Thomas Schwätzer

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Thomas Schwätzer (pseudonym: Max Watts ) (born June 13, 1928 in Vienna ; † November 23, 2010 in Sydney ) was a journalist and activist who was committed to Resistance Inside the Army (RITA-ACT).

Life

His father, the doctor Emil Schwätzer, was also a lecturer at the university. His mother Giza worked as a journalist until 1934 . When the family emigrated to France in 1938, they had to separate due to visa restrictions: While his mother went to the United States with his sister Kitty , he followed his father to England . Soon after, his father, mistakenly believing that he had been denied a visa extension, committed suicide , after which Thomas grew up in various homes . At the age of twelve he joined the Communist Youth in England . In 1944 he was able to travel to the USA, where he studied politics , economics and aviation and qualified as a printer. He was involved in the International Typographical Union , founded in 1952, and joined the Communist Party of the United States.

In order not to be drafted as a soldier for the Korean War (1950–1953), he emigrated to Israel in the early 1950s, where he was soon to do military service and then moved on to France. He studied geophysics in Paris and obtained his Bachelor of Arts with the dissertation La Géophysique au service de l'industrie charbonnière (approx. 1967) . He worked briefly in Cuba and possibly in Algeria .

Back in France, he became involved in the Paris American Committee to Stop the Vietnam War (PACS) founded by Maria Jolas in December 1966 . After the De Gaulle government had criticized the Vietnam War , he organized the Provos escape routes (known as the underground railway ) to France for GIs who deserted to Amsterdam , and from October 1967 also to Sweden, where the GIs received social benefits of US $ 20 per week. Under Richard (Dick) Perrin (* 1948) the organization was renamed RITA.

Banished by the police to Corsica, he was able to flee and came to Heidelberg , where he continued to support resistance GIs and their semi-legal newspapers, and where he met June (Mary-Jo) van Ingen. He represented the Liberation News Service in Germany, where he was under secret surveillance by a US military intelligence service . When a GI leaked to him in 1973 that he was tapping his phone, it resulted in a press hype.

In 1981 he emigrated to Sydney , Australia, where he reported on the struggles of the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea and other countries in the South Pacific. In 1997 he got involved in the Sandline Affair .

Publications

  • US-Army-Europe: from desertion to resistance in the barracks or how the subway went to RITA ; 1989
  • with David Cortright : Left face: soldier unions and resistance movements in modern armies ; 1991

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://katalog.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/titel/66198029
  2. ↑ http://www.lib.umb.edu/node/1653 . Accessed August 31, 2014 (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6SFIu6Qn6 ( Memento from August 31, 2014 on WebCite ) )
  3. ↑ http://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1973STATE149086_b.html
  4. ↑ http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/24/080.html
personal data
SURNAME Babbler, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Watts, Max (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist and activist
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 2010
Place of death Sydney