Louis P. Lochner, foreign correspondent, writer, and news commentator, was born in Springfield, Illinois, on February 22, 1887, the son of a Lutheran minister. The family moved to Milwaukee a few months after Lochner's birth, and he spent the remainder of his youth there, attending a Lutheran parochial school and West Division High School.
Although Lochner was eventually to become widely renowned as a correspondent, journalism was not his first career choice. After graduation from high school, he first took instruction at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Then, in 1905 he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, where he studied the classics before settling on a combined specialty in political science, international relations, and journalism. The latter choice may have been partly influenced by student experiences as a cub reporter for the Milwaukee Free Press and as managing editor of the Wisconsin Spectator, a university publication. Upon graduation in 1909 Lochner won a university journalism fellowship, the responsibilities of which included editing of the Wisconsin Alumni Magazine. This assignment continued through 1913, with the duties of general secretary of the Alumni Association being added in 1910.
While a student, Lochner was also active in the International Club - an experience that was to shape many of his later ideas and associations as much as his academic studies. As club secretary, Lochner was largely responsible for bringing together organizations from other campuses which were also interested in international relations to form the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs. When the ACC first convened in 1907, he was named president and editor of its monthly publication, the Cosmopolitan Student. In the following years Lochner twice headed U.S. delegations to international student conferences, and in 1911 he was chosen general secretary of the Federation International des Etudiants (Cordes Fratres), the organization of which the ACC was the American affiliate.
Involvement with the international student movement gradually led Lochner to active participation in the peace efforts which preceded World War I and continued throughout the conflict. In 1913 the American Peace Society appointed him director of its central-west department and secretary of the Chicago Peace Federation, and in this capacity Lochner attended most of the international peace conferences of the era and met with President Woodrow Wilson on several occasions. In April 1915, he accompanied Jane Addams to the International Women's Peace Conference at the Hague to ghostwrite her daily, syndicated newspaper column. Later that same year he was named “peace secretary” and virtual head of Henry Ford's peace expedition. Until the automaker's abrupt withdrawal from the effort early in 1917, Lochner also served as secretary of the Stockholm Conference for Continuing Mediation, the outgrowth of the peace expedition. As the United States drifted closer to active participation in the war during the early days of 1917, Lochner accepted a position with the Emergency Peace Federation. Although this group dissolved after the declaration of war, Lochner continued his pacifist activities, serving as general secretary of the People's Council of America for Democracy and Terms of Peace, an organization formed to safeguard civil liberties during the war.
After the end of the war Lochner became editor of the International Labor News Service (ILNS), in 1919 he left the ILNS to help establish another international labor news service -- the Chicago-based Federated Press. At the same time he occupied himself with work on a manuscript about his experiences with the Ford peace expedition. As a result of the misconceptions surrounding many pacifist activities, however, Henry Ford--America's Don Quixote did not find an American publisher until 1925. In 1921 the Federated Press sent Lochner to Germany as its European director. After three years of work for the wire service supplemented by free lance writing on cultural affairs, Lochner joined the staff of the Associated Press Berlin bureau. In 1929 he was promoted to bureau chief, a position which he continued to hold until 1942.
During these years Lochner became the AP's acknowledged expert on German affairs as he witnessed and reported on many of the most important events during the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the National Socialists. His professional career in Germany culminated in his coverage of the Munich crisis, earning him the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished journalism in 1939. In addition, Lochner knew and interviewed many German leaders including Adolf Hitler, Paul von Hindenburg, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Bruning, and Gustav Stresemann. His first interview with Hitler came in August 1932. This contact resulted in a second interview in March 1934, one of the frankest such sessions granted to a foreign correspondent by the Fuhrer.
The tenure of foreign correspondents in Germany became increasingly difficult during the 1930s, and at the AP's direction Lochner was careful that his stories were factual, objective, and free of editorializing. Nevertheless, on several occasions his accreditation with the Nazis became precarious, and his position was saved largely because of the prestigious offices he held: the presidencies of the Foreign Correspondents Association (1929-1930 and 1934-1937) and of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany (1936-1941).
In 1939 the Germans selected Lochner as the first foreign correspondent to cover the Polish front; later during the early years of the war he was to report on the Balkan and Finnish fronts, the German advance through the Low Countries, and the fall of France. After the outbreak of war between the United States and Germany, Lochner was one of many American correspondents who were interned at Bad Nauheim for five months. In May 1942, the internees were repatriated, and Lochner returned to the United States to write for the AP feature service Wide World and to work on a book based on his experiences in Germany. Published in 1943, What About Germany? became a highly acclaimed best seller. With the permission of the Associated Press, between May 1943, and October 1944, Lochner was employed as a news commentator with the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain Networks of the National Broadcasting Company. In December 1944, he returned to Europe as a war correspondent for the AP, this time covering the Allied advance through Germany. Relying upon his special knowledge and experience, Lochner was able to file many important scoops, including the first reports of the 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler. He returned to Berlin shortly after the collapse of the Third Reich, and in subsequent months reported on general political, social, and economic conditions and on the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
In 1946 the Associated Press transferred him to New York, and Lochner retired to turn to free lance writing. Later that year, however, he returned to Germany in a semi-official capacity as a member of the Library of Congress Mission to collect manuscripts and papers for the Hoover Library on War, Peace, and Revolution. The following year, he accompanied former President Hoover to Germany and Austria for a study of economic conditions. In 1952 the Department of State assigned Lochner to work with the Exchange of Persons Project in order to help foster closer ties between German journalists and their counterparts in the United States. He was again involved with mass communications on an international level in 1958 when he was designated the sole U.S. representative on the United Nations Expert Committee on Public Information.
In addition to these activities, Lochner continued to be a productive writer. He translated and edited the controversial Goebbels Diaries (1948) and published four other books: Fritz Kreisler (1950); Tycoons and Tyrant, an investigation of the relationship between German industrialists and Hitler (1954); Always the Unexpected, an autobiography (1955); and Herbert Hoover and Germany 1960). In addition he contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers; was on the editorial board of the Lutheran Witness; worked as a commentator (1960-1963) for Broadcast Editorial Reports, a radio and television news service; and served as president of the Overseas Press Club during 1950-1951 and 1955-1956.
Lochner's first wife, Emily Hoyer, died in 1920, leaving him with two children, Elsbeth and Robert. In 1922 he married Hilde DeTerra, a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1971 the couple retired to her native Germany, where he died on January 8, 1975.
