Reporting on Hitler

by Wainewright, Will;

  It did no such thing. ‘It is impossible to tell the truth, the real truth about Germany, and remain an accredited correspondent in Berlin,’ he wrote. ‘The life of a foreign correspondent these days is one long, uncomfortable thrill.’277 Two days later he wrote another article questioning why he had been expelled. It would have made uncomfortable reading for the Nazis. ‘Was it because I exposed the extent of German rearmament? Was it because I told the truth about Germany’s financial condition? Was it on account of my article on the German Jews?’278

  Stephens was the second British correspondent to be expelled from Germany, following Noel Panter. The intrepid reporter did not remain in Britain for long. Lord Beaverbrook valued Stephens highly after his expulsion, which set the tone for the Daily Express’s critical reporting on Nazi Germany during the middle part of the decade. He reported on many other major foreign events before dying in 1937 after being caught in crossfire while reporting on the Japanese invasion of China. He was not yet forty. Pembroke Stephens was one of ‘the heroes of British journalism in the 1930s’, according to John Simpson. ‘It took courage to write openly about the behaviour of the Nazis in the streets. Most of the foreign correspondents in Berlin chose to ignore this as much as possible, and concentrated instead on the safe business of reporting political and diplomatic issues. Stephens was not that kind of journalist.’279

  The reporting of the brave and perceptive Stephens stands out in this period because few other major newspapers in Britain were reporting so critically on the Nazis. There was certainly scant chance of articles of the type penned by Stephens making their way into Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail. While John Segrue provided some piercing reports on Jewish treatment for the News Chronicle, the Manchester Guardian was the main exception. Its robust reports on life inside Nazi Germany were commendable but not without risk: in the early years of Hitler’s rule, the role of Guardian correspondent in Berlin was widely perceived to be the most dangerous and precarious journalism job in Europe.280

  Midway through January 1934, and shortly before Hitler celebrated his first anniversary in power, Rothermere published his most bullish article to date on the fascist movement. His support for Mussolini and Hitler had led him to support a politician who was attempting to replicate their success in Britain. Oswald Mosley was a restless, aristocratic young man who had become disillusioned with mainstream parties in the 1920s. He had been an MP for both the Conservatives and Labour, but sought more radical solutions to the country’s economic problems and set up the New Party in 1931. Rothermere was a fervent supporter of Mosley and that year offered to place the whole of his family’s press at his disposal.281 The pair had much in common. During a trip to Italy, Mosley came to admire the dictatorial rule of Mussolini. He fervently believed that strong and ruthless action was required by modern politicians and the sleepy democracies that remained were not up to the job. Inspired by Mussolini, in 1932 he ditched the New Party for a new nationalist movement, the British Union of Fascists, founded on the model of Mussolini’s Blackshirts.

  The British Union of Fascists’ commitment to youth and a nationalist spirit, as well as its focus on rearmament, appealed greatly to Rothermere. He closely monitored the development of the emerging movement and lent it further support. The Daily Mail’s leading foreign correspondent, G. Ward Price, was a close friend of Mosley. He helped develop a plan that would see Mosley and Rothermere go into business together producing cigarettes.282 Staff at the Daily Mail started wearing black shirts to work in solidarity with their leader. A series of supportive articles started appearing in the newspaper, which reached a fresh high with ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’.

  It was strident stuff. ‘To cope with the grim problems of the present day the energy and vigour of younger men are needed,’ Rothermere wrote. He called for ‘the gigantic revival of national strength and spirit which a similar process of modernisation has brought about in Italy and Germany. They are without doubt the best-governed nations in Europe today.’ Airdefence warranted a mention, as it did in so many of Rothermere’s articles. ‘In the vital matter of air-defence [Britain] has been allowed to sink from the foremost to the lowest position among the Great Powers.’ But the appeal of fascism was the main message of the article, which concluded with a direct call for members: ‘Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King’s Road, Chelsea, London.’283

  Rothermere, Price and Mosley were a bellicose trio, confident in the righteousness of their cause and backed up by the huge machinery of the Mail. Price was especially pleased by the triumvirate. A Mail man through and through, he loved the paper’s staunchly right-wing stance and the opportunities it offered him to travel and report from all over the world in his role as special correspondent. Now he consolidated his position by bringing his friend Mosley and employer Rothermere together in friendship.

  Price first met Rothermere after Lord Northcliffe’s death in 1922. He quickly established the same kind of relationship as he’d had with his previous employer – one of obsequious respect. ‘What made it so agreeable an experience to tour the world with Lord Rothermere was his unfailing high spirits,’ Price wrote. ‘Whether at his villa in the South of France or crossing to the States in a transatlantic liner or making long motor tours on the Continent or walking on the moors near one of his favourite houses in the north of Scotland, he was always the embodiment of good humour.’284 Such fawning helped establish him as the Mail’s most important foreign correspondent of the 1930s.

  The British Union of Fascists signed up more members after Rothermere’s article, but there was a problem. Just as Hitler and Mussolini’s movements had violent tendencies, it did not take long for the ugly side of their British equivalent to emerge and indeed dominate. The problem simmered for months before the aggressive attitudes and fighting instincts of many young British fascists spilled into the open at the Olympia Rally in London in June 1934. Left-wing anti-fascist groups congregating outside to protest against Mosley were attacked. ‘For over an hour before the meeting the crowds jostling one another outside Olympia numbered several thousand,’ the Manchester Guardian reported. ‘There were catcalls and booing and cheering, and in a scuffle one could catch sight of a yelling demonstrator being dragged off by the police.’

  Inside the hall Mosley had put on a show designed to compete with the theatricalism of Hitler and Mussolini. ‘There was a massed band of Blackshirts, there were flags, the Union Jack, and the black and yellow flag of the British Union of Fascists,’ the Guardian reported. Mosley ‘kept his audience waiting while the band played patriotic marches and other tunes devised for the British Fascists’. He then took to the stage. ‘Some people – they did not seem to be many – raised their arms in a fascist salute and others with less commitment, cheered.’

  But then the booing began. Chants and shrieks came from one of the galleries. ‘Blackshirts began stumbling and leaping over chairs to get at the source of the noise,’ the report described. ‘There was a wild scrummage, women screamed, black-shirted arms rose and fell, blows were dealt.’ A new chorus rang out clearly above the chaos: ‘We want Mosley, We want Mosley.’285

  This was too much for Rothermere. These dark scenes of violence, and the movement’s anti-Semitism, meant his support soon evaporated. The violence of the night signalled that a blackshirts movement was not the remedy to Britain’s problems. Indeed, it could make them worse. Izzard, by Reynolds’s side in the Berlin office, received a telegram from the news editor in London. ‘The blackshirts are in the wash and the colour is running very fast,’ it read. The message was clear. ‘What it meant to us in Berlin was we were no longer so friendly with the Nazis as we were before,’ Izzard said.286

  Such a conclusion was premature. If Reynolds and Izzard thought their boss’s discomforting experience supporting the fascist movement in Britain would curtail the Mail’s pro-Nazi attitude, they were mistaken. Fascism in Britain may have been short-lived, but Rothermere’s admiration
for Hitler and what the Nazis were achieving in Germany had deeper roots. He despised communism and viewed the rise of fascism in continental Europe as an unpleasant but necessary counterweight to the menace he saw rising in the east. Communism in Britain was his greatest fear. Bizarrely, during the 1930s he bought acres of land in Hungary as insurance in case the communists overwhelmed Britain.

  Lord Rothermere was far from alone in his early support for Hitler. Many other Britons also viewed him as a man of action and vigour who could solve Germany’s economic problems. He capitalised on a feeling in the post-war years that France had been too harsh on Germany at Versailles and instigated an agreement that callously reduced its enemy’s chance of ever recovering. While the awkward French were blamed for the troublesome Treaty of Versailles, which was viewed less favourably with every passing year, the untrustworthy communists leading Russia were viewed as a threat to be kept under control. These prejudices created an environment that made it easier to support Hitler. He had not hidden his extreme views, but for many these were not considered a sufficient basis to oppose him.

  In the first half of 1934 the grim reality of his situation was clearer than ever to Reynolds. Though the fascist movement in Britain would not last, Lord Rothermere had expressed his views plainly with his ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ article. Reynolds tried to report with balance on the Nazi regime, which was starting to demonstrate its brutal nature. But his press baron employer was utterly blind to its awful reality.

  Fewer articles carrying Reynolds’s byline appeared in the paper, the start of a sidelining process that continued for the rest of the 1930s. Other correspondents became more prominent in the reporting of German affairs as Rothermere seemingly lost confidence in the man his brother had sent to Berlin in 1921. The Daily Mail had little interest in the issues Reynolds was passionate about – most notably the growing Nazi pressure on the Christian churches in Germany, which rivals such as Norman Ebbutt of The Times reported in full.

  Reynolds read the Italy-based publication L’Osservatore Romano to keep informed about the increasing religious persecution. ‘The fact that I had to resort to an Italian newspaper to find out things that were happening in Germany shows sufficiently clearly the difficult situation in which the representatives of foreign newspapers found themselves in Berlin.’287 Those in the church feared the consequences of talking to journalists, even those as supportive as Reynolds. One morning he was told that a German bishop in Berlin had been particularly critical of the Nazis in a sermon. Reynolds rang the church for a copy of the sermon, but was disappointed. ‘It would do us great harm if it was discovered that we had given it to a representative of the foreign press,’ he was told.288

  Even if Reynolds had been able to file an article on the sermon to the Mail there is no guarantee it would have been published. He once described his job as ‘to send my paper reports – which might or might not be printed’. As the 1930s wore on Reynolds became increasingly used to the latter. Other difficulties pressed as conditions for foreign correspondents in Germany worsened. ‘When freedom went, life changed,’ Reynolds observed. ‘It was full of barriers, hindrances, inhibitions.’ A colleague from the Mail’s London office visited him and remarked: ‘It seems to me that what a foreign newspaper needs in Berlin is not a journalist, but a detective.’289

  This was especially true midway through 1934 when Hitler achieved another milestone in his capture of total power in Germany. The brownshirted storm troopers led by former army officer Ernst Röhm had become a problem for the Nazis. Röhm had supported Hitler from the start and participated in the Munich Putsch of 1923. He had been appointed to lead the Sturmabteilung force in 1930 and the storm troopers had been an important part of the Nazi rise to power. But he over-played his hand, arguing that his storm troopers should take precedence over the German army. Hitler began to see the force, whose love of street violence had become almost embarrassing, as a threat. Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, Röhm’s rivals at Hitler’s immediate side, urged the Führer to remind him of his station.

  Hitler went further than that. Even the cold-blooded duo of Göring and Himmler were shocked by the action taken by Hitler at the end of June. During the Night of the Long Knives he had Röhm and scores of other former supporters murdered in extra-judicial killings. Former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his wife were murdered, while Franz von Papen was arrested. Hitler’s personal involvement in the killing of Röhm was particularly shocking. He turned up at his hotel in Munich and passed him on to members of Himmler’s SS, who killed him.

  Reynolds and Harold Cardozo reported on the events for Daily Mail readers in a series of co-written reports beginning on 2 July. ‘Herr Adolf Hitler, the German Chancellor, has saved his country,’ read the first line of the first article. It set the tone, dismissing any notion that Rothermere’s paper had become more critical of the Nazis. ‘Swiftly and with inexorable severity [Hitler] has delivered Germany from men who had become a danger to the unity of the German people and to order in the state. With lightening [sic] rapidity he has caused them to be removed from high office, to be arrested, and put to death,’ the report said.290

  The events were described in blunt detail. Hitler ‘roused the ringleader, Captain Röhm, Chief of Staff of the Brown Army and Reich Minister without portfolio, from sleep and caused him and his fellow conspirators to be arrested,’ read the report. ‘Röhm was put in a prison cell and a loaded revolver placed at his side. Whether from religious convictions or a hope that he might be reprieved at the last moment, he refused to take his life and was shot today.’

  ‘“Clean-up” Completed’ was the headline to the report by Reynolds and Cardozo the next day. They relayed the latest official Nazi statement: ‘The task of cleaning up came to an end last evening and no further action will be taken in this direction.’291 Reynolds’s reporting of the Night of the Long Knives was a source of regret until the end of his life. He admitted to accepting without challenge the official version of events, while the tone of admiration in the report was no doubt inserted at Lord Rothermere’s behest in London. ‘Reading over the dispatches that my colleague, Harold Cardozo, who came from Paris to help, and I wrote at the time, I can see how grossly we were deceived,’ he later wrote. ‘We were told, for instance, that General von Schleicher, revolver in hand, had tried to resist arrest and had therefore been shot down.’ In fact, the former Chancellor and his wife had been murdered in cold-blood.292 Reynolds later concluded:

  The butchery of June 30, whether men were shot at their desks or shot after arrest, was murder. No enquiry was made as to the guilt of those who were slaughtered. They were not brought before a court of justice and were not allowed to defend themselves from the vague charge of conspiracy and treason brought against them.293

  In the following days Reynolds was present inside the Kroll Opera House as Hitler proclaimed himself the ‘supreme court of the Reich’. Rows of men in Nazi uniforms whooped, clapped and cheered their approval. Looking on, Reynolds viewed the spectacle ‘as the measure of Germany’s degradation’.294

  None of this went into the Mail. There was no room for such sentiment in Rothermere’s newspaper, which remained at this point a firm supporter of Hitler’s efforts to supposedly restore Germany to greatness. Reynolds himself is not blameless. He accepted too easily the official Nazi line. He later made his true feelings about Hitler’s regime known, but kept quiet at the time. It would have been a huge risk to voice his disdain publicly. Not only would he have come up against Joseph Goebbels, the Reich’s Propaganda Minister, but also Rothermere in London. His livelihood would have been at risk. In 1934 Reynolds turned sixty-two and was still enjoying life in Germany, despite the lengthening shadow extended by the Nazis. He had a wide circle of friends and was lecturing on subjects including the English monasteries at Berlin University. For a range of reasons, his and the Mail’s reporting fell short.

  From the middle of 1934, Reynolds reported less and less on the main political eve
nts in Germany as G. Ward Price, the Daily Mail’s star foreign correspondent, took centre stage. Price was closely trusted by Rothermere despite their ill-fated flirtation with Mosley’s fascist movement. His was usually the byline for the most momentous European events reported by the newspaper. From the middle of the 1930s he would often be the reporter who conducted interviews with Hitler, supplanting Reynolds despite the latter’s position as Berlin bureau chief. In Nazi Germany, Price had the dubious honour of being the only foreign journalist trusted by Hitler. He was the only non-German who reported his words without prejudice, the dictator told Göring.

  It was not an accolade in the eyes of his peers, who started to view Price as they had Delmer, but it helped him win access to the leadership. Price ‘was welcomed to interviews in the Reich Chancellery in a more privileged way than all other foreign journalists,’ the German historian Hans-Adolf Jacobsen wrote.295 Yet that access bore a heavy price in terms of impartiality if you worked for the Daily Mail. Not only was Price beholden to Hitler for the interview rights he was granted, he was actively encouraged to pursue a pro-Nazi line by his employer in London. It was a cosy little set. Reynolds was not invited to Hitler’s first major dinner party for foreigners in December 1934, but three of the guests of honour were Price, Lord Rothermere and his son Esmond Harmsworth (who within three years would be running the newspaper).296

  Price got on better with Goebbels than other foreign correspondents at the time. ‘He was by far the best orator of the Nazi Party and appealed with great success to the industrial classes of Berlin and the large towns,’ Price wrote.297 (He also noted that Goebbels was ‘undersized, swarthy and notoriously lascivious’.) Good relations with the Nazi set and his newspaper’s sympathetic reporting combined to help Price replace Delmer as the British reporter most trusted by the Nazis in the second half of the 1930s.