Donald S. Day

Donald Satterlee Day (May 15, 1895 – October 1, 1966) was an American reporter in northern Europe for the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s and 1930s. As a broadcaster on German radio for several months during World War II, he argued that the United States should support Nazi Germany in its war against the Soviet Union. Following the Allied victory over Germany, he was twice arrested by U.S. authorities and investigated for treason, but no charges were brought. Due to his position in eastern Europe as a reporter for many years, Day was able to provide the U.S. government with tips about Soviet espionage agents, which played a part in his charges being dropped.

Donald Day was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 15, 1895, to John I. and Grace Bryant (Satterlee) Day. He had two brothers, Samuel Houston Day and John I. Day II, and two sisters, Grace Delafield Day and Dorothy Day, who was a noted Catholic social activist and is being considered for canonization by the Catholic Church. He followed his father, who was editor of the New York Morning Telegraph, into journalism, and worked for The Day Book, a tabloid newspaper aimed at the working-class market which campaigned on behalf of labor unions and the right of women to vote.

In 1917 Day became a pilot in the United States Navy and when discharged at the end of World War I he returned to New York, working as a sports reporter for The Morning Telegraph. He later became the editor of the New York World.

In 1921, Day was invited by the unofficial Soviet representative in New York, Ludwig Martens, to accompany him on his deportation from the U.S. to the Soviet Union and to report on events there. When he arrived in Riga, Latvia, he received a Soviet visa and an offer from the European Director of the Chicago Tribune, Floyd Gibbons, to be that newspaper’s Northern Europe Correspondent. Day accepted the offer and from August 1921 was the only U.S. reporter in the region. He reported on events in the Baltic States, Finland, and the Soviet Union. His visa for the Soviet Union was withdrawn when he refused to report on the Soviet system in a consistently favorable light. He was unable to comply when faced by the realities of Soviet tyranny and the Communist subversion of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. When he was denied direct access to the Soviet Union, he relied on reports from refugees and correspondents he sent across the border.

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