author
Thomas F. A. Smith
b. 1875
Best known for writing about Germany from the inside during the years around World War I, this early-20th-century author brought a close observer’s eye to politics, public opinion, and culture. His books promise the viewpoint of someone who had lived and taught in Germany, not just watched events from afar.
1 Audiobook
What Germany Thinks; Or, The War as Germans see it
by Thomas F. A. Smith
About the author
Thomas F. A. Smith was a writer born in 1875 whose surviving bibliography points to a strong interest in Germany and European intellectual life. Catalog records and digital library listings connect him with works including The Life and Literary Works of Mrs. Augustus Craven née la Ferronnays (1910), The Soul of Germany: A Twelve Years' Study of the People from Within, 1902–1914 (1915), and What Germany Thinks; Or, The War as Germans See It (published in the 1910s).
The clearest biographical detail available from the books themselves is that What Germany Thinks identifies him as Thomas F. A. Smith, Ph.D. and describes him as a late English lecturer in the University of Erlangen. That helps explain the perspective of his best-known writing: he presented Germany to English-language readers as someone with direct academic and cultural experience of the country.
Because reliable biographical information on him is sparse, much of his life remains unclear. What can be said with confidence is that his work sits at the meeting point of history, commentary, and firsthand observation, especially in books that tried to interpret German society and wartime thinking for a wider public.