The scoop of a century: We’re going to war
Death at 105 of the woman who saw Nazi troops on the Polish border, just three days into her new job
IT WAS a scoop like no other: an exclusive account of a Nazi invasion that would, within days, trigger the start of the Second World War.
That it was written by a cub reporter just three days into her career is something not even a Hollywood screenwriter would have dared imagine.
The death yesterday, at 105, of Clare Hollingworth, closed the book on one of the most incredible and celebrated newspaper stories of all time.
Miss Hollingworth was 27 and newly engaged in Europe for the Daily Telegraph when she learned of German armoured vehicles amassed in their hundreds on the Polish border, prepared to invade.
She borrowed a diplomat’s car and drove into German-held territory to see for herself. The next morning, her first-hand testimony scooped the world.
The headline read: “1,000 tanks massed on Polish border. Ten divisions reported ready for swift strike”. There was no individual byline.
The British embassy in Warsaw was so disbelieving of her account that Miss Hollingworth said she was forced to hold her telephone receiver out of her hotel window in Katowice so diplomats could hear the Wehrmacht for themselves.
A year before the invasion, she had been a political activist, working with a charity, the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia.
Sent to Katowice, she led an operation helping refugees get visas to come to Britain and beyond, interviewing them and verifying their papers as well as getting them housing and food.
Documents held at the National Archives at Kew reveal she wrote scores of letters and telegrams asking for money and approved visas, and it is estimated she helped between 2,000 and 3,000 people get to the UK.
But her work was abruptly shut down in July 1939, with letters from MI5 suggesting there were complaints from those in the corridors of power that “undesirables” such as Germans, Jews and communists were arriving in Britain on visas she had signed.
The Polish invasion was by no means her only scoop. In the early 1960s she became convinced that Kim Philby was part of the British spy group that included Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess.
In 1963, she wrote that Philby had defected to Russia, only to have her story for the Guardian put on hold for three months.
Miss Hollingworth’s death came after years of poor sight and severely limited mobility. Nevertheless, she had kept her passport up to date in case of a new commission, right until her death.
Her appetite for foreign journalism was fired after a chance encounter with the
Telegraph editor in the summer of 1939, and the rookie from Knighton in Leicestershire found herself immersed, solo, in a first and largely career-defining post.
She would go on to report from conflict zones in Palestine and Vietnam, the Chinese cultural revolution and the Algerian civil war, and was credited with the first and last interviews with the Shah of Iran.
She married twice, first to the writer Vandeleur Robinson, and then to The Times journalist Geoffrey Hoare, who gave her a stepdaughter, though she dismissed any thought of having children of her own, instead devoting her time to work.
In an interview in 2011, she said she always “enjoyed” being involved in war.
“When I was very small, in World War One, I used to hear people talk about the battles, and I did become extremely interested in warfare,” she said.
“I’m not brave, I just enjoy it.”
I did become interested in warfare. I’m not brave, I just enjoy it.
Journalist Clare Hollingworth, in an interview in 2011.