When I learned of the recent death of Denis Fodor, I immediately recalled my conversation with him in June 2012 that evoked a past I had previously explored only through old newspaper articles, biographies, and history books. I had been researching the life of Denis’s father, M. W. Fodor, a Vienna-based correspondent who had covered middle Europe and the Balkans during the inter-war period for the Manchester Guardian, and Denis knew more about his father’s life than anyone else alive. Plus, he had memories of living as a child in Vienna during the early 1930s, and many adventures after that. I spent more than two pleasurable hours listening to Denis tell about his life and that of his father, seeing the past through the eyes of a witness.
The conversation with Fodor has been arranged and was also attended by Fabienne Gouverneur, who at the time was a doctoral student at Andrássy University in Budapest doing research for a dissertation that centered on M.W. Fodor and his correspondence over the years with important people, especially Sen. J. W. Fulbright. She had interviewed Denis Fodor once before and would have subsequent meetings with him, becoming well acquainted with him and his family. Information gathered from her talks with Fodor helped inform her dissertation and related book, both titled Personal, Confidential: Mike W. Fodor als Netwerker und Kulturmittler. Both include a comprehensive biography of M.W. Fodor.
We met with Denis Fodor at his apartment on a quiet street in Munich and our conversation was accompanied by a modest lunch that he served. He answered our many questions with eloquence, intelligence, and some sharp edges. He remembered some things that occurred more than seven decades ago with great clarity, but some memories were elusive and, frustratingly, some things, such as the circumstances of the deaths of his grandparents, he did not know. He later replied to many other questions in e-mail exchanges.
Denis was still residing in Munich when the end came in late July 2020. He was 93 years old. His death was not (as far as I can tell) reported by any newspaper or memorialized in any obituary. In his honor, I will tell here some of his life's narrative and a few of the memories that he shared with Fabienne and me.
M. W. Fodor
The story of Denis Fodor’s life must begin by introducing
his father and describing the circumstances of Denis’s early life in Vienna. M. W. Fodor, Denis’s father, was named Marcel
Vilmos Fodor at birth and was later known by his friends as “Mike.” He was born
to a wealthy family in Budapest in 1890, and he trod an improbable path to a
distinguished career in journalism; from that perch, he observed, commented on,
interpreted, and swam in the tide of events in Europe that changed the world after
World War I. After earning a degree in
1911 from the University of Budapest in chemical engineering, M. W. went to Great
Britain in 1912 to work for the Frodingham Iron and Steel Company in Scunthorpe. When World War I began, he was initially
interned as an “enemy alien,” but was released in March 1917 to live on the
estate of Lord Mowbray at Allerton to do “important war work.” As the war ended,
he -- implausibly -- got a job as a Manchester Guardian correspondent
reporting from Vienna.[1] Although he lacked experience as a journalist, M.W.
Fodor spoke several languages of countries in middle Europe and the Balkans, and
he had traveled extensively in the areas he was to cover for his newspaper. He
soon developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the leaders and politics of the
European countries on this beat and he made good friends of other Anglo-American
correspondents stationed in Vienna during the inter-war years, most of whom hung
out at the Café Louvre, where M.W. was often at the center of conversations
about current events. 
Photograph from Ken Cuthbertson,
Inside: The Biography of
John Gunther.
In 1925, M.W. Fodor married Martha Roob, whom he had met in Vienna. She had been born in Slovakia. Her mother was Slovakian, and her father, from Vienna, was a professional soldier in the Austrian army. She lived for many years with her parents in Hungary after her father was posted there.
Denis entered the world on June 27, 1927. He was M.W. and Martha Fodor’s first and only child. Their celebration of his birth was interrupted a couple of weeks later when M. W. had to cover Vienna’s “Days of Horror” (July 15-17), during which Vienna’s police killed 85 demonstrators who were protesting a court’s acquittal of three right-wing militia members who had murdered a child and an invalid war veteran in January. They had shot into a crowd of Social Democrats who were parading in Schattendorf, a village near the Hungarian border. The July eruption of violence, during which demonstrators set the Ministry of Justice building on fire, propelled Austria toward the end of its democracy.[2]
A year later, a more pleasant event occurred in the lives of the Fodors: J.W. Fulbright of Fayetteville, Arkansas, came to Vienna. The future senator’s study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar had ended, and after a tour of Europe with his mother, he decided to hang out in Vienna. While there, he found the Café Louvre and M. W. Fodor, who became a mentor. Later, M. W. Fodor and Fulbright exchanged correspondence for more than two decades.
As Denis was growing up, he met his father’s famous friends,
sometimes with his parents at the Café Louvre and sometimes at their home on Börsegasse,
near the Maria am Gestade Church. These friends included Dorothy Thompson, who
arrived in Vienna as a young woman in 1921 with hopes of breaking into
journalism; John Gunther who moved in 1930 to Vienna to cover events for the Chicago
Daily News, and William Shirer, a journalist who stumbled into Vienna in
1929 as an insecure leftist reporter for the Chicago Tribune, a paper
owned by reactionary capitalist. Thompson later became the second most famous
woman in the U.S., eclipsed only Elinor Roosevelt, through the newspaper column
she wrote from the later 1930s into the 1950s; Gunther’s fame came from his
series of “Inside,” books, the first of which was Inside Europe,
published in 1936; and Shirer – who was fired by his newspaper not long after
he arrived in Vienna – became a household name when he made regular radio
reports from Berlin in the latter part of the 1930s and his books Berlin
Diary and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich became best sellers. 
Picture was taken in about 1932. Published in M.W. Fodor. 1939. South of Hitler.
Another of Fodor’s friends was Robert Best, whom Denis also
liked, a reporter for the United Press news service, who later became infamous
when he stayed in Germany during World War II and made propaganda broadcasts
back to the U.S. After the war, Best was
convicted of treason for his actions and died while still in prison.[3] 
Robert Best (left) with his
brother and sister as his treason trial ended.
AP press photograph
Surrounded by these and other talented journalists, Denis
Fodor grew up in turbulent times. In February 1934, a few months before his seventh
birthday, Vienna had a brief civil war instigated by Chancellor Englebert
Dollfuss and the Christian Socialist Party, with its militia and the country’s
army routing the supporters of the Social Democrats. The victors installed the
one-party Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front), an Austro-fascist government,
as the country’s regime. A few months later, at the end of July, Dollfus was
murdered by Austrian Nazis as they attempted to take over the government. In
March 1938, when Denis was ten years old, Hitler sent the German Army to annex
Austria.[4]
During his early school years, Denis was enrolled in the Schottenschule (now Schottengymnasium), a private Catholic school located a short walk from his home. At the time, he attended a Catholic Church with his mother, a Catholic. His father did not go to church but embraced Quaker beliefs. Nevertheless, both M. W. and Denis Fodor would have been classified under Nazi racial laws as Jewish because M. W. Fodor’s mother, Berta von Auspitz, came from a Jewish family. (M. W.’s father, Janos Fodor, was not Jewish.)
As Vienna’s Nazis became more brazen in their behavior and anti-Semitism grew in Vienna, Denis’ parents sent him to England in 1936 to study at Abinger Hill School, a progressive and prestigious private school in Surrey. He was studying there on March 12, 1938, when German troops marched into Vienna. His parents fled Austria a week later after selling their apartment at a fraction of its value, leaving behind furniture, books, and papers.
Soon after the Anschluss, the Fodor family made a trip to the United States and began the process of obtaining U.S. citizenship. With their citizenship clock ticking and permission granted to be absent from the U.S., the Fodors departed for England in June 1938 so that M. W. could resume reporting from Europe for the Chicago Daily News and the New Republic and Denis could prepare to return to his school.
Two years later, following Germany’s invasion of the Low Countries, Denis and his mother hurriedly left England to travel to the United States, arriving aboard the M.V. Britannic on June 21, 1940. They were joined there by M.W. Fodor on the following day. He had been in Belgium in May when the Germans attacked, had made his way to Portugal via Paris, and had flown to New York City on a Pan Am “Atlantic Clipper” flight.
The Fodor family spent the summer of 1940 at Dorothy
Thompson’s expansive farm in Vermont. There, Denis spent time with his good
friend Michael Lewis (1930-1975), Dorothy’s son, whom he had met earlier while
living in Vienna. When summer ended, the Fodors settled in Chicago, where M.
W. taught for a while at the Illinois Institute of Technology and later became
a columnist for the Chicago Sun. In 1943, M. W. was granted citizenship and
Denis received “derivative citizenship.” 
Initial Citizenship Application, 1938
Denis attended Chicago’s Francis W. Parker High School, a private school with a progressive college-prep curriculum, graduating in May 1944. One episode in his life during his high school years was documented in the Chicago Sun: Living with his family at the Sherwin-on-the-Lake Apartments, 1205 Sherwin Ave., a few hundred feet from Lake Michigan, Denis had tried to rescue occupants of an airplane that had crashed into Lake Michigan within view of his apartment. According to the Chicago Sun, “Dennis Fodor, 15, … saw the plane crash, ran downstairs from his apartment…and began swimming out to the plane. His mother said, ‘Dennis tried at first to launch his sailboat, but he couldn’t; the water was too choppy. He then kicked off his shoes and began swimming but the rescue boat had already reached the pilot.’”[5]
Between Fall 1944 and March 1949, Denis earned an
undergraduate degree in English from Harvard College, taking time out to serve
in the U.S. Army, with a stint as an army translator in Vienna. At Harvard, he
played club football and basketball, and he had several stories published in
the college’s literary magazines. He lived with two roommates in the apartment inhabited by Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he studied at
Harvard. After graduating, Denis moved to Germany – the front line of the Cold
War -- where he took a job reporting for the United Press. His parents were
living in Berlin at the time. His father edited the Berlin edition of Die
Neue Zeitung, a daily newspaper published by the occupying U.S.
forces. 
1947 Harvard Yearbook
In about 1953, Denis Fodor began reporting for Time
and Life magazines. He covered the 1956 uprising in Hungary and soon
after that was sent to Beirut to write about events in the volatile Middle
East. Not long after finishing that assignment, he switched from reporting to editing
for Time and Life magazines. He spent the rest of his life
working as an editor, first for Time/Life, then the Encyclopedia Britannica,
and finally Reader’s Digest. He lived during much of the 1960s in New
York; several years during the 1970s in Paris, where Reader’s Digest had
its European office; and most of the rest of his life in Munich. In 1981, he
co-wrote a book, The Neutrals, about the history of the European countries
that remained neutral – or tried to – during World War II. Published by
Time/Life, it was positively reviewed. 
Cover of The Neutrals by
Denis J. Fodor
When I had the chance to ask him questions in June 2012, most of my inquiries had to do with his memories of his early years in Vienna and of his father. Below are the summaries of some of the questions I asked and his responses to those questions, plus some of his other recollections that the illustrated the richness of his life.
The Stammtisch for Anglo-American Journalists at the Café Louvre
As I read about the lives of Fodor, Thompson, Gunther, Shirer, and other English-speaking journalists stationed in Vienna during the 1920s and 1930s, I was struck by the Café Louvre's role in their lives.[6] It was a regular meeting place for them as they did their work, and it provided a comfortable locale for socializing. At the Café Louvre, the journalists had a Stammtisch – a table or tables at the café reserved for them because they were regular customers. The café’s first-district location was perfect: it was a few steps from the Central Telegraph office from which the journalists could send their stories by telegraph. Also, it was across the street from Radio Austria, which could transmit urgent stories to their newspapers by wireless communications.
Cafe Louvre in about 1940
From Der Spiegel
I was eager to hear what Denis remembered about Café Louvre, where he spent time as a kid. In the interview and some email exchanges, I learned the following from him:
The café, located at the corner of Wipplinger and Renngasse, was in a neo-baroque or gothic building that “had eyebrows." The building had a dog-leg design. It was about five stories tall.
In the middle of the L-shaped room of the cafe were marble top tables
with cane chairs. On the sides were booths, upholstered in cloth. The waiters
carried silver trays. The head waiter wore tails. The others wore smoking
jackets with butterfly ties. Patrons called the head waiter by his last name.
They called the other waiters by their first names. The usual order was one of
several types of coffee -- melange, kleiner braune. You could also get a simple
meal such as goulash or soup such as leberknödel. The dessert trays had cake and strudel
of various kinds.”
Robert Best at
the Café Louvre
One journalist used the Café Louvre as his office, even receiving telephone calls and his mail there. That man was Robert Best, who had, over time, made the café the central meeting point for most English-speaking foreign journalists in Vienna. He had done so by running a side business at the café that helped other journalists stay informed about breaking stories, covered for them when they were absent from the city, and provided other small services that made their jobs easier. The many journalists who worked with Best during his time in Vienna, most of whom considered him a friend, were shocked when he stayed in Europe after the start of World War II and made anti-Semitic propaganda broadcasts back to the U.S.[7]
Best was a well-liked, but strange character. Elements of his life and personality were captured in two books written by journalists who knew him well. The first book, The Lost City, was written by John Gunther in the last half of the 1930s, but the publication of this roman a clef was delayed for nearly thirty years because of fears that some of its characters, who were clearly based on journalists and others living in Vienna in the early 1930s, would sue the publisher for libel. Foremost among those who might have claimed defamation was Robert Best, whose character in the novel was James N. Drew. According to the novel, Drew was “at once bashful, boyish, and portentous… a stout man in his middle thirties, with a heavy long face and an extraordinarily sweet – that was the only word for it – smile…. He was a mess, but, God damn it, he did have that sweetness.” In the novel, Drew – as apparently in real life --did some sleazy and even dishonest things.[8]
Best was also the inspiration for the main character of William Shirer’s novel, The Traitor, which was set in Berlin. The character, Oliver Knight, according to the cover blurb, had “to choose…between returning to the land of his birth or staying in wartime Germany to satisfy his hunger for lust and power.” He made the wrong choice.[9]
I asked Denis of his
memory of Robert Best, and he gave a surprising answer. According to my notes,
he observed that Robert Best was among his father’s best friends. Denis remembered Best as a "very nice man" and
a "poor slob" who was deeply Southern, not too bright, and a bit
uncouth. Illustrating the last point, Denis noted that Best spooned goulash
sauce onto his Sachertorte. He also mentioned the Romanian "Princess"
that Best supported (the “princess” was also an unsavory character in the
novels written by Gunther and Shirer), saying that she was on drugs and he had
to scramble to pay her costs.
Denis recalled that Best often would loan his father money at the end of the month to help him make ends meet. He stated his opinion that his father would have testified in favor of Best as his trial for treason. He said that neither he nor his father blamed Best for what happened. According to Denis, Best was forced into his actions by specific circumstances, and we do not know what we would do if we were in those circumstances.
The Fodors in John Gunther’s
Novel, The Lost City
Among the sympathetic characters in Gunther’s The Lost City are three who were clearly based on the Fodors, whom Gunther obviously liked. Laszlo Sandor was the name given to M. W. Fodor, Martha Fodor was Erji Sandor, and Denis was Albrecht, nicknamed “Putzi,” which was Denis’s nickname when he was a boy. Here are some short descriptions from the book:
Like Balkan kings, [Laszlo] Sandor spoke no language perfectly, not even his own. His English had a Hungarian accent, his Hungarian a French accent, his French a German accent, his German an Italian accent, his Italian an English accent and so on around. His voice carried a friendly chuckle, and his eyes, beyond heavy owl-like spectacles, held a friendly gleam. He loved to elucidate, to share his wisdom; he would say, “Now, it is something inter-est-ing that will happen. Let me tell you about. He seldom conceded the necessity of using pronouns at the end of sentences.
Erji was a Slovak and probably had gypsy blood. Her father, of the most respectable class, had been an officer….She asked nothing better of life than that she should run the household while he worked, sit quietly with him when he wrote his dispatches, and then go to a coffeehouse by his side in the evening. Laszlo asked for nothing more than what he had. She must always be close by [and] she could sing the old gypsy songs when they had a party.
Albrecht, nicknamed Putzi, their six-year old son, came in with Fräulein. He paid little attention to his parents, but casually sat on the floor of the room where Sandor worked and pulled a pile of toys from a bottom shelf. Laszlo beamed and Erji dropped on her knees beside him, worshiping him with her eyes, adoring him. The child yanked at a tin locomotive.
“For my name day I want a new locomotive. This locomotive has only one smokestack. I want a locomotive with two, three, six smokestacks!
“Locomotives
do not come with six smokestacks.”
When I went to talk Denis Fodor in 2012, I took along a paperback edition of The Lost City to give to him in case he did not have a copy, had not read it recently, and might want to reread it. A few days after the meeting, I received an e-mail from Denis in which he mentioned that he had re-read the book and concluded that “the characters in it are either more or less composites. My mother, for instance, is more composite than mother. I am Gunther’s Putzi and was called that, but don’t remember myself as acting Gunther-like.”
Dorothy Thompson’s and Sinclair
Lewis’s 1933 Christmas Celebration at Semmering
Denis was present as a child at a famous Christmas party hosted in 1932 by Dorothy Thompson and her husband Sinclair Lewis. The ten-day party was held at Semmering, a small Alpine ski resort town in Lower Austria about fifty miles from Vienna, and was attended by about forty of Dorothy’s friends, both journalists and others.[10]
Accounts of this party can be found in the biographies of Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis and in a book titled Dorothy and Red by her friend Vincent Sheehan. Opinions about the party varied. M. W. Fodor is quoted in one of Thompson’s biographies as describing it as “a week of unadulterated pleasure enlivened by witty companions and his lovely Martha’s gypsy songs performed nightly to her own guitar accompaniment.”[10] Other accounts, such as that given by Lilian Mowrer, had less generous assessments of the party.[11] Amid ten days of fun, boredom, and drinking, two things happened to change the life of Dorothy Thompson: her deepening estrangement from her husband Sinclair Lewis and the feelings that she developed for one of her guests, Baroness Christa Hatvay (also known as Christa Winsloe), author of a book titled Mädchen in Uniform, which developed into a love affair.[12]
Photos from this holiday party can be found in Sheean’s book
and in Dorothy Thompson’s papers housed at Syracuse University. Included among
them are those of the five young children at the party, including Denis. On December
24, 2012, the day before the eightieth anniversary of the party, I sent an email
to Denis to ask him if he had any recollections of it. He replied that he had
some, but they were vague: “The Fodors put up at our accustomed hostelry, the
burgherly Hotel St. Johann. The others stayed at the Panhans, a modern (for the
times) luxury hotel. One or others may even have stayed at the very
conservative and luxurious Südbahn Grand Hotel. For skiers there
was one slope that had a rope-lift, a novelty at the time, and another slope
that had none. I used the slope that had none (neither my father nor mother
skied). Meetings were over meals and cocktails. Buses, belonging to the postal
service, had skis attached to their front wheels and chains at the rear, took
care of the to-ing and fro-ing.” He later added, “I seem to remember a large
Christmas tree, very silvery, and boxes etc…..people… and Red Lewis sitting
there smiling benignly…It was in a house, not a hotel or hotel room. No Dorothy,
no Michael.”
 |
| Children at Semmering, 1932 Denis Fodor is standing. Sitting by him is Michael Lewis. |
Later I sent him two photos of the five young children at the event and asked him to point himself out in the photos. He confirmed that he is the only kid standing in the first picture, and the young boy near him was Michael Lewis. In the second picture, he is sitting, and Michael Lewis is standing. Denis commented, “I used to dress well back then.”
 |
| Children at Semmering, 1932 Denis Fodor is sitting. Michael Lewis is standing. |
Fodor and Fulbright
Denis was only one year old when J. W. Fulbright showed up in Vienna, so he had no memories of him. However, he heard his father talk about Fulbright. I asked him what he recalled his father saying, and he replied that M. W. Fodor had liked Fulbright from the start. He was impressed and amused by him. Then he repeated a story about Fulbright that he heard from his father:
In Vienna, it was custom before
Christmas for different charities to collect donations from people for
"Winterhilfe" -- literally winter help. One day, he and Fodor were
together at a place selling dairy products and were chatting when a person
soliciting contributions for the Nazi Winterhilfe campaign came into the room
and walked up to Fulbright to ask for a donation. Fulbright looked at the guy
then turned to Fodor for help figuring out who was soliciting the donation,
asking, "What domination is this?"
Denis Fodor and Kim Philby
Denis lived in Beirut for more than a year in 1958 and 1959, and he recalled that his residence was an apartment had an angled view of the campus of the American University of Beirut and another angled view of Beirut`s main lighthouse. Among Denis’s acquaintances in Beirut was Kim Philby, who was a journalist working for the Economist. According to Denis, Philby used to hang out at the Hotel Normandie, just off the Corniche, and “after stealing the wife of Sam Pope Brewer, the Beirut bureau chief of the New York Times,” he took an apartment not far from there. Denis saw him daily and went to his house many times. In fact, according to Denis, Philby was good friends with all the Americans there. Philby stayed in Lebanon until January 1963, when he flew to Moscow as evidence was mounting that he had been an important spy for the Soviet Union. Before then, according to Denis, he and Philby’s other past and present colleagues did not know that he was a spy.[13]
Denis recalled that his father had known Philby when, as a young man, he “pitched up in Vienna in female company.” Philby connected with the Anglo-American press corps in Vienna because of his connections with a member of the British press corps there.[14] During his time in Vienna, according to Denis, “He seems to have been an overt far-leftist… and only turned surreptitious later.” Denis also noted that “ingenues of the Liberal flavor” who were visiting Vienna, as well as other visitors with suitable recommendations, often ended up “being hand-held by my father.”
M.W. Fodor From His Son’s Perspective
When you read about someone’s life, it is important not only
to find out about what they did but also get a sense of what they were like and
what motivated them. We know that many of Fodor’s friends thought highly of
him, but it is also valuable to see him through his son's eyes. Here are
some of Denis’s observations about his father:
My father was never a writer as such. He was a Central European intellectual of a liberal orientation and had the kind of gregarious personality that could land him all kinds of interesting jobs. He was a wonderful moderate man and a pacifist.
[My father] deserved to be rated an intellectual…He had a higher education not only in engineering but also in the humanities.
The significance of John Hamilton [whom M.W. Fodor said was his mentor] to my father was as a teacher of the craft, not of the flow of history. My father was anything but a journalist by education (though my grandfather (part-) owned two newspapers, one in Budapest the other in Vienna). It was Hamilton, something of an intellectual, but mainly just a Manchester Guardian hand, who showed my father how to make his special kind of savvy of use to the editorial desks in Manchester. My father was grateful to him for this, but he also respected him for the acuity of his judgment of the situation as it developed in Berlin in the twenties.”
As the only correspondent on the Guardian’s staff who was not Anglophone, the copy-desk editing that my father required was done in Manchester….My father filed daily by dictation over the telephone and did so from our apartment’s library, not from a separate office. His daily beat consisted of meeting a circle of local personalities – officeholders, diplomats, scientists, musicians, artists, and so on.
My father:
*never wore a wedding ring.
*never raised his voice, even when he was angry; in fact, he was seldom angry.
*was not docile but was quiet, even-tempered.
*had a strong sense of history.
*understood and wrote about leaders as people.
*was not a monarchist but thought the breakup of the empire was a mistake.
*did not like Dollfuss very much. (Contrary to my impression based on his book, South of Hitler)
In one email, Denis told me, “I always enjoy opportunities to talk about my father, who remains to me dearly memorable.” I am glad that I had the opportunity to meet Denis Fodor, not only to learn more about his father and but also to learn more about his remarkable life.
--------------------------
Footnotes:
[1] Fran Baker. 2016. South of Hitler: Marcel W. Fodor and the Manchester Guardian, August 12, The John Rylands Library Special Collections Blog, accessed at https://rylandscollections.com/2016/08/12/south-of-hitler-marcel-w-fodor-and-the-manchester-guardian/
Fabienne Gouverneur. 2019. Personal, Confidential: Mike W. Fodor als Netzwerker und Kulturmittler. New Academic Press, Vienna. The dissertation on which the book is based can be accessed at this web site: https://www.andrassyuni.eu/pubfile/de-213-dissertationfabiennegouverneur2016-doi.pdf
Dan Durning. 2011. Marcel W. Fodor, Foreign Correspondent
https://www.scribd.com/document/65502558/Marcel-W-Fodor-Foreign-Correspondent
[2] See July 15-17, 1927: Days of Horror in Vienna, Austria (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2012/01/july-15-17-1927-days-of-horror-in.html
[3] Finding M. W. Fodor: Fulbright, Vienna, and Me (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/09/finding-m-w-fodor-fulbright-vienna-and.html
[4] See Austria’s Fatherland Front, 1933-1938 (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/08/austrias-fatherland-front-1933-1938.html
The Assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss, July 25, 1934 (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/08/assassination-of-engelbert-dollfuss.html
[5] “Lake Crash Kills Flier in Snow
Storm.” 1943. Chicago Sun, April 14, p. 1.
[6] A Great Night at the Café Louvre in Vienna (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2012/02/great-night-at-cafe-louvre-in-vienna.html
[7] Edwards, John Carver. 1982. “Bob Best Considered: An Expatriate's Long Road to Treason.” North Dakota Quarterly, Winter, 50 (1): 73-90 and “Worst Best.” 1943. Time, February 15. [About journalist Robert Best]
[8] John Gunther. 1964. The Lost City. Harper & Row.
[9] William L. Shirer. 1950. The Traitor. Farrar, Straus, & Co.
[10] Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis Celebrate Christman in Semmering (Austria), 1932 (blog entry). https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2012/12/dorothy-thompson-and-sinclair-lewis.html
[11] Marion Sander. 1973. Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time. Houghton Mifflin Co. p. 179.
[11] Vincent Sheean. 1963. Dorothy and Red. Houghton Mifflin Co., p. 213.
[12] See Peter Kurth. 1990. American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson. Little, Brown and Company.
[13] Robert Littell. 2012. Young
Philby. Thomas Dunn Books. (Philby’s time in Vienna is included in the roman a clef.)
[14] The reporter was G.E.R. Geyde. His
powerful account of the 1934 civil war is in chapter 9 of his book (p. 104), Betrayal
in Central Europe in which he mentions, but not by name, a young Englishman
who was helping some threatened social democrats escape capture. The young man
was Philby, who had recently signed on with Moscow as a spy. G.E.R. Geyde.
1939. Betrayal in Central Europe, Harper & Brothers Publishers. Also, see Littell 2012, p. 53.
