Two years after the Zinoviev affair, Thomas Marlowe, who had been editor of the Daily Mail for twenty-seven years, left after arguments with Rothermere. Other senior staff left at that time, allowing Rothermere to assert himself on the newspaper and influence content. His style of management was different from how Lord Northcliffe had run the paper; though both interfered, Rothermere tended to back managers over journalists.259 ‘The day-to-day production of the paper was carried on under the system of bullying and insult,’ observed one newly hired sub-editor towards the end of the decade.260 A circulation battle with the Daily Express, led brilliantly by Lord Beaverbook, ensued in the following years.
The two press barons dominated the popular press and followed Lord Northcliffe’s lead in using their position to influence those in power. Rothermere was shameless in his attempts. One early instance occurred in 1922. Three years earlier, his son Esmond Harmsworth had been elected to a Conservative seat in Parliament at the age of nineteen. He was the youngest member of the House of Commons, known as ‘the baby of the House’. Rothermere told Andrew Bonar Law that the support of his newspapers would be withheld unless Esmond was given a position in Cabinet – a threat ignored by the Prime Minister.261
Before the general election in 1929, Rothermere tried a similar trick. He refused to support Stanley Baldwin, the Conservative leader, unless Baldwin promised to provide him with the names of eight of the ten members of Cabinet he planned if elected. Baldwin replied: ‘A more preposterous and insolent demand was never made on a leader of any political party. I repudiate it with contempt and I will fight that attempt at domination to the end.’262
At the start of the 1930s both Rothermere and Beaverbrook were passionate believers that the British Empire should form a free trade area and impose high tariffs on imports from elsewhere. This put them in conflict with Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, who had formed a minority Labour government after the 1929 election, and Baldwin, who favoured more protectionism. In 1930, Rothermere allied his United Empire Party with Beaverbrook’s Empire Free Trade Crusade and the two parties agreed to fight by-elections together on the issue.
This incensed Baldwin further. On 17 March 1931 he delivered his famous tirade against the press barons at the Queens Hall in London. ‘Their newspapers are not newspapers in the ordinary acceptance of the term, they are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal wishes, personal likes and personal dislikes of two men,’ he thundered in a speech partly written by his cousin Rudyard Kipling. ‘What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, but power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.’263
Even so unruffled a figure as Clement Attlee later called Beaverbook ‘the only evil man I ever met’.264 The reason these proprietors so infuriated politicians was the power they wielded. Though unelected, they could influence events greatly in Britain, which seemed to undermine the principle of its centuries-old parliamentary democracy. It was not just Rothermere and Beaverbrook – the power of the press in 1930s Britain was amply demonstrated when the major newspaper proprietors conspired to suppress news of the controversy surrounding King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson in 1936. On that occasion, the politicians were delighted to be assisted by the pressmen. Media outlets in America and the rest of the world were reporting on the scandal engulfing Edward, who wished to marry the divorced American socialite, for months before the British press. Owners of newspapers clubbed together with Prime Minister Baldwin and other high-ranking members of the government to ensure that not a word about the growing controversy was reported. Incredibly, it worked, and when newspapers finally reported news of the crisis in December 1936, it was to the shock of virtually the entire nation.
Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship in Germany was greeted with predictable delight by Rothermere. He had courted the German leader since his election breakthrough in 1930 – and now his support would continue. In July 1933, on one of the many trips he made to ‘Naziland’ to witness events first-hand, he wrote an editorial headlined ‘Youth Triumphant’. After declaring fascist Italy to be the best-governed country in Europe he said he was confident of seeing similar results achieved by Hitler. ‘There has been a sudden expansion of their national spirit like that which took place under Queen Elizabeth. Youth has taken command,’ he wrote admiringly.265
In 1933, Rothermere met Hitler for the first time, in an introduction brokered by the mysterious Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe, an Austrian princess and suspected German spy. The pair struck up a friendship and Rothermere would visit Hitler at Berchtesgaden three times later in the decade. On 7 December 1933 the enamoured press baron received a letter from the dictator, who thanked him for supporting Germany in withdrawing from the League of Nations just weeks before. ‘A policy that we all hope will contribute to the enduring pacification of Europe,’ Hitler wrote.266 The strengthening friendship between the pair coloured the Daily Mail’s coverage of Germany during the first half of the decade. Compared to Rothermere, Beaverbrook interfered less in matters of foreign affairs in the early 1930s. He invested in a network of foreign correspondents and strongly backed them. Only towards the end of the 1930s did he interfere significantly in Daily Express coverage of Germany.
There were differences in how the other major newspapers were owned and managed. The influential Astor family had controlling interests in both The Times and Observer and in 1933 both newspapers had long-standing editors who reigned supreme. Establishment man Geoffrey Dawson, whose love for his home county Yorkshire was second only to his love for the British Empire, started his second spell as Times editor in 1923, while the irascible James Garvin had edited The Observer since 1908. Both were larger-than-life figures whose presence was felt on every page of their newspapers. While disputes over foreign reporting at other papers were more likely to arise between staff and ownership, at these two it was more likely to be between editor and staff.
The Daily Telegraph was owned by a peer, Lord Camrose, who was generally unlikely to interfere. His paper stood out from The Observer and Times in the 1930s by having editors who were much more averse to interfering with the work of its correspondents. Lord Kemsley, who owned the Sunday Times, occupied the other end of the scale. He took an increasingly active interest in Britain’s relationship with Germany as the decade progressed and this approach did not leave the newspaper’s content untouched.
The Manchester Guardian was unique. It had been transformed into an influential liberal newspaper during the 57-year editorship of C. P. Scott, who died in 1932. After this his sons devised the Scott Trust, which was intended to provide a sound long-term financial footing and free the paper from the whims of a proprietor. The trust began in 1936. The most influential leading figure at this time was William Crozier, who took over as editor in 1932. He mainly backed his foreign correspondents, though there were conflicts over some of the paper’s reporting and its positions on several issues as the 1930s went on.
The Labour Party-supporting Daily Herald had been majority-owned by Odhams Press since the start of the 1930s, with the Trade Unions Congress retaining a substantial minority stake. There were disputes at the paper, which boasted a high circulation, over how closely their policy positions should mirror those of Labour. Towards the end of the decade, Odhams owner Lord Southwood would be one of the press barons the government tried to influence when it came to the reporting of Anglo-German relations. This caused consternation among staff.
The News Chronicle was a liberal newspaper owned by a pair of Conservative-minded peers, the Cadbury brothers. Sir Walter Layton ran the newspaper on their behalf and there would be tension over Germany between these three men and the paper’s editor, Gerald Barry, and his loyal staff.
The correspondents at the Taverne often discussed how their newspapers were owned and managed back in London. They were well aware that prejudices at home may colour their work. Bartlett touched on some of the contradictions in his book about Germany i
n 1933. ‘Papers,’ he said, not mentioning the Daily Mail by name, ‘which were most bitter against Germany at the Peace Conference are the only ones which sing praises of the Storm Troops.’267 Editors and proprietors would support and aggravate their reporters in Berlin in equal measure for the rest of the 1930s.
As 1933 progressed the international furore surrounding the German boycott of Jewish goods faded a little. The Times was representative of mainstream British opinion with an article in September, penned by Ebbutt, which asserted that much of the ‘shouting and exaggeration’ in Germany was just ‘sheer revolutionary exuberance’. Germans who had ‘felt themselves to be the only true patriots are enjoying the sounds of their own unrestrained voices’.268
Many in Britain wanted to see if Hitler could succeed in turning around Germany’s economy and curing unemployment. The clampdown on Jews was ugly, but if Hitler could provide a stable government and restore Germany’s confidence, they thought maybe it would be justified to turn a blind eye. Levels of anti-Semitism in Britain were lower than in Germany, but disdain for Jews was still far from uncommon. This limited the general sympathy felt for their plight, especially as few could envisage the depravity of Hitler’s future actions against the Jewish population. Those who held serious concerns were invariably the same people who had taken the effort to read Mein Kampf.
A potential turning point for British policy towards Germany came in October 1933, when the German delegation walked out of the Disarmament Conference. This aggressive act defied international attempts at mutual understanding and reconciliation. It was one of the first reliable indicators, since Hitler had taken power, of the brazen, uncooperative and erratic path he would pursue in foreign affairs. At just the moment politicians in Britain could have chosen to unite against Hitler, they were distracted by electoral concerns. The death of the Conservative MP for Fulham East forced a by-election. The timing meant that rearmament would be a key issue for voters. The Conservative leader, Stanley Baldwin, did not mention it in his electoral message, but Labour claimed the Tories wanted war. Ramsay MacDonald had been disowned by Labour, meaning his National Government was reliant upon the support of Conservative MPs for its parliamentary majority. The Conservatives were vulnerable to attacks. Labour campaigned on the basis that a vote for its candidate was a vote for peace. It became an election about war and defence and Labour’s campaign triumphed, overturning the Conservatives’ huge majority.
It was an eye-opening moment for Baldwin, who served in MacDonald’s government. In a meeting with the Foreign Office’s Lord Vansittart he admitted it would be electoral suicide to campaign on rearmament and risk being seen as wanting war. ‘Look at these East Fulham results,’ he groaned.269 In the months that followed, ministers handled the rearmament issue gingerly, in Vansittart’s opinion, and were frightened of a voter backlash on the issue.
While politicians in Britain vacillated, foreign correspondents in Germany were confronted with the clearest evidence yet of their hazardous predicament. Noel Panter was the Daily Telegraph’s man in Munich. Just thirty-one years old, he had quickly developed a reputation as an informed and intelligent reporter respected by others in the British press pack. In October he attended a march of 20,000 storm troopers in Munich, an event infused with militaristic fervour. He described it for Telegraph readers in these terms, despite an instruction from the German authorities that any military comparisons were to be avoided in reports.
Panter was arrested on 24 October, after which his flat was raided and his personal papers confiscated. He was held for more than a week, despite growing calls for his release by the British media and government. The Nazis were initially resistant to all diplomatic approaches, so great was their anger at his report. Rivals in the press lauded his bravery in daring to tell the truth about Nazi Germany. The report he wrote was ‘a faithful and admirably written account of a very remarkable event,’ wrote A. J. Cummings in the News Chronicle. ‘The arrest of Mr Panter suggests a new development. It suggests that foreign journalists are to be subject to the same censorship and to the same penalties as the German press.’270
After more than a week in prison Panter was released and expelled from Germany. He was the first British journalist to be thrown out by the Nazis, and he crossed the border into Switzerland with huge relief on 3 November. ‘I can hardly hope to convey to those who have not experienced it what it means to me in Switzerland tonight to be free from the eternal clicking of heels, fascist salutes and “Hail Hitlers” of Munich,’ he informed Telegraph readers the next day.271
Panter’s expulsion drew a flurry of comment and criticism in Britain but no wholesale change in approach. Germany continued on its aggressive path, leaving the League of Nations in December 1933. That month, Hitler greeted British enquiries about his storm trooper forces with a glibness that would become standard. ‘Hitler assured me that the S. A. and S. S. might be compared to the Salvation Army,’ said Sir Eric Phipps, the new British ambassador in Berlin. ‘Here I regret to say I laughed.’272
Frederick Voigt of the Guardian ended the year in a gloomy mood. ‘Grey depression, grey as the London fog,’ he wrote in his diary in December. ‘A whole world foundering before the onslaught of Hitler. Where there is understanding there is no will; where there is will, there is no understanding.’273
- CHAPTER IX -
‘HURRAH FOR THE BLACKSHIRTS!’
Sefton Delmer’s departure from Berlin for Paris in 1933 left a large hole in the Daily Express’s coverage of Germany. But the vacancy also represented a significant opportunity. Delmer’s reports from inside Nazi circles had established his reputation as one of the better-known foreign correspondents – and he soon developed an ego to match – but had drawn criticism too. The wider press pack thought he was too close to the Nazis. Even if he did not support Hitler, rivals felt he was too quick to relish his meteoric success and the opportunities it afforded him as a journalist.
His replacement in Berlin was an Englishman named Philip Pembroke Stephens. Born in 1903, making him a year older than Delmer, he had reported from Paris and Vienna before being sent to Berlin. He trod a different path from his predecessor in Germany. While many other reporters in Germany became distracted and did not focus on the long-term consequences of the Jewish Boycott, Stephens made it a priority. He travelled widely in Germany and reported on events first-hand rather than relying on reports, which became increasingly unreliable as Hitler’s grip on power tightened.
Stephens filed reports from cities including Hamburg, where he witnessed the consequences of the international boycott of German goods. The boycott had been designed to force Hitler to end his anti-Semitism by the use of economic pressure. Jews outside Germany would boycott German-made goods for as long as Hitler’s regime continued to boycott Jewish-made goods. ‘No town has suffered more from Hitler than this once wealthy city of commerce,’ he wrote in one dispatch in May 1934. He was clear that Hitler, and not the international community, was to blame for the situation – which did not please the Nazis.274 It was obvious where his sympathies lay.
The report from Hamburg earned Stephens a short stay with the Gestapo, who arrested him shortly after its publication. It did not intimidate him, however, and in the following days he sent dispatches with headlines including: ‘Germany Pleads Poverty While Trade Booms’ and ‘Germany Dodging State Loan Obligations’. On 25 May he wrote a long article revealing just how dark life had become for Jews in Germany. Under the headline ‘New Hitler Blow at the Jews’, he described in grim detail the conditions facing Jews living in Arnswalde, a small German town that is now part of Poland. ‘Unaffected by his arrest and imprisonment last week by the German secret police, [he] sends another vivid dispatch,’ the Express wrote in an introduction to the front-page article.
‘I have spent the past few days visiting districts where the Jews are reported to be suffering most keenly,’ Stephens wrote. The tales he heard were bleak. ‘Jew baiting has been brought to a fine art and cafés carry
the slogan, “No Jews allowed here.”’ He reported that Jews in Bavaria were no longer allowed to use the public swimming baths and that synagogues and Jewish cemeteries had been attacked. German Jews, he wrote, are ‘friendless, persecuted and told by Nazi officials “the best thing you can do is to die”’.275
Days after this article was published, Stephens was again arrested by the Gestapo. This time there would be no second chance. The Nazis charged him with ‘Abuse of Hospitality’ and he was given twenty-four hours to leave the country. When he was arrested, the police would not tell his wife where he was being taken. In a statement explaining his detention the Nazi authorities blamed ‘constant misrepresentation of the peaceful efforts of the German government and frivolous and distorted reports’.276
The next day Stephens crossed the frontier to Belgium and rang the office in London to pass on a report describing his expulsion that made the front page of Saturday’s Daily Express. ‘I was locked up like a beast in a cage behind high wire netting. I was not allowed to telephone my wife,’ he said. He had witnessed horrific sights during his short stay at a prison in Berlin. ‘Grim photographs of murdered men with blood-stained faces distorted in death grinned at me from the walls.’ It was a clumsy attempt to intimidate and threaten the reporter before he left, perhaps in the hope that it would dissuade him from writing about his expulsion.
Reporting on Hitler Page 13