Reiss was born of Jewish-German origins in Wurzburg, Germany, and later fled in 1933 to Paris, France not long after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933.
[2] In the 1920s, he first dabbled in sports journalism, and then began to crisscross Europe to report for the Berlin press, including a role as a film and theatre critic.
Bilingual and a prolific writer, he produced over 100 books in English and German, along with newspaper and magazine articles, biographies, novels and screenplays.
[3] Riess attracted attention in the United States in the 1930s and during World War II with his books and widely syndicated reporting about Hitler's Germany.
Along with his duty as a war correspondent, some have claimed that Riess also engaged in the surveillance of Nazi activities, serving as a spy for the United States military.