Death of Clare Hollingworth, Reporter Who Broke News of World War II

From the January 10, 2017, New York Times by Margalit Fox.

Clare Hollingworth died January 10, 2017, at age 105.

Less than a week after first getting a job with the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph in 1939, she was driving alone from Gleiwitz, then in Germany, to Katowice in Poland, a distance of less than twenty miles.

She happened to be looking when wind lifted a piece of tarpaulin the German side of the road which was being used to screen the village below.  She saw "large numbers of troops, literally hundreds of tanks, armored cars and field guns."

She knew at that moment that the Germans were getting ready to attack Poland and telephoned her editor on August 28, 1939.  Her article was published the next day by the British newspaper The Guardian.

This was probably the greatest scoop of modern times.  Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and war began.

--GreGen