Soon after Ebbutt’s return to Britain, his health failed. Though only in his mid-forties he suffered a severe stroke that paralysed him and left him a shadow of his former self for the rest of his life. It was a sad, abrupt end to an illustrious career, no doubt brought on by the stress of his life in Berlin. ‘He was a man in the prime of his life; but the strain was too much for him. After his return to England, his health suddenly broke down and he has since lived in retirement,’ Reynolds wrote a couple of years afterwards.393
The extent to which The Times interfered with his dispatches to soften their tone towards Germany remains an unanswered question. There is widespread agreement that Ebbutt frequently filed stories that were too long and required significant lopping by sub-editors. Two things seem indisputable. First, Dawson periodically tried to make what went into The Times more appealing to German eyes. He himself admitted this. Second, Ebbutt had issues with how some German issues were presented in the newspaper.
Written shortly after the war, the fourth volume of the official History of the Times was unsparing in its criticism of Dawson and the manner in which he handled the reporting of German affairs. His decision not to appoint a new foreign editor in 1929 when the vacancy arose was criticised as ‘the most important decision of Dawson’s second innings and most deliberately reached’.394 Dawson thought the role was obsolete and the function could be better performed by a new team structure, but it undoubtedly gave him more control over coverage of foreign affairs. The fifth volume of the History of the Times, published in 1985, was much more sympathetic to Dawson. ‘Objective testimony gives little support to the common charge that Dawson and (deputy editor) Barrington-Ward stopped any news that they did not like from going into the paper.’ Yet it admits that Dawson’s letter, in which he admits doing his utmost to keep content that might hurt German sensibilities out of the paper, ‘defies a wholly convincing explanation’. The fact that Ebbutt was expelled for his reports in The Times is held up as proof that his work was not altered. It is a persuasive point, but not supported by other evidence.395
Staff at The Times were split over who had been behind Ebbutt’s expulsion. Dawson’s deputy, Robert Barrington-Ward, thought Goebbels was responsible. His successor in Berlin, James Holburn, saw the hand of Ribbentrop, the ambassador in London. The ambassador spent a lot of time reassuring anxious British politicians that Hitler’s intentions were honourable. Ebbutt’s firm and incisive reporting on Nazi foreign policy and the regime’s treatment of the church in Germany was widely read in London and made Ribbentrop’s job more difficult. If Ebbutt was not in Berlin, Ribbentrop’s life would be a great deal easier.
Ebbutt returned to Britain less than a year after his friend Robson of the Morning Post had been expelled. Robson had not spent much time in London in the intervening months. Instead he had continued to report on how the Nazis were stoking disquiet beyond the borders of Germany, travelling to Austria, Danzig in Poland, the Memel region, Latvia, Czechoslovakia and even as far afield as Turkey. He met Lord Vansittart at the Foreign Office and the two men found they shared a similar perspective on events in Nazi Germany.396 But the Morning Post would not exist for much longer to print his dispatches. Its owner was looking for a buyer and in October Lord Camrose stepped forward. Instead of running the newspaper alongside the Daily Telegraph, he merged it with his flagship title, ending the Morning Post’s 165-year history as an independent publication. Representations were made to Prime Minister Chamberlain that this storied paper should be kept in business. He apparently answered by saying he had no time for Conservative newspapers that criticised his government, particularly on the sensitive issue of finding an accommodation with Germany. The Morning Post’s criticism of both the Nazi regime and the British response to it had been an acute source of annoyance to Chamberlain in his first five months in office. The newspaper would not be saved.397
In Berlin, Holburn faced the daunting challenge of maintaining the standard of dispatches set by Ebbutt. He was helped by Iverach McDonald, a young Times reporter sent with his wife from London to assist the Berlin bureau after Ebbutt’s expulsion. McDonald was shocked when he arrived in Berlin – it was a more sinister and oppressive environment than he had realised. ‘Anyone who lived in Berlin during the last year or two before the war must recall the time with disgust and anguish,’ he later wrote. ‘One knew beforehand that Hitler had set out to de-civilise the German nation, but it was dreadful to see the process in action as Goebbels and the newspapers harped day by day on the lowest passions of greed, fear, blood-lust, and greed.’398
McDonald noticed how the lives of correspondents in Berlin differed from those working in other cities. The threat of expulsion hung like a cloud over all the foreign reporters in the city. It was not a fun place to be a journalist in the final years of the decade. But the grim reality of Nazi Germany merely prompted Reynolds and the other reporters to live their lives as fully as possible in those years. McDonald likened the feeling to a ‘traditional eve-of-Waterloo release from care among westerners’ in Berlin. ‘British, French and American diplomats and journalists and their wives met in the happiest of dinners and dances that were deliberate withdrawals from the reality outside.’399
McDonald and his wife were told by Jewish acquaintances about the frequent pogroms and arrests, many of them secret, which targeted Jews in the country. ‘The sheer magnitude of the evil was at times hard to grasp.’400 He was also surprised by the intimidating reception he received from Henderson, the British ambassador. ‘He more than once warned me, with his eye on the latest issue of The Times on his desk, about the dangers of picking out German events which did not fit in with the picture of the amenable Reich which he saw and which he commended to London.’401 The British government’s message was clear, even in Berlin – friendship with Germany was the most important objective.
- CHAPTER XIII -
APPEASEMENT BUILDS
Nazi flags flutter above crowds lined up for a central Berlin parade. (PA-1456 Thomas Neumann, The National Archives of Norway)
In November 1937, Britain’s leading politicians joined King George VI on Whitehall for the first Service of Remembrance of his reign. Heads bowed, they stood in neat lines around the Cenotaph, the imposing monument of Portland stone built seventeen years earlier, to lead tributes to the country’s war dead. The occasion was crowded with members of the public, most of whom had vivid memories of the First World War. The sombre ceremony was interrupted halfway through when a man ran forward from the crowd to shout at the assembled politicians and dignitaries: ‘Cease this hypocrisy. You are conniving in a new war.’ He was quickly bustled away by police. Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare later told the House of Commons the man was suffering from delusions.402
The heckler was dismissed as a madman but the incident reflected a growing tension in Britain about how to deal with German aggression. Chamberlain’s ascent to the premiership in May had brought new urgency to efforts begun by the last government to find common ground with Hitler’s regime. The Prime Minister and his most important lieutenants, including figures such as Lord Halifax and Sir Horace Wilson, were convinced that Hitler could be tamed and better relations were possible. The more hawkish attitude of Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and his leading civil servant Lord Vansittart, both of whom continued in the positions they had held under Baldwin, were regarded as unhelpful by the new leadership.
While Neville Chamberlain was irritated by the attitudes of his men at the Foreign Office, his opinion of journalists bordered on contempt. As he became more comfortable in power he started to refuse to answer off-the-cuff questions and declared that he would only answer enquiries submitted at least four hours in advance. The only contact in the press he liked was the Sunday Times editor W. W. Hadley – and that was largely because Hadley could be relied upon to support his decisions.403
Chamberlain’s right-hand man Sir Horace Wilson was his adviser on foreign affairs and the man he sent to speak to proprietors and edit
ors when necessary. The Prime Minister himself despised contact with members of the press pack. Another useful associate was Sir Joseph Ball, who had emerged from a shadowy background in the intelligence world at MI5 to assist with Chamberlain’s attempts to control the press. Ball was tasked with briefing lobby journalists at Westminster, who eagerly relayed the government’s thoughts to readers without challenge. It was lazy, but the London-based reporters knew stories based on these briefings would guarantee them column inches in the paper. They became unwitting accomplices in spreading the government’s emerging appeasement agenda. This was the perfect outcome for Ball, a skilled operator whose talents extended to the underhand – in 1939 he tapped the phones of supporters of Anthony Eden to monitor the status of a man who had become a potential threat to his master.404
Nothing was off limits for Ball. In 1935 he had suggested to Prime Minister Baldwin that the government try to buy a small newspaper and turn it into a publication that would happily toe their line. He felt that The Times and Daily Telegraph were admirable newspapers and welcomed their support, but was frustrated by their small circulations. He wanted to control a publication with a greater readership and influence over the masses. Truth, an organ with a history of radical thought, was thus bought in 1936 by a friend of Ball’s, Lord Luke of Pavenham, and supported the government for the rest of the 1930s. Its role as a propaganda organ was exposed by the ever-watchful Lord Vansittart during the Second World War.405
The Foreign Office had a more sophisticated approach to interacting with newspapers. Rex Leeper had served Eden and Vansittart as the head of the Foreign Office News Department since 1935. He treated journalists with caution rather than disdain and built up a network of trusted diplomatic correspondents, including Voigt of the Guardian, Victor Gordon-Lennox of the Daily Telegraph, William Ewer of the Daily Herald, Charles Tower of the Yorkshire Post and Vernon Bartlett of the News Chronicle.406 Leeper had fed news to reporters, which helped Vansittart drive forward his campaign to reveal the reality of German intentions. For instance, in March 1935 Leeper had leaked documents relating to German claims of air parity to the Telegraph’s Gordon-Lennox.407 The publication of these documents, which the government had been keen to keep out of the public domain, renewed the debate about rearmament.
In this way, news became a battleground at the heart of the growing tension between the Foreign Office of Eden and Vansittart and Prime Ministers Baldwin and Chamberlain. The tight relationship between the diplomatic correspondents and the Foreign Office attracted some criticism from other journalists. Robert Dell, the Guardian’s Geneva-based correspondent, thought Voigt had become too close to Leeper and Vansittart. He criticised Leeper for attempting to persuade all British diplomatic correspondents to say the same thing.408
In November 1937, Leeper’s news operation faced an unprecedented challenge. Chamberlain had instructed Halifax to fly to Germany for secret talks with Hitler at his mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. Halifax had the official role of Leader of the House of Lords, but his influence with Chamberlain meant he had more power than anyone in government except the Prime Minister himself. Chamberlain hoped that Halifax might be able to deal with Hitler as he had dealt with Mahatma Gandhi in India at the start of the 1930s. While Halifax was Viceroy of India, he was seen as having tamed the leader of the Indian independence movement. ‘Were not both of these “mad mullahs”,’ wrote Arnold Toynbee, a commentator in Britain, in reference to Hitler and Gandhi. He thought the pair – both ‘non-smokers, non-drinkers of alcohol, non-eaters of meat, non-riders on horseback, and non-practisers of blood-sports in their cranky private lives’ – were faintly similar.409 Maybe Halifax could repeat with Hitler the success he had enjoyed with Gandhi, another ‘mad’ foreign individual.
Halifax’s visit to Germany clearly undermined the authority of Foreign Secretary Eden. Anti-appeasement figures in Whitehall viewed the talks as an improper way of conducting foreign policy and feared they would lead to more demands by Hitler. He had been speaking in increasingly angry terms about the possible return to Germany of some African colonies taken away from the country after the war, leading some to think that colonies were his next objective. Leeper leaked news to the Evening Standard that a potential deal between Britain and Germany could see Hitler granted a free hand in central Europe in return for a ten-year truce on the colonies issue.
Chamberlain and Halifax were furious. They viewed the leak as a sabotage attempt and blamed the Foreign Office. Eden’s department denied responsibility and briefed that the Italian Embassy had been responsible (Voigt, who was close to Vansittart, was sure this was not the case).410 Chamberlain need not have worried. The press reaction to the leak was mostly favourable, with many papers, particularly on the right of politics, holding the view that some accommodation with Hitler should be found. As early as 1935, Lord Rothermere had used the Daily Mail to argue for the return of some German colonies. ‘We cannot expect a nation of he-men like the Germans to sit forever with folded arms under the provocations and stupidities of the Treaty of Versailles,’ he wrote in typically bellicose fashion. ‘To deny this mighty nation, conspicuous for its organising ability and scientific achievements, a share in the work of developing backward regions of the world is preposterous.’411
Chamberlain twisted the leak to his advantage by briefing that the trip had a greater scope than the Foreign Office wished, and was therefore sending Halifax. He met Hitler on 19 November and received a long harangue about the unfair reporting of the British press, which Hitler viewed as immensely hostile to Germany. Halifax was stunned by Hitler’s sensitivity to adverse newspaper opinion. Rather than disregarding Hitler’s apparent upset, which was a tactical ploy to leverage further concessions, Halifax took him at his word. He concluded that a firm future understanding with Hitler may not be possible unless he could get control of the press in Britain.412
Halifax spoke to the British correspondents in Germany and told them there was a ‘need for the press to create the right atmosphere if any real advance were to be made towards a better understanding’.413 He also met Goebbels, who underlined Hitler’s message about the press. Ever thin-skinned, Goebbels mentioned Norman Ebbutt as an example of someone he viewed as a rogue reporter and criticised ‘the spiteful taint given to him in reports’ by the Times man.414
Halifax spent time with Henderson, the British ambassador. The two men were well acquainted, having socialised together at the Cliveden home of the Astor family in Buckinghamshire. The phrase ‘Cliveden Set’ was coined around this time after Claud Cockburn, the editor of The Week, had written about a group of eminent and influential figures within British society who discussed their pro-appeasement views during meetings at the grand country home. Halifax and Henderson were supposed members, as well as Garvin and Dawson, the editors of The Observer and The Times, and government members Lord Lothian and Sir Samuel Hoare.
In Berlin, Halifax told Henderson that he planned to meet the owners of the News Chronicle and Daily Herald, and persuade them to tone down their dispatches about Germany. He was also thinking about how to get to David Low of the Evening Standard – Halifax said his cartoons had proved ‘the most troublesome’ to Goebbels.415 Low was the cartoonist who made the greatest impact with his sketches lampooning the appeasement set. His most famous cartoon of the era was published on 28 November 1937, soon after Halifax’s return from Berlin. It showed Dawson and Garvin with Lord Lothian and Nancy Astor, their legs aloft, in a dance being conducted by Goebbels. The message was clear: all were mere puppets of Nazism. So strong was Low’s position at the newspaper that he was permitted on occasion to parody even its owner, Lord Beaverbrook. But he too came under pressure to soften his message in the weeks that followed.
Halifax tracked down Lord Southwood of the Daily Herald and Sir Walter Layton of the News Chronicle. They were told in no uncertain terms that some of the reports in their newspapers were unhelpful to government efforts to strike a new understanding with Germany. Rather than st
and up for the British press and politely but firmly tell Goebbels that newspapers were free to do as they pleased, Halifax was all too happy to pass on his complaints. Will Dyson, a cartoonist with the Daily Herald, came in for particular criticism. On 1 December one of his cartoons caused Halifax to complain that it was an ‘unjustly cruel cartoon’ that undermined attempts to solve ‘international problems’. Fittingly, such a complaint almost caricatures British government ineptitude when it came to Nazi Germany – Halifax’s grand strategy appeared to consist of little more than going after individual cartoonists.416
In 1937, seemingly in response to German complaints about British newspapers, Halifax had meetings with about eighty press outlets to stress that stories could affect foreign policy and weaken Britain’s position during negotiations. He later boasted that pressure on the BBC led to restricted coverage of the German colonies issue. Though supposedly independent, the BBC was considered a fair target for attack. Lord Reith, its director-general, was summoned twice in one week for a ticking-off delivered by Chamberlain’s faithful colleague Horace Wilson. On the first occasion Chamberlain had taken umbrage at a news report carrying, in his opinion, excessive coverage of speeches in the Commons attacking him. In the second case he was upset by coverage of criticism of the Air Ministry, a story covered only by the BBC and News Chronicle.417
Henderson did not stand up for the British correspondents working in Berlin. Instead he wholeheartedly supported Halifax’s efforts to control the press. ‘I have the greatest respect for the power and freedom of that “chartered libertine”, the British Press,’ he remarked, before adding: ‘I must, however, reluctantly, but in all honestly, record that it handicapped my attempts in 1937 and 1938 to contribute to the improvement of Anglo-German relations, and thereby to the preservation of peace.’ Hitler’s feelings were, as ever, of the utmost concern. ‘However justifiable the majority of press criticisms undoubtedly were at this time, they were also sometimes biased and unfair. It would not have mattered so much had Hitler been a normal individual, but he was unreasonably sensitive to newspaper, and especially British newspaper, criticism.’418
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