Saving Freud From Hitler’s Third Reich

In March 1938, German soldiers crossed the border into Austria and Hitler absorbed the country into the Third Reich. Anticipating these events, many Jews had fled Austria, but the most famous Austrian Jew remained in Vienna, where he had lived since early childhood. Sigmund Freud was eighty-one years old, ill with cancer, and still unconvinced that his life was in danger. But several prominent people close to Freud who thought otherwise began a coordinated effort to persuade Freud to leave his beloved Vienna and emigrate to England. The group included a Welsh physician, Napoleon’s great grandniece, an American ambassador, Freud’s devoted youngest daughter Anna, and his personal doctor. Author Andrew Nagorski and AJU’s Rick Richman discuss the story of how this remarkable collection of people finally succeeded in coaxing Freud to emerge from his deep state of denial about the looming catastrophe and safely extricate him and his family to London, where Freud would live out the remaining sixteen months of his life – in freedom.