Paul Nitze Interview (page: 3 / 9) Presidential Medal of Freedom	Print Interview

Let's go back to your childhood and go in chronological order to some extent. Did you have any sense when you were young of what you wanted to do with your life?

Paul Nitze: Well, it took me some time to make up my mind.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. My father was a professor of French literature and languages and was a member of the faculty of the University of Chicago, a most distinguished faculty. But, I watched what they were able to do during World War I and they were ineffective. No one really listened to them. And, it seemed to me that the things that were going on in the world were dangerous, weren't being handled right, and I would like to be involved in trying to do better than my father and his friends were able to do. And, I thought one needed to go into something different than academia in order to be effective in world affairs.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

And you wanted to have some influence on world affairs?

Paul Nitze: I did indeed. I thought that World War I had been a tragedy beyond measure. We lived through parts of World War I, and I was just horrified.

How old were you then?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Paul Nitze: At the beginning of the war I was seven and we were in Austria, climbing mountains in 1914 when the Austrian Archduke was murdered at Sarajevo. And, that's what set off the powder chain that led to the outbreak of World War I. We saw it happen, we saw the mountaineers in Austria being mobilized for war. My father decided it had become dangerous in Austria, decided to go to a safe country. So, he took us all off to Germany and we arrived in Munich on the day that Germany declared war on Russia. Bombs were thrown in the railroad station. Then, we lived through the early days of the war when the Germans were marching to the western front. Most of them were eventually killed in that war. But, we saw the wounded come back, so the horror of that war -- I had a second cousin who was killed on the eastern front by the Russians at the battle of Tannenberg (Königsberg), where the Russians were defeated. He lost his life in that. We finally got out through Holland and came back to the United States, but that memory of what happened during World War I stuck with me. It still sticks with me. It's one of the most moving, dreadful events that I lived through.

Was that when you started to think that there had to be a better way to deal with these things, and that you would like to be a part of that process?

Paul Nitze: I am convinced that is true, but particularly because of the disasters of the peace.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I went to a school in Chicago called the Elementary School, associated with the University of Chicago, and we used to have not just a current events course there, but we also used to act out some of the big events that were taking place in little plays that were put on by the students. And, I remember acting the part of Walther Rathenau, who was the representative of Germany in the peace negotiations, and finally had to sign the surrender terms. And, then later I read (John Maynard) Keynes's book on the economic consequences of the war and became persuaded that this was -- that that peace treaty was a totally unjust, very negative peace treaty that had in it the seeds of a second world war, and that this was another horror beyond belief. One really ought to do what one could to see whether one could avoid a second world war.

Another experience you've mentioned in the past, that may have taught you a couple of things, was your association with the Scotti Brothers.

Paul Nitze: The Elementary School, as I said, was associated with the University of Chicago. It was later called the Lab School. It was really founded by John Dewey. Those were largely the children of people who were at the University of Chicago, and of the rich Jewish families who lived in the South Side of Chicago. But it was totally different from the community within which the university was situated, and that was a very tough, hard-boiled community. All the gang life of Chicago originated there in the South Side.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. There was a school called the Ray School between our house and the school to which I went, and I would have to pass by that every day. And there, the boys would pick on me and beat me up and make life miserable. The people who were most nasty to me were people from a gang -- it was on the same block that our house was on -- called the Musik Brothers. They were the ones who really made my life nasty. But then, there was another group, a gang on the next block, called the Scotti Brothers, run by the elder Scotti brother. He was red-haired, tall, thin, and a true leader, charismatic leader. I joined his gang because he would protect me against the Musik Brothers. I did whatever the older Scotti brother wanted me to do. One time he gave me a directive to rob the construction site across the way from our house, where a whole row of houses were being built and liberate them (the tools) for the use of the gang. And, I liberated them, and turned them over to the gang.

What did you turn over to them?

Paul Nitze: The tools that were being used to build that house. The saws, hammers, pliers and things of that kind.

Did that endear you to the leader of the Scotti gang?

Paul Nitze: It did indeed. I never confessed that to anyone else!

Do you think that experience with the Scotti Brothers taught you something about the exercise of power?

Paul Nitze: It did indeed, and it also taught me something about leadership. The elder Scotti was a true leader. All the members of his gang were extremely loyal to him, and he defended them all. By the time I was 21, and came back to Chicago, all the members of the various gangs had all killed each other or been arrested, hung, or something or other. Not just the Musik Brothers or the Scotti Brothers, but also the Colosimo gang and the other gangs in the neighborhood. There was hardly a man of those that were still alive. That gang warfare in Chicago was bloody, intense and destructive.

What were you like in school? What kind of activities did you pursue?

Paul Nitze: We are all interested in athletics, so I played baseball and soccer and football, but I was not a naturally talented athlete. There were classmates who were really very good athletes. One of my classmates was George Lott, who later became a world famous tennis player. We had a teacher that taught us how to throw a baseball, and George could pitch a curve by the second day. I never was able to pitch a decent curve ball, but George could do everything right off the bat. Another classmate was Gene Goodwillie. He was the first high school athlete to run the 100-yard dash in less than 10 seconds. So being just an ordinary kid surrounded by much better athletes gave one some sense of humility.

What books made a big impression on you when you were growing up?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Paul Nitze: I first of all remember reading Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon and other Tom Swift stories, an infinite number of Tom Swift stories. Then the Rover Boys were very much my generation. Then The Boys of 1776 which was a very inspirational story about the Revolutionary War. After that, Hans and the Silver Hand, then after that, Treasure Island, but particularly The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne, which was an absolutely glorious book. Then after that, Charles Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm still in love with the girl with the violet eyes which (the hero) was passionate for in The Cloister and the Hearth. After that, I guess also Conrad made the deepest impression upon me. My sister for a while was ill and was threatened with the loss of her eyesight. So, my mother used to read out loud to her and I would sit and listen while she read various things from Conrad and that made a deep impression upon me. After that, I guess Dostoyevsky, and other Russian novelists, and then Kafka. But those are later.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Paul Nitze: First I decided I wanted to be an artist, a painter. That didn't work, I wasn't talented enough for that. So I decided I wanted to be an art dealer and collect art, but I didn't have enough money. I did acquire a few things and I have loved it ever since. I think we have a glorious collection of things today. When I was 16, I went to Austria with my mother. We got to Vienna at the height of the Austrian inflation when the currency was virtually worthless. There was an exhibition of new paintings, modern art. I disliked most of it, but there were two paintings I bought at that time, in 1923, and still have them. Both very handsome I think, great paintings. They were by a man by the name of Hans Grüss. One of them is right there. At one point I thought of becoming an art dealer, but I came to have a distaste for art dealers. They had converted what I thought was a noble interest into a "dollars first" kind of corruption of that instinct.

How about your studies? What interested you most in school?

Paul Nitze: I studied mathematics first, then physics. I decided that I was not a good enough mathematician to go down that route. So then I studied the history and literature of the Renaissance, and fell in love with the beauty of the Italian Renaissance, but I decided there wasn't a career in that. So I took up economics and sociology, and graduated from Harvard in the field of economics and sociology.

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