Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker came from Yoakum, Tex. The son of a Methodist minister, he studied at minuscule Southwestern University, spent a few months in the army as a telegraph operator on the Mexican border, went north in 1919 to study medicine at Columbia. But all he could afford was a course in journalism, so he took that.
In 1923, still hoping to become a doctor, Knickerbocker went to Germany, matriculated at the University of Munich. To pay his way, he took a job as occasional correspondent for United Press. He was in Munich when Adolf Hitler set forth with a handful of...