Clare Hollingworth: The Reporter Who Broke the News of World War II
The veteran British journalist, who scooped the story of Hitler’s invasion of Poland on her third day on the job and later unmasked Soviet spy Kim Philby, has died at 105.
Any big journalistic scoop requires a combination of luck and hustle. It’s only natural that Clare Hollingworth had a lot of both when she scored one of the greatest scoops of the 20th century.
Hollingworth was born to a industrialist who took her to visit major historical battlefields as a girl. As a young woman, she showed a rebellious spark, breaking off an engagement and going to work for the League of Nations as a secretary. From there, she to work for a British refugee organization that sent her to Poland after the Allies sanctioned Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland. Thanks she’d gotten for a ski vacation, she was able to enter Germany and shepherd refugees to Poland and then on to safety.
