Clio's Review: The Dragon from Chicago

Pamela D. Toler, The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany (Beacon Press, 2024).

Pamela Toler’s The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany demonstrates the particular power of biography to reveal history as it was lived. Through the remarkable life of American foreign correspondent Sigrid Schultz, Toler allows us to watch the rise of Nazism and the dismantling of German democracy through the eyes of someone who witnessed it in real time.

As Berlin bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune, Schultz had an extraordinary vantage point. She interviewed Hitler in 1931, cultivated Hermann Göring as a source, and reported as the Nazis transformed political extremism into authoritarian rule. She also recognized the danger early. Hitler, as Toler notes, was remarkably forthright about his intentions. Schultz reported what he said and what she saw, even as censorship, surveillance, and intimidation increasingly constrained the foreign press.

Toler is particularly effective at placing Schultz’s individual experiences within the larger political transformation unfolding around her. The result is both an engaging biography of a pioneering journalist and an illuminating history of how democratic institutions can be dismantled incrementally. Schultz’s encounters with Nazi officials, efforts to evade censorship, and determination to keep reporting give human scale to processes that can otherwise seem abstract.

The book’s real strength lies in that intersection between biography and history. Schultz could not know how the story would end. She could only report what was happening in front of her. Her experience reminds us both of democracy’s fragility and of the importance of journalists willing to recognize and report threats to it.

Listen to or watch my conversation with Pamela Toler on The Clio Dialogues, then buy a copy of The Dragon from Chicago for yourself.