The Dragon from Chicago

For fans of unheralded women's stories, a captivating look at Sigrid Schultz-one of the earliest reporters to warn Americans of the rising threat of the Nazi regime "No other American correspondent in Berlin knew so much of what was going on behind the scene as did Sigrid Schultz." - William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich We are facing an alarming upsurge in the spread of misinformation and attempts by powerful figures to discredit facts so they can seize control of narratives. These are threats American journalist Sigrid Schultz knew all too well. The Chicago Tribune's Berlin bureau chief and primary foreign correspondent for Central Europe from 1925 to January 1941, Schultz witnessed Hitler's rise to power and was one of the first reporters-male or female-to warn American readers of the growing dangers of Nazism. In The Dragon From Chicago, Pamela D. Toler draws on extensive archival research to unearth the largely forgotten story of Schultz's years spent courageously reporting the news from Berlin, from the revolts of 1919 through the Nazi rise to power and Allied air raids over Berlin in 1941. At a time when women reporters rarely wrote front-page stories and her male colleagues saw a powerful unmarried woman as a "freak," Schultz pulled back the curtain on how the Nazis misreported the news to their own people, and how they attempted to control the foreign press through bribery and threats. Sharp and enlightening, Schultz's story provides a powerful example for how we can reclaim truth in an era marked by the spread of disinformation and claims of "fake news."

Pamela D. Toler, PhD, translates history for a popular audience, going beyond the familiar boundaries of American history to tell stories from other parts of the world as well as history from the other side of the battlefield, the gender line, or the color bar. Her work has appeared in American Scholar, Aramco World, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Ms., and Time.com. She is the author of ten books of popular history for adults and children, including Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War (a nonfiction companion to the PBS historical drama Mercy Street), Through the Minefields, and Women Warriors: An Unexpected History.

PROLOGUE "That Dragon from Chicago" ONE A Trilingual Child TWO Stranded THREE Enemy Alien FOUR "How to Meet a Revolution" FIVE Finding Her Own People SIX The Training of a Foreign Correspondent SEVEN Musical Chairs EIGHT Front-Page Girls, Stunt Reporters, Sob Sisters, and Mob Sisters NINE The "Right Man" for the Job TEN On the Job ELEVEN Love and Loneliness TWELVE "The Fascisti Are Very Restless" THIRTEEN When Putsch Comes to Shove FOURTEEN Let the Games Begin FIFTEEN AKA John Dickson SIXTEEN Never Entirely at Peace SEVENTEEN On the Air from Berlin EIGHTEEN War Seemed Inevitable NINETEEN The Berlin Blues TWENTY Going Home TWENTY-ONE Sick and Tired TWENTY-TWO "A Mild Little War Mongering Tour" TWENTY-THREE From Foreign Correspondent to War Correspondent TWENTY-FOUR Bearing Witness TWENTY-FIVE War Crimes Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Suggestions for Further Reading Index