Reporting on Hitler

by Wainewright, Will;

Like Delmer, Price was criticised after the war for being too soft on the Nazis in his reporting during this period. He strongly defended himself, saying he merely reported what the dictators Hitler and Mussolini had told him. ‘This provided British newspaper readers with an opportunity to form their own estimate of the genuineness or falsehood of the declarations that they made,’ Price wrote.298 He admitted that he had greater access to the Hitler than other reporters. ‘Since I reported his statements accurately, leaving British newspaper-readers to form their own opinion of their worth, I had many opportunities of observing him under different sets of circumstances,’ he wrote. ‘He appreciated having a foreign auditor for the long harangues in which he tried to justify himself and his policy.’

  While the Mail’s reporting of the Night of the Long Knives was not a glorious moment for the newspaper, Delmer of the Express riled the Nazis with some commendably fearless journalism. The expulsion of Stephens, his successor in Berlin, had helped open his eyes to the ruthless nature of the Nazis and he was now more willing to stand up to the authorities in Germany. Following the events of 30 June, Hitler and the Propaganda Ministry had promised to publish a list of men killed in the purge. But a week later the list had not been published. Delmer chose to take the initiative. ‘As Chancellor Hitler will not publish his list,’ he wrote on the front page of the Express on 6 July, ‘I have done my best to put together a provisional list of the dead. Forty-six men, it is already officially admitted, have been executed. But I am told that the true figure is now above 108.’299

  The Nazis were incandescent at this. Two days after publication Delmer was issued with an expulsion order by the Gestapo. He defied the order and, with Beaverbrook’s backing, told the Ministry of Propaganda he would be staying. He threatened to write more ‘articles on everything I know about the purge’ if he was forced to leave Germany. The British Embassy also made representations. It worked. German authorities chose not to enforce the order. Maybe Delmer’s reputation as something of a friend to the Nazis had helped him – they may have regarded his report as an aberration rather than typical of the articles he wrote. But it was a brave correspondent who stood up to the Gestapo during those years, and Delmer deserves credit for his actions.

  The Daily Mail’s sympathetic attitude towards Nazi Germany during the mid- 1930s was shared by many in Britain. This culminated later in the decade when an influential group of aristocrats, politicians and media barons who congregated at Lady Nancy Astor’s palatial country home became known as the pro-Nazi ‘Cliveden Set’. But there were leading figures who took the opposite view. Banished from the front line of government, Winston Churchill was in the midst of his ‘wilderness years’ as Hitler’s grip on power tightened. He was good friends with Rothermere, and the two were in total agreement on the importance of rearming and developing a strong air force in Britain. But Churchill mocked his friend for the Daily Mail’s friendship with Hitler.

  During a lunch one day with Rothermere and Price, Churchill turned to Price and said he had been reading the Mail. ‘I see that you’ve been over in Germany again, shaking the hands of your Nazi friends,’ he said darkly – and only half in jest. Price fired back a churlish reply criticising Churchill for how he had handled the Irish nationalists at the start of the 1920s, but the point was made.300

  Churchill was close friends with Lord Vansittart, the hawkish Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, and the two were fiercely distrustful of Hitler’s intentions in Germany. Both men believed that Britain should be a stronger ally to France and Russia and not give way to Hitler. Vansittart struck up an unlikely close friendship with Russia’s ambassador to Britain, Ivan Maisky, and the pair would often meet with Churchill.

  Maisky was an easily recognisable figure in the gilded circles of London’s diplomatic scene as a result of his beard, which though small and thin was highly unusual. As a member of the communist elite, he drew resentment from some in London society for the brutal way in which Russia’s ruling family had been killed in 1918. Vansittart’s indefatigable wife Sarita, who was at his side for countless official functions, gave Maisky short shrift when he compared the assassination to the deaths of Charles I in England and Louis XVI of France. ‘But that was two centuries ago and more, and you killed the entire imperial family! Why,’ she cried, ‘you even killed their dog!’301

  In 1934 Maisky and Churchill attended a dinner at Vansittart’s grand home in Mayfair, during which Churchill summed up the basis of their agreement.

  I consider that the greater danger to the British Empire is Germany, and therefore now I am the enemy of Germany. At the same time I consider Hitler is making ready to expand not only against us but to the east, against you. Why should we not join forces to combat our common enemy?302

  The British government did not see it this way and shied away from stronger ties with Russia throughout the 1930s.

  Vansittart’s attempts to foster closer ties with France met with a similar lack of success. He was acquiring a reputation for being a Francophile who detested the Germans. Even Stanley Baldwin remarked in private that Vansittart felt hatred towards Britain’s First World War enemy. He was saying this in April 1934, a year before becoming Prime Minister. Baldwin was never a member of the ‘Cliveden Set’, which rose to prominence towards the end of the decade, but he shared their sense of inherent contempt for Vansittart’s continuous warnings about Hitler and Germany. Vansittart was not put off and rightly believed he would be vindicated in the end.

  ‘The foundation of Herr Hitler’s faith is that man is a fighting animal,’ Vansittart wrote in 1934. ‘Pacifism is therefore the deadliest sin. Had the German race been united in time, Hitler argues, it would now be master of the globe.’ Vansittart based his findings in part on an uncensored version of Mein Kampf, which had not been sanitised for English eyes. Few other leading politicians or civil servants went to such trouble, relying on the more palatable official translated version, and their perspectives were flawed as a result.303

  As the sides in the British debate over Anglo-German relations took shape – a clash that would define the second half of the 1930s – Hitler moved to consolidate his power. The Night of the Long Knives had reined in the storm troopers and established his power over the army. On 2 August 1934 President Hindenburg died at his estate in East Prussia at the age of eighty-six. Just hours after his death, it was announced that Hitler would combine the roles of head of government and head of state and serve as Germany’s Führer. He finally had the total power he craved.

  - CHAPTER X -

  A CONTESTED VOTE

  The weeks leading up to the second anniversary of Hitler taking power in January 1935 were dominated by events in the coal-rich Saar region between Germany and France. Under the Treaty of Versailles, France was granted the right to exploit the German territory’s resources as a reparation for the damage inflicted on its own coal-mines in the war. The Saar had been governed under a League of Nations mandate since the conflict, but this period was coming to an end. Voters were to be asked to determine their future in a plebiscite scheduled for 13 January. There were three options: for the region to remain independent under League of Nations authority, to return to being part of Germany, or to become part of France.

  Reynolds and other reporters descended on the capital of the region, Saarbrücken, to report on the unfolding events. The vast majority of voters were German nationals and the result was widely expected to fall in Hitler’s favour. But it was not that straightforward. ‘Many of the Saarlanders, as many of the Austrians, are not very enthusiastic about accounts they hear of Nazi concentration camps, and the Saar has become one of the principal refuges for Jews, communists, socialists and others who do not like the atmosphere of Nazi Germany,’ wrote the News Chronicle’s Vernon Bartlett.304

  Banners adorned with Nazi swastikas dominate the front of the Berliner Dom ahead of a party rally. (PA-1456 Thomas Neumann, The National Archives of Norway)

  There was huge international
interest in the process, which was seen as a significant test of Nazi popularity at the ballot box. Tension increased as polling day neared, with violence breaking out between supporters of the German Front, which wanted the Saar to become part of Germany, and the United Front, which opposed Hitler. Impartial observers from other countries were enlisted to oversee the process and ensure voters were not intimidated, but there was controversy about their effectiveness. There was even conflict within the massed ranks of the press, with German reporters taking umbrage at the influx of foreign correspondents. When one of the Germans complained, a Dutch journalist sparked uproar by replying that Goebbels and his propaganda department needed only one press ticket between them.305

  Ten days before the vote, Reynolds reported on growing conflict between rival groups. ‘Political animosity is finding expression in increasing numbers of deeds of violence.’ An array of weapons was used in a growing number of small-scale scuffles: ‘Pistols, pitchforks, hammers, knuckledusters and steel rods.’ Reynolds took a balanced view on competing claims. ‘Accounts of such incidents are highly coloured by political feeling,’ he wrote. ‘There is no means of checking the accounts of disorders which pour in from both sides.’ He expressed frustration with officials from the International Commission for failing to provide information. In particular he castigated their failure to comment on the injuries suffered by the founder of the Christian Miners’ Trade Union.306

  Reynolds remained even-handed two days later in reporting on the great demonstrations planned by both campaigns ahead of the plebiscite. He included an interesting detail about German Front supporters, who were under pressure to behave. ‘The German Front has warned its supporters on no account to give the German greeting – which consists in raising the right arm and saying “Heil Hitler!” before voting.’307 It is interesting to note that, early in 1935, the average reader in London was not assumed to know about the notorious Nazi salute.

  Reynolds was as even-handed as he could be, given the ever-looming presence of Rothermere in London. Other reports provided a clearer picture of the reality on the ground. Supporters of Hitler and the Nazis were subject to some violence, but the intimidation and aggression they meted out to opponents was far greater than what they received. Among the British correspondents watching proceedings, Shiela Grant Duff’s reports for The Observer were especially sharp and revealed clearly the difficult circumstances facing voters in the disputed territory.

  ‘Jewish shopkeepers have been asked to hand over their voting cards to the Deutsche Front officials,’ she reported on the day of the vote. ‘Brutal attacks on supporters of the status quo continue in isolated places … As a newcomer enters a status quo eating house, frightened eyes turn inquisitively to the door.’ She saw how much the election meant to the Nazis – it was ultimately a measure of Hitler’s popularity. ‘It is assumed by most people here that “love for Germany” will prove triumphant over “hatred for Hitler,” which is the real issue in the Saar.’ But she feared greatly for what would happen to the losing minority.308

  Grant Duff was a remarkable woman, whose story deserves wider recognition. Her route into journalism was unique. She was brought up to regard war as the greatest evil, and became convinced while studying at Oxford that a second global conflict was inevitable. This was partly because of vivid dispatches from Berlin sent to her by a friend, Goronwy Rees, who was studying in Germany in the early 1930s:

  Here what seems a nightmare in London is the sober everyday reality: the betrayal and death of every human virtue; no mercy, no pity, no peace; neither humanity nor decency nor kindness: only madness, shouted everyday on the wireless and in the newspapers, spoken by ordinary people as if it were sober sanity: and sixty million people pleased and proud to be governed by a gang of murderous animals.309

  Moved by such words, Grant Duff made a private commitment that she should pursue a career with one objective – to help prevent another war. At Oxford she sought the counsel of Professor Arnold Toynbee, who advised that the best way to stop war was to study the possible causes. ‘The best way to do that was to work as the foreign correspondent of an influential newspaper,’ he said.310

  This advice took Grant Duff to the office of Geoffrey Dawson at The Times. She asked if the paper would employ her to work as an assistant in the Paris office. Dawson sent her to see a senior member of the foreign news department, Ralph Deakin, who explained that women were unable to work on the editorial side of newspapers as it would involve nightshifts alongside men. He riled her further by mentioning that if she happened to visit Paris she was welcome to send articles about fashion. She was incensed. ‘To feel capable of stopping a world war and then to be asked to write fashion notes!’ she wrote.311

  Unbowed, Grant Duff travelled to Paris and tried to get a start in newspapers with the American press. She was introduced to Edgar Ansel Mowrer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Paris correspondent of the Chicago Daily News. He was one of the earliest reporters to warn of the dangers posed by Germany’s move towards extreme politics and had been forced out of the country by Goebbels soon after Hitler took power.

  Mowrer took Grant Duff on as an unpaid assistant and in the months that followed gave her a dynamic introduction to the world of international journalism. He remorselessly poked fun at her English character and sensibilities. On one occasion he relished her shock when he told her that a lot of newspapers were in the pay of foreign powers. He said the French newspaper Le Matin was known as the Paris edition of Goebbels’s Angriff. When she protested that nothing of the sort would ever happen in Britain, he recited a favourite rhyme.

  You cannot hope to bribe or twist

  The honest British journalist;

  But seeing what the man will do

  Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.312

  Her eyes were opened to the hypocrisy and fickle nature of some sections of the press. Mowrer also disabused her of notions picked up at Oxford that the French were the villains of the post-war period and Germany the victim of the Treaty of Versailles. ‘Keep your eyes open and report what you see,’ he advised her, ‘and hope that the great democracies will wake up and realise what they have to deal with in Nazi Germany.’313

  This advice stood her in good stead at the end of 1934, when The Observer found it did not have a correspondent to report on the historic events in the Saar. The connections Grant Duff had established in journalism helped her win the posting. She was consequently one of many reporters who congregated in the town of Saarbrücken at the end of December 1934 ahead of the vote. ‘It was my first experience of the exciting and festive atmosphere which spreads over a town, and especially its main hotel where they drink and congregate, when it suddenly becomes the focus of top-ranking international journalists.’314

  While reporting on events in the Saar, Frederick Voigt of the Guardian took Grant Duff under his wing. ‘Patiently he talked to me and took me with him round the mining villages,’ she wrote. ‘He seemed to have contacts all over the Saar and to be known and trusted by simple people and by anti-Nazis who would have been afraid to talk to anyone else.’ The two correspondents were shocked by the stories they came across. ‘We heard at first hand about the sinister pressure and frightening intimidation which was being brought to bear on the local population. Every street, village and factory had its local [Nazi warden] spying on its inhabitants and whispering about the fate they could expect if they voted against the fatherland.’315

  The international authorities were no help. Their failure to assist the local police in identifying trouble-makers and reluctance to deploy any military force to maintain order were roundly criticised by the non-German journalists. ‘This sort of talk considerably annoyed the British authorities,’ according to Grant Duff. ‘For English journalists to hold such views was considered “disloyal,” “unpatriotic,” and “thoroughly objectionable.” It was in His Majesty’s officials abroad that one met the nearest approach to the attitudes of the Deutsche Front.’ The British and American jou
rnalists argued fiercely for a greater peacekeeping force to ensure opponents of the Nazis were protected. All appeals on the issue were rejected. It was not just the Nazis who viewed the journalists present as nuisances – the senior British members of the international force seemed as keen as Hitler’s supporters to complete the vote as soon as possible.

  Snowfall overnight meant the Saar region resembled a German Christmas card on the day of the vote – a seemingly ‘innocent, friendly, happy’ scene, observed Grant Duff.316 But the situation at polling booths was far from relaxed. ‘Outside the polling stations stood not the cheerful, neutral faces of the British tommies “keeping the peace” but the stern faces of the local Nazis,’ she reported.317 In the end, nine-tenths of voters opted for the Saar to become part of Germany again. It was a huge win for Hitler, but hardly a fair victory. Grant Duff relayed to readers that it was not as clean and straightforward a triumph as the victors would have the world believe.

  In the months and years that followed, Grant Duff remained a friend of the United Front supporters in the Saar who opposed Hitler, many of whom fled to France. ‘That day the face of the Saar changed. A great plague of spiders – the dreadful Nazi swastikas – descended everywhere. Whole streets were filled with them. The green garlands which had hung so decorously amid the snow were suddenly replaced by these tawdry flags.’318

  Reynolds returned to Saarbrücken two months after the vote to report on the region’s formal handover from international authorities to the Nazis. His otherwise straight report veered from an independent line in a stirring second paragraph. ‘For all Germans, whether they be Saarlanders or inhabitants of the most distant provinces, this reunion is the return of a child to the mother from whom it has been cruelly separated for fifteen years.’319 In the same article he relayed local reports – officially denied – that Hitler himself would attend the handover ceremony. Of course, he was never going to miss the event and flew in, supposedly at the last minute; ‘Herr Hitler’s arrival came as a complete surprise to the Saar,’ Reynolds reported the next day.320 Hitler paraded around the town taking the Nazi salute from his gathered hordes of supporters.