her one of the most sought after female public speakers of her time. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Thompson went on the air for fifteen consecutive days and nights. In 1938, Thompson championed the cause of a Polish-German Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, whose assassination in Paris of a minor German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, had been used as propaganda by the Nazis to trigger the events of Kristallnacht in Germany. Thompson's broadcast on NBC radio was heard by millions of listeners, and led to an outpouring of sympathy for the young assassin. Under the banner of the Journalists' Defense Fund, over $40,000 was collected, enabling famed European lawyer Vincent de Moro-Giafferi to take up Grynszpan's case. Fame and controversy In 1939, Thompson was featured on the cover of Time, with an accompanying picture of her speaking into an NBC radio microphone. The article was captioned "she rides in the smoking car" and it declared that "she and Eleanor Roosevelt are undoubtedly the most influential women in the U.S." She was one of the most respected women of her age. The article explained Thompson's influence: "Dorothy Thompson is the U.S. clubwoman's woman. She is read, believed and quoted by millions of women who used to get their political opinions from their husbands, who got them from Walter Lippmann." In Woman of the Year (1942) Katharine Hepburn played Tess Harding, a character directly based on Thompson. The Broadway musical is based on Thompson as well, this time played by Lauren Bacall. During the 1936 presidential race, Thompson characterized Black voters as a bloc "notoriously venal. Ignorant and illiterate, the vast mass of Negroes are like the lower strata of the early industrial immigrants, and like them are 'bossed' and 'delivered' in blocs by venal leaders, white and black." In 1941, Thompson wrote "Who Goes Nazi?" for Harper's Magazine. Zionism and the State of Israel Thompson had been sympathetic to the Zionist movement since first setting off for Europe in 1920. On her voyage over, she had "endless discussions" of the movement with delegates traveling to the International Zionist Conference being held in London. In the late 1930s, as Thompson emerged as a leading advocate for Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe, she grew close with Zionist statesman Chaim Weizmann and his lieutenant in the US, Meyer Weisgal. As World War II unfolded, Thompson went from being a sympathetic commentator to