Marching for War, Little Rock, June 6, 1970

I spent the Summer of 1970 in Little Rock working as an intern at the Personnel Division of the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. This division was a lousy place to hang out, but I learned about organizational dysfunction and how jaded employees can torpedo a weak manager. Also, I learned and wrote quite a bit about public employee unions, a topic of absolutely no interest to state policy makers. Whatever the deficiencies of the internship, completing it was one of the requirements of the University of Arkansas Master of Public Administration (MPA) program and the pay was not bad.

Because I was doing this internship, I was in Little Rock when a pro-war, anti-Fulbright march was held on Saturday, June 6, 1970 in front of the state capitol. I was curious about what would happen and who would attend. Also, my 35 mm Yashika camera had just been fixed, and I had a telephoto lens that I wanted to test.  So, I showed up for the march and took a bunch of pictures.

When I recently ran across some of these pictures, I could not remember much about the march, so I looked up the Arkansas Gazette story reporting it. It was written by Ernie Dumas and was front-page center, with several pictures. Reading it reminded me of what a fabulous reporter Dumas was. In the first three paragraphs, he made it clear that not very many people showed up for the rally, half of those there came from outside Arkansas, and Rev. Carl McIntire -- who was leading the march -- was a liar ("McIntire told his radio audience...that it appeared that the crowd would be the largest ever assembled at the Arkansas Capitol.") Then, he painted short, colorful word pictures of various people at the march. The story is a delight to read.

This march was one several pro-war marches held in 1970 by McIntire (1906 - 2002), a fundamentalist minister who had been expelled from the Presbyterian Church in 1936 and had been minister of the Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingwood N.J. since 1937 (two good sources that provide information about his life and career are:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_McIntire and http://www.carlmcintire.org/  ). 

One of the causes promoted by the march was the collection of signatures for a vote on a state constitutional amendment authorizing recall of Senators and Congressmen in Arkansas. The measure was aimed at Sen. J.W. Fulbright, and the signature drive was headed by Jim Johnson, who had challenged Fulbright in the 1968 Democratic primary, but had lost.  A few days after the march, Johnson announced that he had not collected enough signatures to get his measure on the state ballot.
  

Below is a long excerpt from the Dumas' story about the march, plus some of the pictures that I took of it.

 ************************

1000 at “Victory March” Chant “Fulbright Must Go”

Arkansas Gazette, 

June 7, 1970, p. 1A, 2A, and 4A.

By Ernest Dumas

About 1000 persons, half or more of them from other states, listened to a group of fundamentalist ministers inveigh against Senator J. William Fulbright Saturday on the state Capitol steps and followed one of them in chanting “Fulbright must go.”

Men and women plastered with stickers and waving signs and flags marched three blocks down Capitol Avenue and back and then stood in the sun or under a magnolia tree on the Capitol lawn for three hours of speaking, singing and praying. They came for the “March for Victory in Vietnam,” which was organized by Rev. Carl McIntire of Collingwood, N.J., a radio evangelist.

Rev. Carl McIntire (with Bible) leads the pro-war march

The crowd obviously was below the leaders expectations. McIntire told his radio audience from a telephone in the Arkansas Education Association Building a few minutes before the march began that it appeared that the crowd would be the largest ever assembled at the Arkansas Capitol.

McIntire and Rev. M. L. Moser Jr of Little Rock, pastor of Central Baptist Church, had said the march was organized to show the world that Arkansas people repudiated Fulbright’s stand against the expanding war in Southeast Asia. Fulbright came under wrathful attacks from the ministers.

Speeches at the rally were made from the steps of the Arkansas Capitol

“He is now the chief Communist spokesman in the United States,” Moser shouted. “He has joined forces with the enemies of the United States. Moser prefaced this by saying that he did not hate the senator.

He said he was praying that “God will change you [Fulbright] and that you will become a child of God and a 100 per cent American.”

McIntire called Fulbright “the senator of surrender.”

Crowd listening to speeches

…..

Jim Johnson …told the crowd that it was probably more difficult to obtain a crowd in Arkansas than in any state. However, he said, for every Arkansan at the rally, 100 persons back at home were with them in their hearts.

Jim Johnson at the pro-war rally

A dozen or so young persons carrying signs calling for peace mingled in the crowd. Little clusters of sign waving supporters of the war gathered around them to shield the peace signs from view. The noise from taunts or arguments with the peace supporters at times competed with the loud speakers on the steps.

“Filth, filth, filth,” chanted a heavy man in a black suit, who identified himself as Rev. W. L. Smith of Perry, FLA., a primitive Baptist minister.

Gary Woods, who edits a peace newspaper at Little Rock, sat quietly on the balustrade near the speakers wearing a floppy little hat. He said he was surprised at the crowd. More people show up at local peace rallies, he said.

McIntire had brought 2,500 signs with him, but not all of them were used.

He told his radio audience in a broadcast before noon that the march effort had to overcome opposition from the two Little Rock newspapers. The people here are certainly conditioned – you might even say brainwashed,” he said.

….

McIntire began his first speech by leading the crowd in chanting: “We want victory. Fulbright must go. Go to Hanoi. You’ve become their vote in the United States Senate. Praise the Lord, Hallelujah.”

Arkansas has the plague of a Fulbright and a controlled press,” he declared.

Banner says, "Back Our Boys, Fulbright Won't"

Elderly men and women were in abundance, carrying flags, signs and Bibles. One woman was dressed in clothing resembling an American flag and carried a huge sign that was in the shape of a liberty bell.

Liberty Bell woman in a dress like a flag

The signs brought by McIntire said, “In God we Trust,” “Win the War,” “Why Lose When We Can Win?” and “Bring Home the POWs First.”

Other persons carried home-made signs. One man wave one that read: “Mr. Nickson, America Will Accept Nothing Less Than Military Victory For Our Men in Viet Nam – Let Them Come With Honor.”

Norman Warnock of Camden, a leader of the American Party in Arkansas, held up one end of a huge banner that said, “W-A-L-L-A-C-E.”

Col. Norman Warnock, a leading segregationist in Arkansas

…

Nguyen Hoan, representing the South Vietnamese Embassy at Washington, read a statement in which he said the war was essentially a Vietnamese war but that his people welcomed Americans because “there is no room for another Munich in Asia.” He did not mention Fulbright.

‘’’

What's a pro-war rally without a Confederate battle flag?

A youth who identified himself as Mike Sparr, 17, of North Little Rock, state vice-president of the Young Arkansas Conservatives and a companion with long hair, burned a red flag, which Sparr said represented the Viet Cong flag, on the Capitol steps. Sparr’s companion was grabbed briefly by a man who stamped out the fire and called the two hippies.

Midway in the rally, McIntire’s aides circulated through the crowd taking collection in little buckets. McIntire urged the people to give whatever they had with them or write a check.

Collecting donations

“We spent a lot of money in here believing that you people would make it possible and give use a very fine offering,” McIntire said.

Other Photos:

"Recall HALFBRIGHT"

"IN THIS SIGN CONQUER, VICTORY"

"Crush Satan's Tools"

"American Sold Out by Brother Bill"

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HATE AND SELF-DOUBT IN AMERICAN POLITICS: Sen. J. W. Fulbright’s 1963 Examination of The American Character

Years ago I viewed elections as competitive sporting events in which political teams gave their all, sometimes winning and sometimes losing.  I supposed that when an election was over, the teams shook hands, and the winners celebrated while the losers dusted themselves off and plotted to win the next match. No hard feelings.

Of course such a view was naive and over time I came to realize that elections are not a sport and they create hard feelings.  Unlike sporting events, elections have consequence that can be immense because they enable government actions to take things, such as money and status, from some people and give those things to others.

The Role of Hate in Politics

My view of politics-as-sport ignored much of what was going on around me in the late ‘50s and early 60s.  While the political scene seemed placid to a casual teenage observer, plenty of hate was at work.  Men and women wearing the mantle of anti-communist, Christian crusader, or die-hard segregationist spread their raw hatred of people and public officials whose ideas differed from theirs.  But they were not the only ones to do so. As I came to understand, both hate and love are common elements in politics.

While most of the extremist groups from the ‘50s and ‘60s have faded to irrelevancy or disappeared, they have been replaced by others with equally twisted views.  More importantly, the hate that inspired these groups has, to some extent, been mainstreamed, often encouraged by ideological movements and their propagandists. These movements use all available media to spread outrage, anger, fear, and hate among their followers.  These emotions fuel political battles with cultural or social or racial enemies.    

In truth, I never fully understood the power of hate in politics until the election of George W. Bush as president. Before him, I had disliked some politicians, but had never hated them.  However, by the end of Bush’s third year in office, I deeply loathed him and what he was doing.  Given such feelings about Bush, his re-election was not only incomprehensible to me, but also deeply disappointing and scary. 

Accepting the Undesirable Results of an Election: Humility and Self-Doubt

When the 2004 election was over, I (presumably like millions of other people) had to reconcile myself to its outcome.  I had to accept that my views did not prevail this time. Reconciliation with an undesired election result requires a bit of humility (the collective decision has been made and I am part of this collective) and a dollop of self-doubt (maybe Bush is not as bad as I believe).

As someone who had dipped his toes into the pool of political hate, I had some understanding of the nasty noises of Pres. Obama’s detractors, although it seemed strange that they started even before he took office. I certainly did not agree with most of the critics, found the willful miscomprehensions of some to be detestable, and quickly tired of the flow of lies from the true haters. Over time, I was appalled by the bitter, personal nature of the attacks on Obama and by the insane name calling: the names of Hitler and Stain were invoked by some of the most rabid extremists. (Of course, many people simply disliked Obama’s policies and decisions, and strongly stated their views, as they should have. Their criticism and opposition are part of the functioning of a normal democracy.)

By November 2012, Obama opponents, including the haters, had had four years to state their opinions and do their upmost to convince voters to remove Obama from office.  They failed.            

I hoped, but not really expected, that the failure to defeat Obama would lead some extreme anti-Obama zealots, through self reflection, to find a measure of political humility and self doubt and reconcile themselves to the results.  Perhaps for some, the election results did cause a questioning of the certitude of their views. However, Obama’s decisive victory clearly had little impact on others: the election results gave them more things to hate, including the millions of people who voted for him.

A good example of this response can be found in the messages of a Facebook “friend” who, starting many months before the election, had posted a generous flow of anti-Obama propagated created by groups who despise him.  After the election results were known, he wrote (or copied from someone; I don’t know which) the following into Facebook comments:

The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him to the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency that to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him the prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him president.

A related message from this person conveyed this nonsensical statement:  “We the people can blame the people who voted for Obama for 4 more years.”  He also wrote, “A lot of people are buying guns. I’m buying food. If you want to eat it’s going to cost a lot more.”

From these messages, we see a person who has gone beyond his hatred of Obama to deep contempt for the 61 million fellow Americans who voted for him in the 201 election.  According to him, they (we) are members of the “depraved electorate” and a “confederacy of fools.” They (we) are people who are a threat to the Republic.

Messages with similar sentiments, usually oozing with the venom, can be found in un-moderated comments on news stories, on far-right web sites, and in the opinion columns of rabidly conservative magazines.  Also, extremist public figures, public officials and preachers have chimed in with the latest manifestations of their deep hatred of Obama and, now, the voters who favored him.

Sen. J.W. Fulbright Talks about “The American Character”

As I thought about the new flow of invective from anti-Obama extremists, I ran across a speech related to the topic in Senator J. W. Fulbright’s papers at the University of Arkansas Special Collections library. It reminded me that hate manifested by extremists is not a recent phenomenon.  Fulbright knew all about them. Right wing zealots had often attacked him during his three decades in public office. Fulbright’s files are full of letters from people charging that he was an unpatriotic traitor, a communist, and worse.    

Fulbright gave this speech on December 5, 1963, just a couple of weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which gave it an emotional edge.  It was titled “The American Character,” and was delivered at a ceremony bestowing the 1963 Rockefeller Public Service Award on five distinguished recipients. 

Apparently the speech struck a chord across the nation. According to a letter Fulbright wrote in April 1964 to R. B. McCallum, his former Pembroke College instructor at Oxford, his office had been swamped with over 10,000 letters responding to it, most of them favorable to his views.  (The letter to McCallum is in the Fulbright Papers, Series 88 Subseries 11 Box 19 at the University of Arkansas Special Collections Library; the complete speech, which was published in the Congressional Record a few days after it was delivered, can be found at this Scribd link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/114776933/The-American-Character-by-William-J-Fulbright

Fulbright Examines the Dark Side of the American Character

Sen. Fulbright began his speech by suggesting that Americans in most respect are “decent, civilized, and humane” people. In most ways, our values reflect the dominant values of Western Civilization including  “tolerance and moderation” and “empiricism and practicality.”

However, United States society is also influenced by a darker strand of Western Civilization, a strand that manifests intolerance and violence among some people. Fulbright noted that this strain is easy to see:

It is in evidence all around us. It is in evidence in the senseless and widespread crime that makes the streets of our great cities unsafe. It is in evidence in the malice and hatred of extremist political movements. And it is in evidence in the cruel bigotry of race that lends to such tragedies as the killing of Negro children in a church in Alabama.

              

Fulbright pointed to “moral absolutism” as the force in Western Civilization that has contributed to “righteous crusading and intolerance.” He told his audience:

Whether religious or political in form, movements of crusading moralism have played a significant, and usually destructive, role in the evolution of Western societies. Such movements, regardless of the content of their doctrines, have all been marked by a single characteristic: the absolute certainty of their own truth and virtue. Each has regarded itself as having an exclusive pipeline to heaven, to God or to a deified concept of History – or to whatever is regarded as the ultimate source of truth. Each has regarded itself as the chosen repository of truth and virtue and each has regarded all nonbelievers as purveyors or falsehood and evil.

These movements are free from any element of doubt as to their own truth and virtue. Their zeal and certitude has led “in the name of noble purpose” to “unspeakable acts” dating back to the burning live of heretics in medieval times.

The moral absolutism was brought to the United States by Puritans. According to Fulbright:

Their religion was Calvinism, an absolutist faith with a stern moral code promising salvation for the few, damnation for the many. The intolerant, witch-hunting Puritanism of seventeenth century Massachusetts was not a major religious movement in America. It eventually became modified and as a source of ethical standards made a worthy contribution to American life. But the Puritan way of thinking, harsh and intolerant, permeated the political and economic life of the country and became a major secular force in America. Coexisting uneasily with our English heritage of tolerance and moderation, the Puritan way of thinking has injected an absolutist strand into American thought – a strand of stern moralism in our public policy and in our standard of personal behavior (emphasis in original speech).

Another factor shaping American character was “the experience of the frontier.” Fulbright described its influence this way:

The frontier experience taught us the great value of individual initiative and self-reliance in the development of our resources and of our national economy. But the individualism of the frontier, largely untempered by social and legal restraints, has also had an important influence on our political life and on our personal relations. It has generated impatience with the complex and tedious procedures of law and glorified the virtues of direct individual action. It has instilled in us an easy familiarity with violence and vigilante justice. In the romanticized form in which it permeates the television and other mass media, the mythology of the frontier conveys the message that killing a man is not as long as you don’t shoot him in the back, that violence is only reprehensible when its purpose is bad and that in fact it is commendable and glorious when it is perpetuated by good men for a good purpose.

Moral absolutism, the negative aspects of the frontier mentality, and other factors had a negative influence on post-World War II politics. According to Fulbright:

The voices of suspicion and hate have been heard throughout the land. They were heard a decade ago when statesmen, private citizens, and even high ranking members of the armed forces were charged with treason, subversion, and communism, because they had disagreed with or somehow displeased the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy. They are heard today when extremist groups do not hesitate to call a former President or the Chief Justice of the United States a traitor and a Communist. They are heard in the mail which United States Senators receive almost daily charging them with communism and treason because they voted for the foreign aid bill or for the nuclear test ban treaty.

….

This malice and hatred which have become part of our politics cannot be dismissed as the normal excesses of a basically healthy society. They have become far too common. They are beyond the pale of normal political controversy in which honest men challenge each other’s judgment and opinions but not each other’s motives and integrity. The excesses of the extremists in our country have created an intolerable situation in which we must all guard our words and the expression of an unorthodox point of view is an extraordinary act of courage.

Fulbright suggested that the “prevailing atmosphere of suspicion and hate” found in the United States “spawned” the assassination of President Kennedy, even if it was not a direct cause. He hoped that the death could be redeemed by actions to reduce or eliminate the poisoned atmosphere.

He urged calling forth “the basic decency of America,” which might be possible because of the “national revulsion against extremism and violence” following the assassination. He sensed that there was a desire among Americans to heal of the wounds of “divisiveness and hate.” Above all, he suggested efforts to reshape the character of controversies to conduct them “as the honest differences of honest men in the quest for a consensus.” He said:

We can come to recognize that those who disagree with us are not necessarily attacking us but only our opinions and ideas. Above all, we must maintain the element of doubt as to our convictions, recognizing that it was not given to any man to perceive ultimate truth and that, however unlikely it may seem, there may in fact be truth or merit in the views of those who disagree with us. (Emphasis in the original.)

Fulbright concluded his speech with a plea to “revive and strengthen the central core of our national heritage, which is the legacy of liberty, tolerance, and moderation that come to us from the ancient world through a thousand years of English history and three hundred centuries of democratic evolution in North American.”  According to Fulbright,

It is this historic legacy which is the best and the strongest of our endowments. It is our proper task to strengthen and cultivate it in the years ahead. If we do so, patiently and faithfully, we may arrive before too long at a time when the voices of hate will no longer be heard in our land and the death of our President will be redeemed.

Fulbright’s Hope Unrealized

Unfortunately, based on recent experiences with governing and elections in the United States, it is clear that Fulbright’s prescriptions either were not implemented or they did not work. We failed to redeem the murder of President Kennedy and to realize the hopes of Senator Fulbright for an American political system characterized by self-doubt, toleration, and moderation that permit civil discourse about our most difficult problems.  The politics of hate thrives among a portion of our citizens who believe they possess knowledge of absolute truth that is either unavailable to or ignored by people who do not agree with them. In 2012, as in 1963, the American Character – fine, generous, and admirable in many ways – still has its dark elements that stain democracy.

But, of course, I could be wrong.

Finding M. W. Fodor: Fulbright, Vienna, and Me

The Road to M. W. Fodor

You have probably never heard of M.W. Fodor, a foreign correspondent in Vienna from about 1919 until the Anschluss in 1938, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian and several papers in the United States. Until about three years ago, I certainly did not know who he was. I found out about him in a roundabout way.

One day in 2008, I remembered that in late 1968 I had sent a letter to Sen. J.W. Fulbright about my experiences in Vienna. In 1967 I had received the J.W. Fulbright Scholarship for Undergraduate Studies to attend the Institute of European Studies (IES) in Vienna, and I wanted to show my appreciation with the letter. Of course, Fulbright had neither funded the scholarship nor selected its recipient, but it was created for one student in Arkansas in his honor after he had traveled to Vienna in 1965 for an honorary doctorate, and while there, had met with IES students.

In the response to my letter, Fulbright, as I recalled, had written a note at the bottom of the typed page saying something like, "I had a similar experience while I was in Vienna."  In fact, here is the actual letter, which I finally found hidden in a box:

Recalling that letter, it struck me that it would be interesting to know what Fulbright did while he was in Vienna. So, I consulted four of his biographies, which gave a similar account of his stay there from late summer 1928 to early summer 1929.  His biographers told how he had had hung out at the Café Louve, a cafe frequented by American and British journalists, and had made friends with a journalist by the name of M.W. Fodor, a Hungarian, who then was a correspondent for the Philadelphia Public Ledger, the New York Evening Post, and, I think, the Manchester Guardian. 

According to the biographies, Fodor had invited Fulbright to make a trip with him through the Balkan states in Spring 1929 to interview diplomats and government leaders, and they had made the trip, getting to Athens, where Fulbright fell ill and had to break off the trip to return to Arkansas. Then, the story continues that Fulbright and Fodor frequently corresponded during the 1940s and 1950s.

Picture from Ken Cuthbertson. 1992.
 Inside: The Biography of John Gunther

Then I stumbled on an essay about Fulbright and Vienna by Walter Grünzweig, University of Dortmund, in a publication Fulbright at Fifty: Austrian-American Education Exchange, 1950-2000. In it, he recounts Fulbright visit to Vienna and his relationship with Fodor. He argues "the Vienna experience was formative for the later foreign policy specialist and the creator of the most important venue of international exchange the world has known." His arguments for this assertion can be found on pages 4 to 13 in this document:
http://www.fulbright.at/fileadmin/user_upload/news/festschrift.pdf .

Finding Out More About Fodor's Years in Vienna

Reading Fulbright's biographies and the Grünzweig paper, I began to wonder who this Fodor person was. On-line searches yielded some bibliographical information, but little about him and his life. Since Fodor's death in 1977, this once well-known journalist has faded from sight and his accomplishments are largely unremembered. For example, Fodor still does not have a Wikipedia entry.

Intrigued, I decided to do some research on M. W. Fodor to see what I could learn about him. And I have spent many hours during the past three years accumulating information about him, his life, and his times. First, to learn more about Fodor, I read his two main books, Plot and Counter-Plot in Central Europe (1938) [also published in a slightly revised version as South of Hitler] and The Revolution is On (1940).  Then I tracked down most of the magazine articles that he wrote for magazines such as Nation, Atlantic, and The New Republic. After that, I found dozens of his newspaper articles that he had written for the Washington Post in the years immediately following the end of WWII. I am still searching for some of the more elusive of his published articles. 

One of the first things I learned about Fodor is that he kept very interesting company and had some famous  friends. Two of them were particularly important in the first half of his life: Dorothy Thompson and John Gunther. Fodor was  a mentor to both Thompson, a journalistic dynamo, and Gunther, an exuberant, ambitious man, who clearly greatly admired Fodor. Both Thompson and Gunther were immensely successful journalists, and Fodor shows up prominently in their biographies. Also, Fodor and his wife are sympathetic characters in Gunther's roman à clef (about British and American reporters in Vienna in the first part of the 1930s). In the novel, Fodor is a journalist named "Sandor."

Another of Fodor's friends was William Shirer, who seems in his many books to be a self-absorbed man. Of course Shirer's fame came primarily from two books:  Berlin Diary, mostly about his reporting from Berlin in the '30s and the massive Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  From his many autobiographical books, it is clear that he considered Fodor to be a friend, and he gives the best account of what was happening to Fodor and his family in Vienna in March 1938 just before the arrival of German troops in Vienna. However, Shirer was confusing when giving some details about Fodor. He wrote the Fodor was Jewish, but from all other accounts he was a practicing Quaker when in Vienna. Also, he refers to Fodor's wife as "the beautiful Slovak," but better sources say she was from Hungary.

This picture was on the back dust jacket of Fodor's book,
Plot and Counter-Plot in Central Europe

Other friends and acquaintances included Vincent (Jimmy) Sheean and G.E.R. Gedye, both fabulous writers who were colleagues at times of Fodor, but were not close to him. He appears briefly in one or more of their books. Also, Friedrich Scheu, an Austrian who wrote for a British paper in the 1930s and seemed to know Fodor fairly well.

In their books, these journalists provided more information about Fodor and his work and life in Vienna. In addition to them, Fodor appears briefly in the memoirs of at least a dozen other journalists or political figures who were in Vienna in the 1930s. Without exception, Fodor is presented as the man who knows the most about what is going on in Central Europe and the Balkans and is willing to share his information.

The Later Fodor Years:  The Fulbright Connection

While it is possible to get a good sense of Fodor and his life from about 1920 to 1940, information on the later years is sparser.  We know from the Thompson and Gunther biographies about what happened soon after his arrival in the United States and how he made a living while here. Also, we can find newspaper articles about him speaking in different cities throughout the country.  But, details are missing. For example, Fodor's entry in the Hungarians in America, 1963, says that he studied at Olivet College in Michigan in 1942 and that he received an "Hon. LL.B Sheffield, England." However, I found nothing that corroborates this information or provides details. The University of Sheffield law school, which I contacted, says it have no record of awarding such a degree to Fodor, so it may be from another college in the area.

Part of the problem is that Fodor's books and articles have very little autobiographical information, and little that he wrote after 1947 is easily obtained. After becoming editor of the Berlin edition of Die Neue Zeitung, he wrote -- I am sure -- editorials and other materials for the paper, but copies of the newspaper are in just a few archives in the U.S. and Germany.

Fortunately, some biographical material is available through his private correspondence with J. William Fulbright.  Sen. Fulbright was among the famous people Fodor knew, the two reconnected in 1940 when Fodor came to the University of Arkansas to give a public lecture. Fulbright was then president of the UA and introduced Fodor to the assembly.

Picture from Ken Cuthbertson. 1992.
 Inside: The Biography of John Gunther

Then, later in the 1940s, when Fodor had taken on a new job with the U.S. occupation forces in Germany, he began sending Fulbright information, insights, and views of events in Germany, Central Europe, the Soviet Union, and other world hot spots.  From 1948 to 1957, he sent 65 to 70 memos, plus about 100 letters (some with information, some with personal communications) to Fulbright.  It is clear that Fulbright valued these memos and letters -- he sent copies of many of them to colleagues and to the CIA -- and had high regard for Fodor.

The letters exchanged by Fulbright and Fodor, plus his memos, are in the J. William Fulbright Papers at the University of Arkansas Special Collections Library.  From the memos and letters, we can track where Fodor was living and what he was doing from 1948 to 1957.

Reading Fodor's memo and letters showed the vast extent and reach of his knowledge of world events, and the people making them.  Also it showed that by 1948, Fodor had become a staunch anti-communist crusader, something not wholly compatible with his liberal views and outlook in Vienna. The war and its aftermath changed people; for example, compare Shirer's Berlin Diary, written before the war, with his book, End of a Berlin Diary, published in 1947, which has a nasty, revenge-laden tone. Clearly, the war and its aftermath had affected Shirer, and it affected Fodor. 

Streetcar Advertising in Gienow-Hecht,
Transmission Impossible

Fodor's memos to Fulbright stopped in 1958 when Fodor and his wife, Martha, moved back to the United States, where he worked for the United States Information Agency (USIA) in Washington D.C.  Martha died shortly after their return, in January 1959.  Fulbright and Fodor exchanged a few letters after that about personal matters.


In 1961, President Kennedy appointed Edward R. Murrow, the famous journalist, to head the USIA. In Fall, 1953, Murrow had filmed a "See It Now" program in Berlin; during it, he interviewed Fodor, calling him "one of the greatest reporters I have ever known."

You can see Murrow's interview of Fodor, beginning at minute 29:40 of this 58 minute program, at this link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4041790n   (This is a fascinating video of Murrow's news program, with the great journalists of the early 1950s, such as Howard K. Smith, reporting from this besieged city.)

I read somewhere that Murrow appointed Fodor to an important USIA post, but have found no confirmation of that.  Fodor retired in 1964, and lived until 1977.

Finding A Part of Fodor

I do not claim to have gained great insight into M.W. Fodor, but have formed some impressions about him.  For example, I think that although Fodor lacked the flamboyance of Thompson, the ego of Shirer, the grand vision of Gunther, and the powerful prose of Sheean and Gedyes, he had one gift that made him their equal:  an amazing memory that helped him accumulate knowledge about his subjects that far surpassed the knowledge that others had.  

Also,while some of his famous journalist friends wrote from the heart, some to make money, and others because they were born reporters who had to tell their stories, it seems to me that Fodor wrote because he found out things, and made connections between them, and wanted people to know about them.

The good news for me when searching Fodor was that the subject of this research was, from all the accounts, a very likable man: Quiet, unassuming, a bit shy, generous, a good friend. Fodor was widely praised for his generosity and collegiality. And he led a most interesting life, meeting some of the leading political and diplomatic figures of his day.

The Biographical Sketch

Finally, after three years of accumulating a huge amount of material on Fodor, I have written a short biographical sketch of him. In writing it, the goal was to boil down the massive amount of information I have accumulated to the basic facts about his life, and to fill it in with a little of texture. The biographical sketch is much like a slightly long encyclopedia entry.

Much more could and should be written about Fodor's life, simply because it was so interesting and varied. Hopefully, the biographical sketch can be expanded over time to capture more details of his work as a correspondent in Vienna and as the editor of Die Neue Zeitung in Berlin.  

My research has many gaps. I found little about his ancestors, parents, and early life in Budapest. Many details are fuzzy: where exactly did he study engineering? Where did he work in England? What really happened in England during WWI? What was he doing from 1958 until his retirement in 1964?

At present, another researcher -- a graduate student in Budapest -- is starting research on Fodor, and perhaps she will be able to answer these and other questions.  No doubt that her work add much more information about Fodor's life and times, and will allow a more complete story to be told.. 

In the meanwhile, I have posted the biographical sketch on Scribd, and it can be accessed at this link:      

http://www.scribd.com/doc/65502558/Marcel-W-Fodor-Foreign-Correspondent

If you read the biographical sketch and find mistakes and omissions, please let me know. I intend to update it as I get more information.