Janos Bekessy, later known as Hans Habe, was born in 1911 in Budapest to a family of converted Hungarian Jews. His parents, Imre Bekessy and his wife, made the decision to relocate to Vienna following the conclusion of World War I.
Imre Bekessy, Janos' father, was a prominent figure in the newspaper publishing industry, renowned for his success, yet also notorious for allegedly utilizing his editorial powers for blackmailing purposes. This scandalous behavior was one of the primary reasons Janos Bekessy decided to change his name to Hans Habe.
Habe attended school in Vienna and went on to study for a semester in Heidelberg. However, he soon abandoned his academic pursuits to pursue a career in journalism. After twenty years of dedication, he achieved significant success when he discovered that Hitler's true family name was 'Schicklgruber', thus embarrassing the Nazi regime.
Subsequently, Habe worked for a newspaper in Prague and began writing novels, eventually publishing a total of twenty-five books. When the Nazis invaded Vienna in 1938, his novels were publicly burned. In 1939, he joined the French Foreign Legion to fight against Nazi Germany.
However, he was eventually captured and chose to conceal his Jewish identity in order to escape through Vichy-France and Spain to the United States. As a result of being listed on Roosevelt's roster of anti-Nazi authors, he was granted asylum and joined the US army as an anti-Nazi propaganda officer, collaborating with numerous Jewish and German authors, including Stefan Heym and Ernst Cramer.
Following the downfall of the Third Reich, the Americans tasked Habe with establishing and organizing democratic newspapers in Germany. At the pinnacle of his career, he oversaw eighteen newspapers, resulting in the publication of eight million pieces, including the renowned 'Neue Zeitung'.
