George Bailey

George Bailey (1919 in Chicago – 2001 in Munich) was an American journalist and writer who spent almost 60 years in Europe, most of them in Germany. He is best known for his book Germans, The Biography of an Obsession, in which he interweaves the political, the historical and his own personal experience of 45 years of living and working in Germany. His other fields of expertise were the Communist Bloc, in particular the Soviet Union, and East–West relationships.

Biography A graduate from Columbia College, where he studied Greek and Latin, and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied English Literature under C.S. Lewis, he spoke several languages fluently, including German, Russian, French, Italian and Hungarian. He was married to Beate Ross, whose mother Hilde Ullstein was the granddaughter of Leopold Ullstein, the founder of the Ullstein Verlag. They had one daughter.

Public career He was a U.S. Army liaison officer to the Soviet Army for seven years during and after World War II and was present as an interpreter at the surrender negotiations in Reims and Berlin. A correspondent for American Broadcasting Company and The Reporter (magazine), he also wrote for numerous other newspapers and periodicals, was editor for Kontinent, Springer, Berlin, and was director of Radio Liberty from 1982 to 1985.

In 1959 he received the Overseas Press Club award for the best magazine reporting of foreign affairs.

The George Bailey Collection is at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University