James P. O'Donnell

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James Preston O'Donnell (born July 30, 1917 in Baltimore , Maryland , † April 16, 1990 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was an American author .

biography

O'Donnell, son of a brain surgeon, studied at Harvard University and then worked as a journalist, mostly for magazines. He was friends with the Kennedy family. During the Second World War he served in the US Army with the intelligence service until June 2, 1945 . After his release, he became the head of Newsweek magazine's Germany office . In this position he came to Berlin on July 4, 1945. He was assigned to investigate the death of Adolf Hitler and to obtain information about Eva Braun .

O'Donnell bribed Soviet soldiers who guarded the entrance to Hitler's bunker ( Führerbunker ) under the Reich Chancellery and thus became the first non-member of the Soviet Army to examine the bunker. He found a number of top secret Nazi documents. He used these documents as well as interviews with many of the last people present in the Führerbunker in later publications, so that O'Donnell is considered an expert on the circumstances of Adolf Hitler's death. He finally published his collected findings in his book from 1975: The Bunker , German: Die Katakombe .

After his time at Newsweek, O'Donnell worked as a freelance journalist in Germany for many years and published articles in magazines such as Life Magzine and Saturday Evening Post .

He later worked for the US State Department as a consultant for Berlin. He spent his final years as a professor of journalism at Boston University . Niall Ferguson described O'Donnell as one of the few Western observers who foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall very precisely . For Reader's Digest magazine Das Beste , O'Donnell wrote the following in an article entitled Die Geisterzüge von Berlin in January 1979:

“I recently dreamed of the end of the Berlin Wall. It was 1989. East and West Berliners appeared everywhere and tore them down. Students planted the entire 165 kilometers with linden and oak trees. Smart traders meandered through the cheerful crowd, selling souvenir stones. How did so many people get to the wall so quickly? With the S-Bahn, of course. "

When CBS filmed The Bunker in 1981 , O'Donnell, played by James Naughton , was shown in a short scene at the beginning.

Publications

  • O'Donnell, James Preston (1971): Sailing to Byzantium: a study in the developement of the later style and symbolism in the poetry of William Butler Yeats , New York, Octagon Books, ISBN 978-0-374-96141-1 .
  • O'Donnell, James Preston; Uwe Bahnsen (1975): The Catacomb - The End in the Reich Chancellery , Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, ISBN 3-421-01712-3 .
  • O'Donnell, James Preston (1978): The Bunker, The History of the Reich Chancellery Group , Boston, Houghton Milfin, ISBN 0-395-25719-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Conrad: "The most amazing exact prophecy": US journalist predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1979 . Article from July 1, 2019 in the portal tagesspiegel.de , accessed on July 1, 2019
personal data
SURNAME O'Donnell, James P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES O'Donnell, James Preston
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author
DATE OF BIRTH July 30, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1990
Place of death Boston , Massachusetts