Contact: Gail Short
205-934-8931/[email protected]
STORY: Few people have ever heard of Edward Y. Hartshorne. But the U.S. government official is credited with helping to root out Nazi sympathizers from Germany's universities in the U.S. Occupied Zone following World War II. Only 15-months after the ambitious project began, Hartshorne was killed in a random shooting in August 1946 at the age of 34.
Hartshorne's mission is the subject of a new book "Academic Proconsul" (2000, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier) edited by James F. Tent, Ph.D. Hartshorne was a gifted Harvard sociologist and author who was one of the first volunteers for America's secret intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS. He worked with the Psychological Warfare Division to oversee the control of German newspapers as the Allied occupation of Germany began. Hartshorne's letters and diary entries featured in the book gives readers insight into his thoughts as he worked to reestablish the credibility of German universities, which had been centers for Nazi extremism since the 1920s.
WHO: Professor James Tent, Ph.D., is a university scholar in the UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Department of History and the author of "The Free University of Berlin: A Political History."
"Edward Hartshorne deserves respect for what he attained in the last year of his life," writes Tent. "The appearance of his inner thoughts, reflections and observations may finally provide the recognition he so richly deserves from Americans and Germans alike. His papers also provide fresh insights by a knowledgeable eyewitness into the condition of Germany at the time of its so-called Stunde Null or zero hour when an older society, traumatized by National Socialism, was dying and a new society was being born."
WHAT: During a chance meeting with German scholars in 1945, Hartshorne became convinced that he was qualified to help "denazify" and reopen the German universities in the U.S. Zone.
Hartshorne reorganized, becoming the most knowledgeable American on German higher education. On his own initiative, he developed the directives and procedures to survey, screen, denazify and reopen the universities, employing the help of German academics to help identify and Nazi sympathizers amongst the faculty in the universities.
Only 15 months after his work on the project began, Hartshorne was shot to death while riding in the backseat of his chauffeur-driven car by a drunken, 19-year-old black marketeer. No apparent motive for the shooting was ever determined other than the killer's irritation at being passed by another car on the road where Hartshorne was traveling. However, speculation as to the real motive has continued to this day.
FYI: We are UAB, the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Please use our full name on first reference and UAB thereafter.
NOTE: Review copies are available upon request.
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