Howard K. Smith was born in Ferriday, Louisiana, on May 12, 1914. He received his B.A. degree from Tulane University in 1936, the same year he studied Nazism first-hand in Berlin.
Smith was a Rhodes scholar at Merton College, Oxford, England, 1937. He revisited Germany, Russia, Holland, and Austria, and in 1939 became a foreign correspondent for the United Press in London. In 1941, he became Berlin correspondent for CBS based in Switzerland. In 1944, Smith was a war correspondent in France, Holland, and Germany with the Ninth Army. After the end of the war, he covered the Nuremberg Trials in Germany.
From 1946 to 1957, Smith served as chief European correspondent for CBS and European director of CBS, based in London. He returned to America in 1957 and served as a correspondent in the CBS Washington bureau until 1961 when he became that bureau's chief correspondent and general manager. Smith moved to ABC as a news analyst in 1962.
He is the holder of many awards; among them are: Overseas Press Club Award for best radio reporting from abroad, 1951-1954; Du Pont Award, 1955; Sigma Delta Chi Award for radio journalism, 1957; Sylvania Award, 1959; George Polk Memorial Award for the documentary, The Population Explosion, 1960; co-recipient, George Peabody Award, 1960; Emmy, Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1960; American Jewish Congress Award, 1962; Radio-TV Daily Award as commentator of the year, 1960; Overseas Press Club Award, best radio interpretation of foreign affairs, 1961; Radio-TV News Directors Association Paul White Memorial Award, 1962; and the Du Pont Award, 1963. He also holds a number of honorary degrees.
Smith is the author of Last Train From Berlin, 1942; and The State of Europe, 1949.
