H. R. Knickerbocker

Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker (January 31, 1898 – July 12, 1949) was an American journalist and author; winner of the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for his series of articles on the practical operation of the Five Year Plan in the Soviet Union.

He was nicknamed "Red" from the color of his hair.

He was one of the 13 journalists killed in the India KLM Lockheed L-749 air disaster.

Early life

Knickerbocker was born in Yoakum, Texas, to Rev. Hubert Delancey Knickerbocker and Julia Catherine Knickerbocker (née Opdenweyer). He attended Southwestern University before serving in the army for a few months as a telegraph operator. In 1919, he moved to Columbia University to pursue medicine, but his financial constraints allowed him only to study journalism. He completed the program in 1921.

Education

Knickerbocker graduated from the Southwestern University in Texas and then studied journalism at Columbia University.

Career

Knickerbocker was a journalist, noted for reporting on German politics before and during World War II. From 1923 to 1933 he reported from Berlin, but because of his opposition to Adolf Hitler he was deported when Hitler came to power. On December 1, 1930, Knickerbocker interviewed Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's mother, Keke Geladze, in Tbilisi for the New York Evening Post through a Georgian interpreter. The article was titled “Stalin Mystery Man Even to His Mother.”

In 1932 he traveled across Europe for the book Does Europe Recover. He interviewed many state leaders, amongst them Benito Mussolini, and the second-most important person of Germany's NSDAP Party, Gregor Strasser. His report on Italian fascism is full of praise for the regime's "stability". He also praises Strasser's "left wing" of NSDAP party and the Papen government's semi-dictatorship. There is no hint of a warning about Nazism in the book but rather a recommendation for its success in Italy.