Fawn Brodie: An Unlikely Observer

Strange twists and turns await the researcher who digs deeply into any subject. At the beginning of this project, I never suspected I'd be reading the private correspondence of controversial Mormon biographer Fawn M. Brodie. In 1945 she published No Man Knows My History, an unflattering portrait of the first Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr., that resulted in her excommunication from the faith of her birth. During her career she also wrote acclaimed biographies of Thomas Jefferson, Thaddeus Stevens, Richard Nixon, and Sir Richard Burton.

Brodie also had a connection with her church in Nazi Germany. Her father, Thomas E. McKay, served three missions in Germany, the last as the Mormon leader who turned out the lights after missionaries evacuated at the beginning of the Second World War. Two others, a brother and former boyfriend, also served German missions during the prewar Nazi period. Married outside of her faith to a fellow graduate student at the University of Chicago, a political scientist of Latvian Jewish origin, Fawn developed an intense sensitivity to the plight of Germany's Jews during the 1930s. Her personal correspondence provides an interesting critique of the Mormons' response to the rise of Hitler.