While spending time on Long Island, Weitz was encouraged by the writer John Steinbeck to write. His early novels were bestsellers. While his early novels were semi-autobiographical, including focuses on style, the fashion business, and his experiences in Germany, his latter non-fiction books were serious biographies of Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of Third Reich, and Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics.
