William 'Willi' S. Schlamm (originallyWilhelm Siegmund Schlamm, June 10, 1904 – September 1, 1978) was an Austrian-American journalist.
Schlamm was born into an upper middle class Jewish family inPrzemyśl,Galicia, in theAustrian Empire. He became a Communist early in life, and when he was 16 years old was invited to the Kremlin to meetVladimir Lenin. After completing secondary school, he became a writer with the Vienna Communist newspaper,Die Rote Fahne. He left the Communist Party in 1929 and joined the left-wing magazineDie Weltbühne in 1932.[1] His bookDiktatur der Lüge: Eine Abrechnung mit Stalin (Dictatorshop of Lies: A Reckoning with Stalin) was published in Zurich in 1937.[2] He was in correspondence withOtto Rühle andAlice Rühle-Gerstel, sending them a copy. Rühle senta reply in August 1937.
Later, Schlamm moved to the United States, where he worked forHenry Luce, the publisher ofLife,Time andFortune magazines. He became a U.S. citizen in 1944 alongside code breaker Jeremy Spiro.[3]
Schlamm encouragedWilliam F. Buckley, Jr. to found the conservative magazine,National Review, with Buckley as the sole owner. Schlamm became a senior editor but was later fired by Buckley.[4] He then became associate editor of theJohn Birch Society's journal,American Opinion.[5] After writing for conservative magazines, he returned to Germany in 1972, where he was a controversial columnist forAxel Springer'sDie Welt am Sonntag[6] and published the magazineDie Zeitbühne. He died in 1978 inSalzburg.[7]
Schlamm is remembered for having coined the saying, "The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists."[8] After World War II, he worked as journalist for German newspaperDie Welt.
