The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

mainly Archbishop Makarios’ maneu- vering and the movement to union with Greece, took place there during this time, culminating in the partition of Cyprus and the Turkish invasion of the northern areas of the island. Mr. Schott received the Department of State’s Superior Honor award for his work during this period. In 1967, he was assigned as political-military offi- cer in Embassy Tehran. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1970. After retirement, Mr. Schott was associated with Iranians Bank in Tehran (an affiliate of Citibank) and worked as a consultant to the bank and other companies until the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. He continued consulting, working principally out of Athens until 1999, when he retired from active business. He divided his time between Santa Fe, N.M., Athens and Washington, D.C., until his death. Mr. Schott was a member of Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired. Mr. Schott was married to the for- mer Diana Bennett, whom he met while serving in Basra. Besides his wife of 55 years, who resides in Santa Fe, Mr. Schott is survived by two daughters, Barbara Mostofi of Hono- lulu, and Alexandra P. Schott of San Francisco; two sons, Robert B. Schott of New York and Conrad W. Schott of Santa Fe; and four grandchildren. Paul Robinson Sweet , 96, retired FSO and specialist in German history whose work ranged from research and teaching to intelligence and diploma- cy, died in Philadelphia on Nov. 5. During World War II, as a mem- ber of a roving three-man unit of the Office of Strategic Services on Europe’s western front, Mr. Sweet co-authored reports that got promi- nent notice in the press and led to changes in occupation policy. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in recognition of his OSS work. In the 1950s, as the senior U.S. editor of documents captured at the war’s end from the German foreign office, Mr. Sweet found himself in an awkward confrontation with British authorities over whether to publish material concerning the Duke of Windsor’s relations with Nazi Ger- many. Mr. Sweet joined the Foreign Service in 1959 and was U.S. consul General to Stuttgart in the late 1960s. Mr. Sweet grew up in Indiana, the son of a prominent historian of reli- gion in America. His interest in Germany was first awakened in 1929, when he received a scholarship from Depauw University in Indiana to spend a year studying in Germany. It was a time when German nationalism was sharply on the rise, and while Mr. Sweet sent letters home expressing alarm, he also was strongly drawn to Germany’s language, culture and his- tory. Upon returning to the United States, he went to the University of Wisconsin to do graduate work in German history. There he met his wife-to-be, Katharyn Grumman, the daughter of an art curator and profes- sor of German at the University of Nebraska. They married soon after Sweet completed his dissertation on Friedrich Gentz, a top aide to Clemens Metternich, the architect of the conservative post-Napoleonic European order. Wisconsin published the disserta- tion as a book, to strong reviews from the French historian Georges Lefebre and Hannah Arendt, the social theo- rist. Until 1943 Mr. Sweet taught modern European history at Bates College in Maine. When war broke out, he was recruited by the OSS, assigned to its London office, and then sent to accompany the invading Allied forces to interrogate prisoners of war and report on matters like enemy morale. In January 1945, the nationally syn- dicated columnist Dorothy Thompson picked up on a report by his OSS unit that in the occupied city of Aachen, German nationalism had evaporated and people felt unfit to govern them- selves. Thompson praised the report, done by Saul K. Padover, Lewis F. Gitler and Sweet, not only for its find- ings but for the interviewing tech- niques the three men used. Rather than asking “a stereotyped question” that can only bring “a stereotyped answer,” they conducted interviews as informal conversations. In March 1945, their report com- plaining that Nazis were being re- stored to positions of authority in Aachen evidently led to a change in policy. Drew Pearson, in his “Merry- Go-Round” column in the Wash- ington Post , said that it had prompted Roosevelt himself to order a tougher line. According to an article by the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. that appeared in the New York Times after the war, the findings came to the attention of top military brass in Paris, where Schlesinger was serving at the time. Schlesinger said the Sweet- Padover-Gittler report reverberated through every level, so that future military government officials tried to “avoid the Aachen pattern of collaboration with Nazi fellow-trav- elers.” Mr. Sweet reported extensively on Austrian affairs in the months immediately after victory in Europe. J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 77 I N M E M O R Y