Reporting on Hitler

by Wainewright, Will;

  In Britain resolve was less strong about the status of Czechoslovakia. Kingsley Martin, the editor of the New Statesman, ‘felt that things had gone so far that to plan armed resistance to the dictators was now useless. If there was a war we should lose it. We should, therefore, seek the most peaceful way of letting them gradually get all they wanted.’444

  The major newspapers were divided. While the Guardian remained opposed to rearmament, The Times continued to encourage it, but was opposed to a British pledge of protection to Czechoslovakia. James Garvin, the Observer’s editor, thought that Germany had a right to interfere in central and eastern Europe, and that it was of no concern to Britain. The Sunday Times agreed. ‘We have no alliance with Czechoslovakia, no interest of our own to serve except the remote contingency that later if Germany won and turned to invade France we might be fighting along on her side without Eastern allies,’ declared the newspaper’s Scrutator column.445

  For the Daily Mail, Price was telling peers from other newspapers in private that Czechoslovakia was ‘about to plunge civilisation into war because she was so obstinate about the Sudetenland’. He said this to Leo Kennedy of The Times, who dismissed him as a ‘Nazi heart and soul’.446 Kennedy’s lacerating view of Price and the Daily Mail was shared by an increasing number of observers as Hitler continued to reveal his true colours. In May 1938 the Daily Express took a swipe at its rival, saying Rothermere’s paper ‘has spent the last five years assuring us that ’Dolfie Hitler is a wonderfully good fellow and is very fond of Britain’.447

  In Berlin, Reynolds despaired. Levels of Nazi brutality were rising by the week, yet the newspaper he worked for maintained its placatory attitude to the Nazis. ‘Czechoslovakia is not of the remotest concern to us,’ Rothermere wrote in the Daily Mail on 6 May. ‘If France likes to burn her fingers there, that is a matter for France.’ A. L. Cranfield, the editor of the Daily Mail, passed proof versions of the article to the German ambassador in London before its publication.448 Rothermere’s words and Cranfield’s actions sum up the complete control of the paper’s leadership over its reporting on Germany.

  Reynolds, together with Izzard, his assistant, and a correspondent named Paul Bretherton who came to help, continued running the Daily Mail’s Berlin bureau. But for all the big stories on their patch it was Price who did the reporting. Just a handful of articles carrying Reynolds’s byline were printed in the paper in 1938. Increasingly frustrated, he took to saying the Holy Rosary prayer aloud in the streets. This drew the attention of bemused Nazi officials who could not decide if it was meant as a subtle demonstration. For the ageing Reynolds, who turned sixty-six in 1938, it was precisely that. The sight of a pious old Englishman muttering as he worked the beads through his fingers stood out amid the bland and colourless conformity of life under the Nazis. It was one small way in which Reynolds could resist their dominance, but it made him a potential target. Rothermere’s sympathetic approach to German issues, however, meant there was little chance of his correspondents being expelled from Germany.

  The journalists in the Berlin bureau became a magnet for Germans seeking foreign currency. ‘A lot of the journalists went to Berlin to change their money there,’ Izzard recalled. ‘Whenever they could, they passed their straight currency on to individual Jews to help them get out of the country. This went on the whole time. These currency exchanges were local gathering points.’449 The situation for Jews became increasingly desperate as it became more and more difficult for them to leave Germany.

  The Nazis sought to extract high penalties from anyone wishing to leave, particularly Jews. Though sympathetic to their plight, other countries were growing intolerant of the wave of Jewish immigration. This was most particularly the case in Palestine, which was ruled by the British under a League of Nations mandate. There was increasing displeasure among Palestinians at the number of Jews coming to the country and buying land. Resentment in the region was rising and there was Arab support for Hitler, despite the fact that his oppressive treatment of Jews in Germany had caused so many to seek an exit to Palestine.

  Reynolds was the close friend of a man doing his best to keep the route between Germany and Palestine open for Jews. Captain Frank Foley’s official title was passport control officer attached to the British Embassy; but in reality he ran MI6 operations in Germany. A short and bespectacled man, Foley was not an obvious spy. Delmer of the Daily Express met him in 1933 and dismissed him as ‘a rather commonplace little ex-captain’. But Foley had enjoyed an unusually successful career in espionage since being recruited after the First World War. He had helped recruit Jonny X, the Bolshevik agent Johann de Graff, who informed Britain about Soviet intelligence operations in the West during the 1930s.

  Foley’s cover role as passport control officer was far from trivial. It meant he was in charge of who had permission to leave Germany and move to the British Empire, a function that transformed in significance after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Jews in Germany saw Palestine, Britain and America as destinations to which they could escape and leave the Nazi oppression behind. As the requests increased in the 1930s, the number of staff attached to the British Embassy’s passport office rose from three to twenty-three. Foley arrived at his desk at 8 a.m. sharp every morning to handle the rising workload. ‘No man in the service had harder or more heart-breaking work,’ wrote Reynolds.450 Foley had the utmost sympathy for the plight of Jews in Germany and disregarded official rules on how many visas could be granted, saving thousands of lives in the process.

  Foley mixed with journalists including Reynolds and Ian Colvin of the Morning Post and later News Chronicle. In the course of 1938 alone, the Foleys met Reynolds for dinner on six occasions, according to the diary of Foley’s wife, Kay. The MI6 man tried to recruit journalists to help with his work by passing on intelligence about Nazi activity. In 1933 he took Delmer to lunch and told him about the real nature of his work.

  ‘Probably you know this already, Tom,’ he said. ‘But I must ask you to keep it secret all the same. I represent [MI6] here. We would like you to help us. You know all the Nazi bosses. If ever you get anything from them which you think might interest us, pass it on to me. I’ll see that it goes straight to the Foreign Secretary himself.’451

  Delmer was not interested in such work. ‘Only very foolish newspaper men allow themselves to get mixed up with intelligence in peacetime,’ he remarked in his memoirs.452 Reynolds was more discreet than Delmer about his dealings with Foley, but he certainly had a closer relationship with MI6’s man in Berlin. Whether he helped in an official or merely informal way is unknown. He had experience of the intelligence services from his wartime work for MI7. He may even have been active in St Petersburg – Arthur Ransome, who succeeded him in Russia for the Daily News, worked as a spy during the Bolshevik Revolution.

  There is evidence that Frederick Voigt, a peer of Reynolds in 1930s Berlin, worked in intelligence. The assistant chief of MI6, Sir Claude Dansey, ran a shadowy ‘Z’ organisation to monitor Europe with the help of Lord Vansittart and other Whitehall hawks who viewed Germany as a threat. Voigt was recruited to help provide intelligence.453 The truth about Reynolds is likely hidden forever. But he was certainly sympathetic to the Jews and other oppressed minorities in Germany. Like Foley, he did his best to help. ‘Hundreds of victims of Nazi persecution and terror received from him material and moral support in an uneven fight with an evil system,’ Reynolds’s colleagues in the press pack later said.454

  Tension over Czechoslovakia continued to simmer. On Thursday 19 May reports emerged from the country that Hitler was massing his army on the border. It seemed to be evidence of preparation for one of his weekend strikes. Britain and France had been nervously monitoring the volatile situation but did not expect Hitler, who had instructed his agents to spread unrest in the Sudeten region, to act so soon. A frantic sequence of diplomatic back-and-forth ensued before the two countries informed Hitler that they would not stand by if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. For once, he
stood back from the brink.

  There was jubilation in the British press, which celebrated the passing of the crisis as a triumph of diplomacy. ‘By refusing to be hurried into irremediable action or promises, by maintaining steadiness and calm, Mr Chamberlain has again revealed himself, to quote a foreign commentator, as an “exceptional statesman”,’ proclaimed a leader in the Mail.455 Voigt’s column in the Guardian attributed the avoidance of war to the ‘skilful precautionary measures of the Czechoslovak Government, thanks to the energetic diplomatic effort made by Great Britain, and thanks to the farreaching collaboration between Great Britain and France’.456

  Voigt’s article in the aftermath of the May Crisis was the source of more tension between the reporter and his editor: ‘I am afraid you will think I have omitted rather a lot of your article tonight, but it’s a matter of tactics,’ Crozier wrote to him. ‘What you write about the German plans for the conquest of Czechoslovakia is vivid, and, I have no doubt at all, accurate.’ However, Crozier did not want Voigt to publish details of likely German aggression for fear that it may rile the Nazis. ‘On the other hand, I don’t think that tonight, when we are hoping that we have just escaped, even if only for the time being, from the imminent outbreak of war, is the right time to describe the German plans for making war.’457

  The passing of the May Crisis did not herald the end of Hitler’s focus on Czechoslovakia. Incensed at the press reaction in the West, he redoubled his efforts. Ever sensitive to German feelings, Henderson in Berlin cautioned that jubilation would only make Hitler more determined. Rather than signal the beginning of a strong and united front against Germany, Britain and France again shrank back. There was a growing feeling that Hitler, despite all his aggression, may have a case for some sort of say over the Sudeten lands. Even as critical an observer as Winston Churchill felt relaxed enough in June 1938 to assert in the pages of the Daily Telegraph that ‘without the championship of armed Germany, Sudeten wrongs might never have been redressed’.458

  Labour demands for an enquiry into Britain’s air defences were rebuffed. As Hitler’s pressure on Czechoslovakia remounted in the summer, the British government continued to baulk at the prospect of taking firm action. Defence spending was reviewed but not increased significantly. Churchill suggested to Halifax that ‘a joint note to Berlin from a number of powers’ might demonstrate to Germany that Britain objected to its aggression. He demurred. Suggestions that the British Navy assemble a fleet at Scapa Flow were rejected.459

  Hitler was emboldened. ‘See Germany for yourself. You will find truth in personal contacts. A hearty welcome awaits you,’ read German tourism adverts in The Times in July 1938.460 Talk grew of how Britain could somehow give way to Germany over Czechoslovakia, which would potentially be the last of her grievances. Some thought, in effect, that if war could be avoided over the issue, Europe would be home and dry. ‘I don’t myself object, and I have never objected, to the British government advising the Czechs to give way to the utmost degree that they can without endangering their existence,’ Crozier wrote to Voigt on 26 July. ‘But the British government should not push Czechoslovakia to a point where the Germans can get all they want by shaking Czechoslovakia to pieces from within.’461

  Those on the right wing of politics and the newspaper trade were less cautious. An increasing number argued for some sort of accommodation with Hitler over Czechoslovakia. Many felt that the stance adopted by Britain and France during the May Crisis had been too firm. But they continued to press the case for rearmament, unlike papers on the left. ‘You do not seem to know that today Great Britain, instead of being largely invulnerable as she was in 1914, is, owing to the development of aircraft, the most vulnerable country in Europe,’ Rothermere wrote in an open letter to former Times editor Wickham Steed. ‘If you and your friends had your way, you might provoke a war infinitely more disastrous that the Great War of 1914.’462

  For the reporters in Berlin, getting to the truth of events was harder than ever. ‘I listened to the barrage of abuse falling on Czechoslovakia,’ wrote Reynolds. ‘Goebbels’ technique was the same as that which he had employed in the attack on Austria. To disentangle truth and falsehood in the columns of the newspapers, which it was my business to read, was impossible.’ Reynolds suspected that the picture presented by Goebbels of the Sudetenland was not a true one. The Ministry of Propaganda described for the correspondents in Berlin a picture of ‘ruthless oppression of German brothers across the frontier’. It was, noted Reynolds, ‘in glaring contrast to the accounts given of peaceful towns and quiet countryside by travellers who passed through Sudetenland’.463

  Reynolds was sure of one thing in the summer of 1938: that if Germany did wage war with Czechoslovakia, ‘war would not be with Czechoslovakia alone’. He was convinced that Britain and France would maintain the solid stance established during the May Crisis. Like the rest of the world, he tensely looked on as politicians in Europe scrambled to bring the situation to some kind of conclusion.

  By the summer of 1938, Iverach McDonald’s short assignment for The Times in Berlin was over. In Germany, he had surveyed, with his foreign correspondent colleagues, the British government’s growing drive for friendship with Germany. ‘The parliamentary reports and the political speeches which we read from home left us floundering. There was nothing on which the mind could grip. Chamberlain was obviously dealing with a Hitler of his own imagination, not the homicidal madman whom we heard screaming in the Reichstag,’ he wrote. ‘Worse still, for us who worked on The Times the confusion and sense of unreality were far the greater because the leading articles were descending steadily, step by step with Neville Chamberlain, to the paper’s nadir of appeasement.’464

  - CHAPTER XV -

  ‘QUARREL IN A FAR-AWAY COUNTRY’

  Towards the end of July 1938 came a scoop for The Times. Dawson’s continued fraternisation with Chamberlain, Halifax and other government ministers bore fruit when his paper was the first to report on a new government attempt to calm the growing crisis in central Europe. Lord Runciman, a former Cabinet member, was to be sent to Czechoslovakia to mediate between the government of Edvard Beneš and Sudeten German Party politicians. Though the ‘Runciman Mission’, which took place over a few days at the start of September, did not produce a resolution to the Sudeten dispute, the British press warmly welcomed the initiative.

  Ahead of the talks came an incident that permanently broke Chamberlain’s faith in Rex Leeper’s Foreign Office News Department. The section leaked news to the Daily Herald’s diplomatic correspondent that Hitler’s friend, Captain Wiedemann, had met with Halifax at the Foreign Office. This report was considered to be grossly unhelpful, as was all news relating to the government’s discussions with Germany. Leeper was informed that his department should say nothing about upcoming discussions led by Lord Runciman.465 It was the beginning of the end. Leeper was removed from his post later in the year.

  Great columns topped by Nazi and German symbols in front of the Brandenburg Gate, pictured by eighteen-year-old Anthony Hewson in August 1938.

  A second picture of central Berlin taken by Hewson in August 1938 during a visit to Reynolds.

  Runciman was in Czechoslovakia when The Times was preparing an article that would transform the debate around central Europe. Dawson’s attitude to Czechoslovakia had been criticised in the summer of 1938 by John Walter, a co-owner of The Times, whose forebears had founded the newspaper. He was a figure of some authority but was very much the junior partner to the Astor family. He criticised Times policy in the summer of 1938 in a letter to Dawson, suggesting it was favouring the wolf of Germany over the lamb of Czechoslovakia. Dawson replied saying he did not think Germany wanted a revision of borders.

  But Dawson was not prepared to rule it out altogether. On Tuesday 6 September he returned to the office after almost a month away to find some draft leading articles awaiting his attention. One of them focused on Czechoslovakia. He worked on it until after midnight, rewriting and twe
aking, and published it the next day. The leader raised the possibility of Sudeten secession, saying Czechoslovakia could be ‘a more homogenous state by the secession of that fringe of alien populations who are contiguous to the nation with which they are united by race’.466

  The article caused a global sensation. For The Times to be putting forward the suggestion that Czechoslovakian borders may need to be adjusted was a landmark moment. The paper’s reputation as a mirror for government thinking meant many thought this was Chamberlain’s way of slipping his preferred solution into the open. Other even more cynical critics thought it bore the fingerprints of the German Embassy. Under pressure from Czechoslovakia the Foreign Office issued a statement saying the Times leader did not reflect its own views. Even Runciman admitted that the final paragraph appeared to recommend an Anschluss. Behind the scenes, diplomats contacted the British Embassy in Prague and asked it to underline to the Czech government that it was not representative of official thinking in Britain.

  The uproar sparked by the editorial conspired with the ongoing summer tension to offer Hitler an opening. He planned to capitalise on the tumult. The annual Nuremberg rally was scheduled for the following days. The 1938 edition was named the ‘Rally of Greater Germany’ to celebrate the country’s Anschluss with Austria six months earlier. Hitler used his speech to attack Beneš and make aggressive noises about the treatment of Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia.