John G. Stoessinger

John George Stoessinger (October 14, 1927 - November 20, 2017), a prize-winning author of ten leading books on world politics, has been the recipient of the distinguished Bancroft Prize for History for The Might of Nations, and has served as Acting Director for the Political Affairs Division at the United Nations. On the eve of World War II, Dr. Stoessinger fled from Nazi-occupied Austria to Czechoslovakia. His family was saved by a Japanese diplomat, Chiune Sugihara, who issued three visas to transit Russia, allowing them to escape to Shanghai via Siberia and Kobe. Dr. Stoessinger was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, lecturing extensively throughout the world, and served as Distinguished Professor of Global Diplomacy at the University of San Diego.

Stoessinger's work is notable for his individualistic analyses of war, contrasted with the systemic views more commonly studied by political scientists after the Second World War. An example of this is his work in Why Nations Go to War. In the first section of his novel, The Iron Dice, Stoessinger offers an alternative explanation of the causes of World War I, one that includes human reactions and feelings.

In 1976, Stoessinger pleaded guilty to concealing fraud totaling at least $260,000 committed by Anne Lament, who used letters of recommendation from him which she addressed to overseas banks and governments. He subsequently received a full Presidential Pardon from Ronald Reagan, thereby nullifying the original offence.

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John G. Stoessinger was born on 14 October 1927 to a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna. After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, he and his mother fled to her parents in Prague; his father had emigrated to Palestine, where he died in 1939. In March 1941, the family – Stoessinger's mother had meanwhile remarried – fled from occupied Prague via the Soviet Union and Japan (Kobe) to Shanghai, where Stoessinger was able to attend an English school. In 1947, he went on to the United States; his mother and stepfather followed him there in 1949. John Stoessinger began studying politology at Grinnell College, Iowa, where he obtained his B.A. in 1950. He then went on to Harvard, where he first and foremost attended lectures by Sigmund Neumann; here he was awarded an M.A. in 1952 and a Ph.D. in 1954. After various teaching posts, for example at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, John Stoessinger began teaching political science at City University of New York's Hunter College in 1957; in 1964 he was appointed to a professorship. In 1969, he led the Seminar on International Relations at Harvard University. From 1967 to 1974, he was the acting director of the UN’s political affairs division; he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Besides holding academic and political offices, he lectures extensively, also on radio and television. Stoessinger, who lived in Encinitas, California, taught global diplomacy at the University of San Diego, California.