Newspaperman.” That’s the preferred term today’s lost lady, Sigrid Schultz, used when referring to herself. Schultz served as Berlin bureau chief and primary foreign correspondent for Central Europe for The Chicago Tribune from 1925 — 1941. As you can imagine, she saw a lot unfold in that time span and was one of the few Americans with the intel and understanding to accurately convey what was unfolding in Germany — even as the Third Reich tried to thwart and threaten her. She also interviewed Hitler in 1931 and repeatedly warned Tribune readers of his hateful agenda. I’m joined today by the author of a brand-new biography on Sigrid Schultz and can’t wait to introduce her, so let’s raid the stacks (or in this case, the newspaper archives!) and get started!

[intro music plays]

AMY: My guest today is historian Pamela Toler who’s written ten books of popular history for adults and children, including Women Warriors: An Unexpected History and Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War (if you happened to watched the PBS drama Mercy Street, her book dives into the stories of the real medical professionals who inspired the series.) Last month Beacon Press released Pamela’s latest book: The Dragon From Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany. Publishers Weekly deems it “a journalistic adventure story of the highest caliber” and Kirkus calls it “a fascinating portrait of a trailblazing reporter who was an eyewitness to history.” Pamela, congratulations on the book, thanks for joining me to discuss it!

PAMELA TOLER: Thanks so much for having me. I am delighted to be here.

 AMY: Okay, so first off, tell me about this fantastic title of the book, The Dragon from Chicago. That's really badass. Where does that sobriquet come from?

PAMELA: The Nazis gave it to her, and specifically Hitler's right hand man, Hermann Goering. There was a period in about 1935 when they were trying to trap American reporters or foreign correspondents into doing things that looked like they'd be spies. And so one day a man they didn't know delivered a box to the apartment that Sigrid shared with her mother. And her mother immediately called Sigrid and said, “You know, there's this strange box here.” And Sigrid hurried home because she was pretty sure that was in fact going to be an attempt to entrap her. She opened it. Sure enough, there were what looked like plans for an airplane engine in the box. And if she were caught with it, she knew she'd be arrested as a spy. And she also suspected she didn't have a lot of time. So she tore up the documents and shoved the package and the documents in the fireplace, waited until they were burned down to ash, and then headed back to the office. And on the way there, she ran into a German who she had long suspected of being part of this attempt to trap journalists. He was on the sidewalk with a couple of men who she suspected of being Gestapo agents. And she stopped right in their path and said, “Don't even bother. There's nothing there. You're not going to find anything.” And then she hailed a cab and jumped in and said in a loud voice “To the American embassy!” A few days later she was at an event that the foreign press club was holding actually in Goering's honor And while they were there, she confronted him about this in front of basically the entire world Foreign Correspondents Corps, and told him he just needed to give it up. None of them were stupid enough to run those kinds of stories. And he lost it. He just snapped at her and said, “You know, you're never going to learn proper respect for authority. That's got to be from being from that crime-ridden city of Chicago.” Which actually cracks me up because she only lived there until she was eight. Um, but then he called her “that Dragon from Chicago,” and thereafter that's how he and his staff referred to her. And yes, she wore that title with pride. 

AMY: Oh, I was gonna say, I'm sure she loved it. And I mean, a badass title for a badass lady, right? I mean, She's just not taking any of their BS. 

PAMELA: None. 

AMY: Not even BS, but like scary, scary threats. Okay, so before we talk more about Sigrid's time in Germany, let's back up because you did mention she lived in Chicago until she was eight years old. She was born in 1893. She was an only child. Her father was a Norwegian portrait painter and her mother hailed from Germany, but her ancestry included a mix of European heritage, as I guess you could say. Talk a little bit about some of the ways that Schulz's early years, her childhood, provided her with skills that she would come to use later in her career.

PAMELA: Well, the most important one is languages. Her parents were both fluent in multiple languages, and they were determined that she was going to grow up fluent in those languages as well. So the rule in the house was that she had to answer a question in the language it was asked in. So she ends up with a solid grounding in German and French and English and then as a child in school in Europe she becomes fluent in German and in French and in Norwegian because she goes to visit her father's family in the summers. And she acquires some other languages to lesser degrees along the way. So the first thing early is language skills. And I would say the other thing that she comes up with is this really clear sense that entertaining is important. The house in Chicago was just a center of parties, and her father's studios in Europe would be as well. And she used those same skills as a way to nurture contacts throughout her adult life. So, languages, hospitality.

AMY: That's how you're going to get all the scoop, right?

PAMELA: Absolutely. Absolutely. For Sigrid, those years in Chicago were just golden in memory, and she always described herself as being an American from Chicago. But in fact, she grew up in Europe. Her father got a major portrait commission when she was eight. He moved the family back. They really didn't expect to stay more than two years, but you know, one commission came after another. Sigrid really doesn't end up back living in the United States full time for 40 years. But she ends up, she's in Germany for a while, she's in Paris through much of her youth and younger adult years. And then finally they end up in Berlin, 1914. And that's where things get complicated.

AMY: So this is kind of right as World War One is, kicking off, she and her parents are stranded in Berlin and it's a harrowing time. To make matters worse, the Schultzes were considered enemy aliens because they're Americans living in Berlin, but it doesn't stop Sigrid. She starts teaching at a girls finishing school there. She also manages to land another job as a German translator to a diplomat from Baghdad, and all of this is kind of priming her for her eventual role with the Chicago Tribune, right?

PAMELA: Absolutely. And that job with the Turkish diplomat is fascinating. I mean, it looked like she was just made for it. He has lots of meetings happening in his office, businessmen. newspaper editors, some Turkish military officials who are there buying military equipment from the Germans and they don't necessarily have a shared language. So she is there translating between German and French speakers about what is happening in Berlin at the time, what's happening in the world at the time. So it ends up being an informal education in power and diplomacy And it also means it's just one more layer of contacts in German society, and that is enormously important. Her years in Berlin during World War I means she ends up with this incredibly rich network of personal contacts. You know, everything from the baker who lived down the street to what she described as “white-haired old baronesses” to incredibly powerful men. And that's a network that really no other American reporter has.

AMY: So how does she come across her initial acquaintances with The Chicago Tribune? How does she land into that position?

PAMELA: Well, as with so many good things, it starts at a party. In 1919, the older brother of one of her students is throwing a carnival party. It's the first big party to be held in Berlin society after the end of the war. Siegfried's invited. What she doesn't know is that she's invited as bait. The brother (who is an important banker) and a lot of his business friends really want to meet American reporters who are starting to come into Berlin after the war. So he tells them, you know, there's going to be a young American woman there. She lived in Berlin through the war, and she'll be able to give you a first hand account in English. I mean, Sigrid's just thrilled to be invited to this party. There's a Cinderella, “boy, I get to go to the ball!” feel to the whole thing. I mean, she's going to dance. She's going to have great food. And that doesn't actually turn out to happen because almost as soon as she meets two reporters from Chicago who have accepted the invitation, Including Dick Little, who was the first Berlin Bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune… she meets them and before anything else can happen, they are surrounded by Europeans who want to talk to these American reporters. But they don't speak German. Most of the Germans don't speak English well enough to be understood. And once Sigrid understands what the problem is, she says, “I'll translate.” And so instead of dancing that night, she spends the night interpreting. between English and German and French on this wild conversation about politics and economics and German history and she loved it. And a few days later, Dick Little offered her a job as an interpreter and a cub reporter.

AMY: Yeah, they're like, “Uh, we can use this girl! She's going to be helpful!” And for her part, you know, this guy, Dick Little, the Bureau Chief, if you're going to be thrown into the fray and have no experience whatsoever, this is the guy you want to be your mentor, right?

PAMELA: Absolutely. I mean, one of his colleagues called him a knight of journalism, which pretty much sums it up. And he taught her so much. I mean, they travel together throughout Berlin in the little less than a year that he's there because he doesn't speak any German. So he needs her, uh, you know? She's only five-two, he's six-six. They become this comic site in the streets of Berlin. She's walking as fast as she can to keep up with him, sometimes translating at top speed but he doesn't just use her skills. He also teaches her about journalism. And one of the most important things he teaches her is the importance of accuracy. You know, he doesn't just accept a rumor. If there aren't sources, there's no story. And that ends up being one of her guiding positions throughout her career.

AMY: Tell us a little bit about this place that they would all hang out. The Hotel Adlon is where alll the journalists are going to get their scoop, right?

PAMELA: Yeah, I mean, it's practically a character in the story that hotel, you know, it was Berlin's first luxury hotel. It was built right before World War One. In some ways it's the center of everything. Everyone who's anyone stays there. Political intrigue happens in the lobby. Deals are cut in the lobby. But the bar ends up being the unofficial clubhouse for foreign correspondents. And, you know, that becomes an issue for Sigrid because she grows up in a time and a place and a kind of family where she's taught that women shouldn't go to bars unaccompanied by their father or their husband, and she soon realizes that that's not going to work. She's got to be able to go hang out in that bar with the guys and she needs to seem to be “one of the guys,” but again, she's only five-two and she's not going to be able to match them drink for drink. So she cuts a deal with the bartender, and they create a drink he calls The Schultz, which when she drinks it is doctored up orange juice. If anyone else drinks it, it's orange juice with a healthy slug of alcohol in it; a really strong drink. So she gives the illusion of being able to match the guys drink-for-drink. Yeah. And the Adlon is just the center of everything.

AMY: She is one of the guys in a way. I mean, that goes back to what I said in the introduction about she liked to be known as a newspaperman, right? She didn't want to be singled out as the girl of the group.

PAMELA: Right, and she hated it when people tried to make that an issue.

AMY: And The Chicago Tribune, didn't they have their actual office in the Hotel Adlon on the ground floor? So she was right there. 

PAMELA: She was right there. The man who was the head of the foreign service was determined that each bureau be in the best address in that city. And in Berlin, that was the Hotel Adlon.

AMY: Okay. So her best boss. Dick Little, he gets reassigned to Russia, which means he's leaving the country. And Schultz finds herself sitting at the desk doing the work of the Berlin Bureau Chief, but she didn't get the title Bureau Chief.

AMY: Instead, she had to answer to these other male bosses that they brought in, who frankly didn't seem as qualified as she was at that point. As we said, she didn't really want to paint herself as a, you know, victim of sexism or anything like that, gender barriers. But what are your thoughts on that? Was she facing that?

PAMELA: You know, absolutely, she faced it. A lot of women of her period who succeeded in all male fields also tended to say, “No, I didn't face any gender barriers. I got the job because I was good at it.” And God knows she was good at it. But when you read her things from the period, it's absolutely clear that she faced gender discrimination and microaggression and just in-your-face hostility over and over and over. And even when she tells stories about that later in her life, she twists it so that they're always a little funny and there's, you know, a triumphant ending. You know, there was a case where there was a businessman's meeting early on in her career. She got an invitation, and this was soon after she became bureau chief. She got to the door and the women who were checking the tickets wouldn't let her in because she was a woman. So she flipped the invitation over and wrote on the back of it, “Are 200 men that afraid of one small woman?” And managed to bully the secretary into taking it to the man who ran the event. He came out and got her, introduced her around. And she then says, And after that, I never had trouble talking to anyone. But of course, the real part of the story: Someone was going to close the door and not let her in. And once she got the bureau chief job, one of the first things she had to deal with was that they didn't want to pay her the same amount they paid the man before her. It took her two years to get that settled.

AMY: So the good news is that bosses in Chicago did realize like, “Okay, we got to have this woman running the show.” So let's talk about that and kind of some of the creative ways that she really managed to track down stories that nobody else could get. Tell us some of your favorite anecdotes.

PAMELA: One of my favorite stories happens early in 1925. It's before she's the bureau chief, but it's just such a great example. Um, the first president of the Weimar Republic, Friedrich Ebert, was hospitalized for what he thought was the flu, what turned out to be appendicitis. And the German government was sending out statements that he was doing just fine. They weren't even saying it was appendicitis at first, but they weren't giving reporters access to the hospital. So no one could verify what the condition actually was. And at that point, Sigrid had a nasty case of bronchitis, which she later described as journalist's luck because she used that bronchitis (complete with hacking cough and horrible voice) to get herself admitted to the same hospital where Ebert was being treated. And once there, she talked a friendly doctor into helping her get the information. He basically said, “You know, you really are sick. You really need to be lying down. And if you will stay lying down, I will help you with this.” So she was able to call in the report that Ebert had died while the official comments were still saying he was okay, things were getting fine. So The Chicago Tribune is reporting the first president has died. The New York Times is reporting he's getting better. Unfortunately, her boss got the byline.

AMY: Oh no, he didn't!

PAMELA: He did!

AMY: This has to be a TV series or something. I mean, there's just story after story where she's concerned. I mean, I'm thinking also about, um, how she attended the wedding of, uh, Goering?

PAMELA: No, it's the kaiser. The kaiser's second wedding. Which is just, again, it's a great story. She ends up getting the assignment to cover the wedding (mostly because her boss is out of town) And it’s at a castle in the Netherlands, the town around it is just swarmed with journalists from all over the world because everyone wants to know the story. And she's so frustrated because at the end of the day, her sources have not gotten her anything that she couldn't already read in the Dutch newspapers. And it's cold and she's miserable and she's trying to write up the story as best she can and she decides to go down into the kitchen, which is in the basement, and see if she could get at least, you know, something hot to drink to warm up that maybe it would be a little easier. Well, she gets there and she finds a bunch of the wedding guests are in the basement because they didn't want to go to the dining room because they'd run into reporters. And again, she's got all of these social connections. So one of the little old ladies is there, knows she knows Sigrid, but doesn't remember she's a reporter and calls her over and they're giving her all the stuff. I mean, she's hearing all the inside scoop on the wedding, on the service, on the fact that there wasn't enough food at the reception, which is the reason they're all in the kitchen trying to eat. She's hoping nobody recognizes her and she's trying to remember everything. And finally she manages to ease her way out. She goes and she writes the story as fast as she can and sends it by cable to Chicago. She's just sure she's nailed it. And then she's on the train and she gets despondent because other reporters are saying, “Oh, you sent it from the local office.That's never going to get there. We all made arrangements to have our stuff driven over to the big town office.” Well, they were wrong. That big office got swamped. Sigrid’s stuff got there. Big scoop, got more stuff than anyone else had. And it was because the little old lady knew her.

AMY: Those contacts are coming in handy!

PAMELA: Every time.

AMY: Okay. So around this time we see Hitler beginning to have a bigger political presence. What is her take on this guy as well as the Nazi party and what it could possibly mean for Germany?

PAMELA: You know, it's the big story of her career. And in 1925, when she takes over, they don't really matter. That's starting to change in 1929, after the Depression hits, you start to have people saying, you know, maybe we need a Mussolini, maybe we need a dictator to make things better. But at that point, when she's reporting on it, Hitler's just one of a number of possible candidates. And as far as she's concerned, not even the most important one. But then you get the Reichstag election of 1930. And she's very clear that race an election that's running for the soul of Germany. And that the extremists at either end win, that it will be the death of the Weimar Republic. And she spends a lot of time at that point talking about The Nazi platform. I mean, they're already talking about pogroms, they're already talking about tearing apart the republic in place of a dictatorship. I mean, the Nazi program is all right there, and she reports it in the papers clearly. How much was heard in the States? Hard to tell, but she already knows they're dangerous even before they've become a power of any sort. And that really is the point at which they become a power. In that election, they go from having 12 seats to being the second largest party in the Reichstag.

AMY: In your book, you also explain that the covering news from Nazi Germany means skirting Joseph Goebbels’s “lie factory.” Tell us about that and how Schultz had to walk a treacherous tightrope.

PAMLA: Sure. I mean, once the Nazis are in power in 1933, it takes them only 2 months to tear apart the rights and the safeguards that were in place in the Weimar Republic. And it takes them only two months to make it clear that it's dangerous to report. They're already, they're starting to tap phones, they're starting to open letters. And she has a network already in place, and she believes in accuracy. So even though the Nazis are setting up conferences and they're handing out information and they're telling the story the way they want it told, she's not just accepting what they tell her. And over and over again, she tries to tell the story the way it should be done, but it is a tightrope because she doesn't want to get thrown out. So one thing she does, she likes to put dangerous news in the middle and sort of a news sandwich. So she'll have a relatively innocuous story and then one or two really important sentences in the middle. The idea being that the Nazis are less apt to notice. And in fact, that's where she does her first reporting of the establishment of a concentration camp is in a relatively innocuous story only two months after the Nazis have taken power. 

AMY: Wow. Yeah, it's like she's having to put on this outward front for the government. Like, “Oh, I'm playing your game.” Because if she doesn't, she's going to get kicked out of the country or worse jailed or whatever they want to do to her. Oftentimes they would haul her in, right, if they didn't like the way she wrote something and kind of interrogate her?

PAMELA: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, she certainly was blunt enough that she got warned a lot. The first time she got called in to the Gestapo was in June, 1933. So again, five months after the Nazis are in control. It was terrifying reading that account. I mean, I obviously knew everything turned out okay, but it just, my heart was in my throat reading it because she goes in and she's absolutely sure that she's protected by the fact that everything she's reported is true. And she gets to the Nazi headquarters and the guy who called her isn't there. And she waits for a while and she finally says, “I'm sorry. I'm too busy for this. Um, you know, call and make an appointment and I'll be happy to come back.” And you're going, wait a minute. She just told the Gestapo to shut it?! Okay. Um, and you know, they do call and say, “Will Monday work? What time?” And she goes into the American embassy and makes sure they know that she's going in. She says, you know, “If I don't show up in two hours, you know, do something.” Um, and she goes and again they make her wait, which turns out to be standard operating procedure. She was expecting that they were calling her on the carpet because she's been reporting on the Enabling Acts, which are basically allowing Hitler to work without any checks and balances at all. And instead, they call in about a much smaller article, still disturbing, but not the big hard story.

And so she gets a warning and a slap on the wrist. It's just the first of many warnings. She gets called in again and again and again.

AMY: A lot of her exploits remind me of some of the books I've read about female spies over there at the time. Um,the “limping lady,” Sophia Purnell's book about, um, Virginia… uh, I can't remember the spy.

PAMELA: I know. Fabulous book. 

AMY: Virginia Hall. Yeah. Um, but I was thinking a lot of there were some commonalities in terms of Schultz having to sneak around a little bit or use, um, covert, bylines and things like that.

PAMELA: Right. And obviously she's openly there, openly doing what she's doing, which is a little different than the spies, but she's certainly having to find ways to get information out. One thing she does is she sends stories in two pieces with the hope that at least part of it will get through 

AMY: You saying because they're checking? 

PAMELA: They're checking the mail.

AMY: You can't get it out without the Nazis seeing it.

PAMELA: Right. Um, you know, she'll try and send it out with friends who are leaving. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Occasionally she finds that somebody got nervous and tore up The dispatch before they crossed the border because they didn't want to get caught with it. But the most important thing she does is she sets up a pseudonym. The Tribune office had sent a request for her to write a new article about the Night of the Long Knives, which had happened in 1934. Hitler had basically massacred the heads of the SS and other perceived political rivals, and, you know, she had written about that. But now two years later, the Tribune sends to Paris asking her if she can write a more in depth account, and the Paris office just doesn't get it. I mean, they're not having their phones tapped. They don't have that immediate sense of danger. So, a secretary calls her on a tapped phone and gives her the message about writing this again, and then the head of the Paris office sends her a letter about it to her house, and she can tell it's been opened. But she really wants to write this story. Um, partly because it's 1936, the Berlin Olympics is recently over, and a lot of Americans who were there were taken in by the way the Nazis kind of cleaned up Berlin. They made sort a “Nazi Disneyland” for foreign visitors. So Americans were coming back and saying, you know, these reporters are crazy. It's just not as bad. And so Sigrid really wants to write the story. So the first thing she does is decide to take advantage of how clearly the Nazis are watching what she sends. And she writes to Chicago and says, “I know you asked for this, but I just can't do it. There's no new information. I've said everything I have to say.” And she counts on the Nazis opening it and seeing that as a safety lever. Then she goes to Paris and she writes the article from Paris and she sends it to the Tribune with the request that, you know, maybe we should run this under a different name. It'll be safer. And the name she chooses is John Dixon, which ends up being a sly tribute to Dick Little, because she always calls him her father in journalism, and so that makes her “Dick's son.” They run that article…

AMY: I love that!

PAMELA: I know, it's just so good, although maybe part of me says she could have been “Jane Dixon” and had the same impact, but that's okay. 

AMY: Well, but you know, they suddenly see “Jane” and they're like, “Who's the one woman over in Berlin?”

PAMELA: That's right “We can figure this out.” [laughs] But for the rest of the time she's in Berlin, she runs some of the most dangerous stories under that name, even though she's continuing to report a Sigrid Schultz as well.

AMY: I just want to pause for a second and say that, what you had to do in your book was not just write Sigrid's story, which for a biographer is difficult enough. You had to tell the whole story of World War II in Germany, like, you had to explain it for everybody, and it's a complicated series of years with so many moving parts, and so I commend you for not only telling her story so well, but telling the full story of Germany and those years in a way that was really compelling and easy to understand.

PAMELA: That's nice to hear, because I really worked hard at that, and there were times when the book turned into a history of Nazi Germany, and I would have to pull back and say, “Okay, what does the reader really need to know here?” So, it's good to know that worked, because I worked really hard at that!

AMY: Okay, so Sigrid Schultz wasn't just reporting for print. During the war, she also started filing radio reports, especially as America got involved and people back home really wanted instant feedback on what was happening over there. It kind of sounds like she was the equivalent of like a CNN correspondent almost.

PAMELA: Yeah, very much so. and we forget how new that is. I certainly grew up with a picture of the American homefront with everyone around the radio listening to FDR do a fireside chat, and you're sort of left with the feeling that, you know, radio is just embedded in the culture, but it was so new. And radio news was even newer. And the first real international news broadcast about a big event happened in March of 1938 with the Austrian Anschluss, and Sigrid gets her first opportunity on the radio in September of that same year. CBS did the groundbreaking live news coverage and they had started having a nightly newscast and they weren't going to be able to do it. William Shirer, who your listeners may recognize as the author of, um, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, at the time, he was a CBS correspondent, and he told his boss, like, “I'm not going to be able to do my regular slot because we're all getting on the train to go to the place where Hitler and Chamberlain are having a meeting.” And New York said, “Well, gee, do you think you could do it from the train platform?” And so he talked to the German radio engineers and they set up microphones that would work internationally. And so Shirer is interviewing other foreign correspondents as they go by on the train platform. One of those is Sigrid Schultz, the only woman in the group. And she catches the attention of the Mutual Broadcasting Network, so they hire her as what's called a stringer, you know, someone who will do a story now and then. She gets her first big opportunity to report on her own at the Munich Conference, 19 days after showing up on that train platform. And she'd hoped to be able to report on the Munich Conference, but the representatives of the four powers have gone back into meeting. There's nothing to say. So she ends up doing this really interesting combination of sort of a satirical commentary on men in power and then her own analysis of what the impact of the Munich Conference is. What's it really about on the surface? The Munich Conference is about Germany wanting the Sudetenland, wanting to take it from Czechoslovakia. She claims that in fact, it is a tryout for Germany to test the strength of the other powers who are there, particularly France and Britain. Several hours later, about two in the morning, she's back on the radio, this time with a heavily edited script. She's been through the censors because they've signed an agreement. The agreement has been made that they're going to force Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland. So, as Chamberlain famously says, “we have peace in our time.” Sigrid's on the air, breaking the news. It's real news in real time and it's new.

AMY: Is that the middle of the night then? 

PAMELA: Yeah, it's two in the morning there. Uh, yeah, and she does end up becoming a regular broadcaster from Berlin starting in January of 39. She has a 15 minute slot every Sunday night. And yeah, she's got to be in front of the mic at 2 in the morning so that it's primetime in Chicago, and she has to get there earlier because she's got to turn in her script to a bank of three censors two hours before she goes on the air.

AMY: And she's doing her print journalism stuff during the day, like her, her bureau chief stuff. Yeah. Um, so she decides in 1941, she's going to take a trip back to the United States. She hasn't been there in forever. Uh, but while she's there, she gets derailed by a pretty serious illness. so she's there longer than she intended. While she's there, she thinks I want to write sort of more in depth about what I experienced in Germany so far, but it seems like breaking news was really her forte in that department as opposed to trying to write books, would you say?

PAMELA: Oh, absolutely. She struggled to write that book. The title is Germany Will Try It Again, and her thesis was that because they thought they were going to be losing, they were already preparing for the next war. and it was this weird combination of political analysis and memoir, and it's pretty unreadable to a modern audience, quite frankly. On the other hand, the book went through three printings in a very short period of time. That's a success in the moment by any standard. But yeah, long form did not work for her and it didn't work for her later either. She never managed to even sell another book.

AMY: Okay. And so because she kind of got waylaid in the States and she's more frail and ill and she's getting older, her time in Germany as the bureau chief has kind of passed her by a little bit. But she does get back to Germany. She was determined to, um, so talk about sort of the next phase for her?

PAMELA: Once she finally got well (And that was hard. She came down with war typhus and almost died, and then she got hit by a cab and her leg torn badly messed up, and then she had another resurgence of war typhus.) But 1945, she ends up going back as a war correspondent for the Tribune, but also for McCall's magazine, which, uh, It's just fascinating to me that women's magazines were sending war correspondents, but they were a very different vision of trying to make themselves relevant. But the really important work that she did as a war correspondent in those final months of the war was her reporting on the concentration camps. She was one of a group of correspondents who were flown into Buchenwald only hours after the Americans had liberated the camp. Um, and I won't go into the details about all the horrible things that all of us know happened there. Um, but she was one of the first people to go to Buchenwald. But she had a very unusual experience of the camp. It was different from any of the other correspondents, and it was based on her ability to speak French, and Norwegian, and German, but to be able to speak to prisoners there. And she had a list of young French scholars who were believed to be some of France's best and brightest, the hope for the future. And the Germans had deliberately sought those young men out when they marched into Paris and arrested them. So she had that list and she'd been looking for traces of those young men ever since she got into Germany. And while she was asking the prisoners in French if anyone knew any of these names, one of the prisoners said, you know, there's a group of prisoners who are in this separate barracks who are dying. And if you have the courage to do it, it would be important for them to hear someone tell them in French that the camp is liberated. So she went. Um, and she later said it was one of the most gruesome things she'd ever seen. All she could do was say over and over again in French, “you are free.” And then something inspired her. And she said, “I'm just back from Paris and the chestnuts are in bloom in Paris.” One man sat up halfway and he reached out his hand and she took it and he said, “Is it true?” And she said, “Yeah, it's true. You're free. The American planes are coming.” He said, “No, are the chestnuts really in bloom?” And she said, yes. And he let go of her hand, and then he died. The Tribune editor said that was the most amazing reporting he had ever read, and he had to cut it by two thirds because of, um, paper restrictions.

AMY: But yeah, it's so impactful. And I can hear even in your voice, just recounting it, how moved you are. I can imagine doing this research and spending so much time with her and her story. I mean, you must have so many moments that just profoundly, you know, make you emotional, make you choked up.

PAMELA: Absolutely. There were plenty of times where her personal papers brought me to tears. 

AMY: And speaking of personal, you talk a little bit in the book about the fact that she made personal sacrifices to have this career that she had

PAMELA: It was so complicated. Uh, she had three great loves in her life. The first was a young sailor who died during World War I. His ship was torpedoed by the Germans. And he was on his way back to Norway, she was supposed to meet him there

AMY: And marry, yeah. 

PAMELA: And yeah, and I think if that had happened, we would not have had Sigrid Schultz, the journalist. She had two later loves but her private life took a backseat always to her professional life. 

AMY: Yeah, it kept drawing her back even when she was injured and sick and, you know, everybody kept saying, “you need to rest.” She hated that. She wanted to be back in the mix. It was glory days for her. Right?

PAMELA: Absolutely.

AMY: So she died in 1980 at the age of 87 in Westport, Connecticut. Pamela, what else do you most want people to know about her that maybe we haven't touched on yet?

PAMELA: Wow. Just the sheer courage of her, for one thing, and not necessarily the throw-yourself-on-a-grenade kind of courage, but just the speaking-truth-to-power kind of courage. But the other thing, I think, is that she never quite gets forgotten. I mean, unlike some of the women I wrote about in Women Warriors, throughout later years, journalists are coming to talk to her, historians are coming to talk to her, to find out about her time in Berlin. She shows up in small ways in the histories of journalism in the United States and the histories of the period. If you've read, um, Erik Larson's, In the Garden of Beasts, she has several walk-on moments in that book. She's not a big character, but she is a character who plays a small, but important role. So she's never entirely forgotten, but she's also never been front and center before.

AMY: Which is why an HBO series would be great. Netflix series. I mean, come on! Yep. We got the book now. We got the book to base it on.

PAMELA: Sounds good to me!

AMY: Um, I want to say also that while I was reading the book, and even while we were having this discussion today, there were a few moments where my blood kind of ran cold a little bit hearing you talk about what happened after the Nazis took power. And there were parallels to today, and I, we don't need to get into politics or anything like that, but I was wondering if you felt what she lived through is something that's still happening.

PAMELA: You know, one of the things I did was I read her reporting in chronological order and yes, the parallels, I mean, I don't want to be simple about it, but there were moments where I went, “Oh my.” Um, but I think where it really came was just this wondering if I would be as courageous as she was. I mean, that is what hit me more even than the parallels, was wondering if I would have the courage — and hoping I never find out. 

AMY: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Pamela, thank you so much for illuminating the life of Sigrid Schultz in this new book of yours, The Dragon from Chicago. It was a delight to read and our discussion today was equally fascinating. So thank you.

PAMELA: Oh, well, thank you for giving me a chance to talk about her here today!

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. We've got one more hiatus. encore presentation coming to you guys next week and after that we're starting back up with new original episodes um, our first book that we'll be discussing is I Await the Devil's Coming by Mary MacLane If you want to get a jump start on your reading before you listen to that podcast. This book is something else. I'll just say that. It's quite interesting. So yeah, can't wait to be reunited with Kim in two weeks, and thanks so much for listening. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.