Spiro, Herbert John (38461724): Difference between revisions

|death_place=San Antonio, Texas

'''Herbert John Spiro''' (7 September 1924 – 6 April 2010) was a German-born American Ritchie Boy who trained at [[Camp Ritchie]] in [[:Category:Class 19|Class 19]] and served with [[Team IPW 155|IPW Team 155]], and who became a political scientist and United States Ambassador to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.

Herbert John Spiro was born on 7 September 1924 in Hamburg, Germany, to Jewish parents; his father worked for a distribution firm. He attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium and later recalled experiencing no discrimination in liberal Hamburg until Kristallnacht. A month later, in December 1938, the family emigrated to the United States, fleeing Nazi persecution, and after passing through New York settled in San Antonio, Texas, where he attended Brackenridge High School and spent a year at San Antonio Junior College.

Spiro entered the Army as a private (ASN 38461724) and did basic training with the 62nd Infantry Battalion in June 1943. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen on 5 January 1944 and volunteered for military intelligence. In March 1944 he attended the Army Specialized Training Program at the University of Illinois, and he trained at Camp Ritchie with [[:Category:Class 19|Class 19]] (section 5B). He was promoted to staff sergeant on 4 September 1944, served with [[Team IPW 155|IPW Team 155]] attached to the First Army and with the 11th Armored Division, and received the Bronze Star Medal with oak leaf cluster, finishing the war as a master sergeant. In 1945 and 1946 he was an administrative assistant to the War Department in Vienna.

After returning to the United States, Spiro entered Harvard University, where he wrote his senior honors thesis on Marxist critiques of democracy under William Yandell Elliott, received his master's degree in 1950 and his PhD in 1953, spent a year in Germany as a Fulbright Fellow, and taught as an instructor from 1954 to 1957. A Guggenheim Fellowship in political science in 1959 took him to Rhodesia and the Central African Republic for a year. In 1961 he moved from Harvard to Amherst College as associate professor of political science until 1965, then was professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania until 1970, when he joined the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. He wrote thirteen books on politics and government. In July 1975 President Gerald Ford nominated him as ambassador to Cameroon, with concurrent accreditation to Equatorial Guinea; Equatorial Guinea declared him persona non grata in March 1976, and he served in Cameroon until May 1977. From 1980 to 1989 he taught at the Free University of Berlin's John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies. Returning to Texas, he ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992 and 1994 and for the U.S. Senate in the 1993 special election. His family name was a corruption of Speyer, though in the United States people often took him for a Greek American. Spiro died in San Antonio on 6 April 2010 and was buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.

* 5 January 1944 — Became naturalized U.S. citizen.

* March 1944 — ASTP, University of Illinois.

* 1945–1946 — Administrative assistant to the War Department in Vienna.

* Drafted into Army as Pvt (ASN: 38461724).