Dorothy Thompson was quite the influential figure in her time. In 1939, she was recognized nationally as the second most influential woman in the United States (behind Eleanor Roosevelt), according to Times magazine. By some, she is even regarded as the “First Lady of American Journalism” (Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, 2011). In her time, she was well respected and at the top of her game. However, one of the most influential times in her career saw her playing  key role in the German resistance.

Dorothy Thompson was born in the year 1893, and was from the state of New York. She graduated in 1914 and studied Politics and Economics. Upon graduating university, she became heavily involved in Woman’s Suffrage up until 1920, when she moved abroad to pursue a career in journalism. In 1927, she was stationed in Germany as the head of the Berlin Bureau of the New York Post. It was here where she saw two different Germany’s, a republic and a dictatorship.
Being in Germany in the early 1930’s meant that Dorothy Thompson had a firsthand account of the Nazi rise to power. However, she witnessed a different kind of government before this extreme party. This government was called the Weimar Republic. Currency in this republic meant nothing, and the exchange rate was ridiculously high, with one American dollar worth 4.21 trillion German marks (Economics and politics in the Weimar Republic, 2002). Needless to say, this was worthless for the German people, and they found better value in the currency by burning it for warmth. German nationalism was at an all-time low. This was no surprise, since they were just off the back of an enormous defeat in an industrial war that seemingly pitted the entire world against them. The Germans felt hard done by this, yet could not rally behind anyone or anything.

Amongst all of the inner turmoil in post WWI Germany, Hitler was the biggest beneficiary. He was able to oust the communist party through a conspiracy trial, and while he was never voted into office by a public majority vote, he was popular amongst the German people. Dorothy Thompson, adroit in the field of journalism, quickly recognized his rise to power and as such, was the first foreign reporter to interview Hitler. She wrote in I saw Hitler! in 1932, “When I walked into Adolph Hitler’s salon in the Kaiserhof hotel, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something like fifty seconds I was quite sure that I was not. It took just about that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog.” Thompson made it blatantly clear she was not impressed by the Austrian soon-to-be dictator. She was not at all expecting to meet with such a man she described as “faceless” and “formless” (I saw Hitler!, 1932). Even though she egregiously underestimated Hitler, it is not hard to see why. What Thompson saw in Hitler was insignificance, a mere radical with big ambitions without the political prowess to fulfill his endeavors. She remarked “In personal intercourse he is shy, almost embarrassed. […] He gives the impression of a man in a trance” (I saw Hitler!, 1932). Although Thompson did not think much of Hitler, a short year after the article was printed Hitler had seized power and the atrocities (not well known at the time) started to appear. Aware of her mistake, Thompson frantically started to publish various articles, desperately trying to inform the world how Hitler was defeating his opponents and persecuting the Jews. In 1934, she was ordered to leave Germany, and was the first foreign reporter to be ordered out of the country. It made world news.
Dorothy Thompson had a unique view of Germany in the 1920’s and the 1930’s. She was able to differentiate between the aforementioned Weimar Republic and the dictatorship under Adolph Hitler. Thompson recognized that Germany was a defeated nation under the Weimar Republic. Then, once the Nazi Party came along, she observed a gradual change in the German people, but not for the better. It was not a warranted sense of belief, but rather a dumb sense of loyalty, where the public would blindly follow the Nazi Party into anything. In one example, she noticed a banner strung up in a Hitler Youth Camp that deeply perturbed her. That banner read “You were born to die for Germany.” This scared her, as it was a camp full of little kids, ordering them to die for the country because that was what they were born to do. She interpreted this banner as representative of the changes wrought by the Nazi’s. The days of inflation and depression were replaced with brutal efficiency and evil scare tactics. The shift in government went from one extreme to another, with neither change truly “for the people.” The Weimar Republic was inflated with too many political parties, while no one party could speak on behalf of the public. On the other hand, the Nazi Regime was an extremist dictatorship where anyone who spoke out against the party were quickly silenced and sentenced to life in a concentration camp. Thompson even remarked as the war dragged on, that the Germans weren’t necessarily fighting for Hitler, but they were “fighting because a lost war meant a lost nation” (Col. Sunnen, 2015). She recognized that the Nazi rise to power only meant destruction for the German people, and she legitimately sympathized for them.

Dorothy Thompson played a key role in the Resistance through the publication of Hitler’s atrocities and spreading the word about the evils of the Nazi Party. Her actions were genuine and meaningful, because she truly felt for the Germans. Proof of this was illustrated when she wrote “It must be said, it must be re-iterated that there has been and still is a widespread terror, which extends throughout the whole of Germany.” As such, she felt she needed to do something (for the German people, not for Germany). Her work still speaks volumes today on what journalism should be: standing up for what is right and fighting against what is wrong.