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Herbert J. Spiro

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Herbert J. Spiro
Herbert J. Spiro
Personal details
Born7 September 1924
Hamburg, Germany
Died6 April 2010
San Antonio, Texas, United States
NativityGermany
ReligionJewish
Known forPolitical scientist
Military service
Allegiance United States
Branch United States Army
ASN38461724
RankMaster Sergeant
Rank at RitchiePrivate
Camp RitchieClass 19 (16 May – 13 July 1944)
Section5B
TeamIPW 155
Research notes on this page are compiled from the source file and later edits. They may be unverified, incomplete, or incorrect, and should not be treated as established fact. Please correct the article or add sources on the talk page. For class-roster terms, see About the data.
Sources & confidence: Treat Research notes as leads, not settled fact. Prefer NARA, the class roster, newspapers, Find a Grave, or published histories for contested claims. Mark unsourced claims with {{Needs source}}, or explain disagreements on talk. Baseline import notes: About the data.


Herbert John Spiro (September 7, 1924 – April 6, 2010) was an American political scientist and diplomat. Born in Hamburg, Germany, where he attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium, he and his family emigrated to the United States in 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution. He served with the United States Army in World War II. His training at Camp Ritchie places him among the list of over 20,000 Ritchie Boys. Afterwards received bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. The author of thirteen books on politics and government, he taught at Amherst College and the University of Pennsylvania.

Biography

Born in Hamburg, Germany, where he attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium, he and his family emigrated to the United States in 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution. Spiro was born in Hamburg, Germany to Jewish parents.

He received his master's degree in 1950 and his Ph.D. In 1961, Spiro moved from Harvard to Amherst College, where he was Associate Professor of Political Science until 1965. Afterwards he joined the University of Pennsylvania as Professor of Political Science, where he remained until 1970.

Afterwards received bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. The author of thirteen books on politics and government, he taught at Amherst College and the University of Pennsylvania. He later returned to academia as a professor at the Free University of Berlin.

There, Spiro attended Brackenridge High School, and went on to San Antonio Junior College. After returning to the U.S., Spiro entered Harvard University. Spiro taught at Free University of Berlin's John F.

Afterwards, RB Spiro received bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. He served in the US Foreign Service as Ambassador to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, and taught at the Free University of Berlin.

His training at Camp Ritchie places him among the list of over 20,000 Ritchie Boys. His training at Camp Ritchie places him among the list of approximately 20,000 Ritchie Boys.

Herbert John Spiro (September 7, 1924 – April 6, 2010) was an American political scientist and diplomat. His family emigrated from Germany just a month later, in December 1938; they passed through New York where their relatives had earlier fled, before settling in San Antonio, Texas. He and his family emigrated to the United States in 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution.

Formally an enemy alien, Spiro was not subject to the draft, but after naturalizing in 1944 he volunteered for a military intelligence position. He spent 1945 and 1946 as an administrative assistant to the United States Department of War, stationed in Vienna. in 1953, with a doctoral dissertation on accountability in government.

He spent the following year in his native Germany as a Fulbright Fellow, and then returned to Harvard in 1954, where he continued as an instructor until 1957. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in political science in 1959, and lived in Rhodesia and the Central African Republic for the next year. Kennedy-Institute for North American Studies from 1980 to 1989.

House of Representatives in 1992 and in 1994, and for the U.S. Senate in the 1993 special election, but failed to be elected. He served with the United States Army in World War II.

During the Ford administration, he served as United States Ambassador to Cameroon and to Equatorial Guinea, though the latter country declared him persona non grata. In the early 1990s, he ran for state and then national office as a Republican from Texas, but was not elected. His family name is a corruption of Speyer, a town in the Rhineland which once had a significant Jewish community, but he reminisced that in the U.S.

it often led people to mistake him for a Greek American. His father worked for a distribution firm. He attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium.

Despite the increasing Nazification of Germany, he states that in liberal Hamburg he experienced no discrimination whatsoever until after Kristallnacht. In a news interview a few years after his arrival, he expressed his disappointment at the relative absence of "wild west heroes" and American Indians in Texas, contrary to the image of the state that he had formed from the Western fiction popular in his native Germany. He served with the 11th Armored Division and received the Bronze Star Medal with oak leaf cluster.

There, he wrote his senior honors thesis on Marxist critiques of democracy, with William Yandell Elliott as his advisor. He then joined the Department of State as a member of the Policy Planning Staff. After returning to Texas, he ran for the U.S.

He was survived by his sons Peter Spiro and Alexander Spiro, his ex-wife Elizabeth Spiro Clark, and four grandchildren.

He died in San Antonio in 2010, and was buried at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Ambassador Spiro, the author of 13 books on politics and diplomacy, passed away in 2010.


Research notes

  • BS

Gallery

Technical record

Field Imported value
Approx Age at Death 86
Class_ASN 38461724
Class_Name SPIRO, Herbert J.
match_method asn_exact_name_exact
row_source both

Sources

  • Camp Ritchie class roster (classes 1–31), merged research file
  • NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
  • 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
  • Wikipedia: Herbert Spiro
  • Ritchie Boys of WWII Facebook page, post dated 2022-05-19 (1 post)
  • Facebook-linked source: bit.ly