In Memoriam: Robert E. Herzstein

The editors are saddened to learn of the passing of Robert E. Herzstein, distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina, on January 24, 2015. He had long battled multiple myeloma. Herzstein was a widely respected scholar on the Holocaust and the Nazi era and a contributor to Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He was also a vocal advocate of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998.

Born in New York City in 1940, Herzstein obtained his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from New York University. He held teaching positions at MIT and Carnegie Mellon before joining the faculty of South Carolina in 1972, where he remained until his retirement in 2008.

Herzstein’s academic interests included European fascism, propaganda, and Holocaust studies. His books include The War that Hitler Won: Goebbels and the Nazi Media Campaign (1978); Adolf Hitler and the German Trauma, 1913–1945 (1984); and Roosevelt and Hitler: Prelude to War (1989). He was also the author of The Nazis, part of Time-Life’s 39-volume World War II series published in the late 1970s.

In 1986, the World Jewish Congress appointed Herzstein to investigate the past of Kurt Waldheim, the controversial Austrian president whose activities during World War II were under scrutiny. Herzstein’s interviews with Waldheim, and his subsequent 1988 biography, Waldheim: The Missing Years, not only filled in the gaps but also raised the larger question of Austrian complicity under the Nazi regime.

In recent years, Herzstein’s work turned homeward, with a focus on American culture and politics around World War II and into the Cold War era. More specifically, he studied Henry Luce, the magazine magnate behind the Time-Life empire, and his impact. Two publications—Henry R. Luce: A Political Portrait of the Man Who Created the American Century (1994) and Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia (2005)—resulted from his research.

Although he officially retired in 2008, Herzstein continued to teach and write. At the time of his death, he was working on a book about Alfred Kohlberg’s anti-Communist network. Herzstein leaves behind his partner, Faye Flowers, and the many students to whom he was an inspiration.