Lauterbach was among a group of several journalists employed by
Time magazine including
John Scott that demanded publisher
Henry Luce fire
Whittaker Chambers as head of the foreign news department because of Chambers views toward
Stalinism and Soviet Communism. Lauterbach was ''Time's'' Moscow bureau correspondent. According to
Jack Soble, Lauterbach threatened to resign rather than write articles critical of the Soviet Union. Soble recommended Lauterbach for recruitment to the
KGB. In January 1944, Lauterbach was part of the delegation of Western correspondents who visited the graves in
Katyn forest at the invitation of the Soviets. He believed the Soviet version that the Germans were the perpetrators. Lauterbach was one of the first American journalists to write about the liberation of
Nazi concentration camps. After visiting the
Majdanek camp near
Lublin in 1944, Lauterbach described how the impact of the "full emotional shock came at a giant warehouse chock-full of people's shoes, more than 800,000 of all sizes, shapes, colors, and styles.... In some places the shoes had burst out of the building like corn from a crib. It was monstrous. There is something about an old shoe as personal as a snapshot or a letter. I looked at them and saw their owners: skinny kids in soft, white, worn slippers; thin ladies in black highlaced shoes; sturdy soldiers in brown military shoes..." Lauterbach, then "associate editor of LIFE," wrote a January 1, 1945,
Life magazine article marking Stalin's birthday, entitled "Stalin at 65." ==Legacy==