Reporting on Hitler

by Wainewright, Will;

  The press barons moved to make their presence felt. In the Manchester office of the Daily Sketch, a popular newspaper owned by Sunday Times proprietor Lord Kemsley, sub-editors were busily laying out the paper’s coverage when the phone rang. The London office, after speaking to the proprietor, had a very specific instruction. They wanted the Nuremberg report to be accompanied by a favourable photograph of Hitler alongside the word ‘peace’. The message was passed onto the chief sub-editor, who responded: ‘Well, that’s not my reading of Hitler’s speech.’ But the order had been made. ‘It was another instance of journalistic knowledge, experience and sense of responsibility to the public being overridden by the fiat [decree] of a press lord,’ a staff member told the Royal Commission on the Press after the war.467 It was an early example of the increasing interference by British press proprietors over how their papers covered relations with Germany, which reached a peak during negotiations in September and October 1938.

  Runciman returned to London with the message that Czechoslovakia could not continue in its current form indefinitely. Chamberlain asked him to go and speak to Hitler but Runciman refused – he had been unwell in the summer heat and wanted to play no further part. In an unexpected development, Chamberlain himself decided to go and meet Hitler in Berchtesgaden. The press barons remained onside. Lord Beaverbook assured Chamberlain that it had the backing of his newspapers as he negotiated with central European countries.468

  Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany on 15 September. It was his first ever flight in an aeroplane. He travelled in a silver twin-engine Lockheed Electra and landed at Munich airport at 12.30 p.m. He was greeted by Henderson, who remarked that ‘Mr Chamberlain stepped out of the machine looking remarkably fresh and quite unperturbed’.469 Also present was Price of the Daily Mail, who had a unique ability to be present for the most important moments in European foreign affairs. He later produced a colourful description of Chamberlain. ‘A stiff wing-collar and grey silk tie completed the English character of his appearance, and in his hand was grasped the umbrella which was soon to become famous.’470

  Hitler had organised a special train to take the party of thirty, which included Chamberlain, Ribbentrop, Henderson and Horace Wilson, to Berchtesgaden. The passengers made their way through a five-course meal of turtle soup, trout, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, cheesecakes and fruit during the journey, which lasted several hours. At Berchtesgaden Chamberlain was cordially greeted by Hitler. The two men agreed the outline of a deal whereby Hitler would have control of areas in the Sudetenland where more than half of the population was German. But Chamberlain still needed the approval of the French – and would have to inform the Czechoslovakian government, which was sidelined from the process altogether.

  Around this time Henderson’s view of Göring dimmed. The ambassador had previously got on well with Hitler’s senior lieutenant and his wife. The trio had shared a light-hearted relationship. On one occasion, when Emmy Göring declined to eat a desert, Henderson asked if it was a ‘question of her excellent figure’, to which she replied: ‘Oh no. Hermann likes women who are fat.’471 But Göring joined Hitler in making threats about Czechoslovakia. ‘If England means to make war on Germany, no one knows what the ultimate end will be. But one thing is quite certain. Before the war is over there will be very few Czechs left alive and little of London left standing,’ Göring warned.472

  Chamberlain spoke to the French and got approval for the proposed settlement. The proposals were then sent to Prague. ‘We have chosen a shameful peace and shall have a terrible war,’ a despairing Voigt wrote in his diary. ‘If only we would learn the lesson and pull ourselves together, put our industries on a war-basis and [conscript] men and money. All would not be lost then. But we won’t do it, we won’t! Disaster is coming, hastened on by ourselves.’473 Churchill wrote a bullish dispatch from inside Czechoslovakia for the Telegraph, saying there was ‘an absolute determination to fight for life and freedom’.474

  A week after the Berchtesgaden meeting, Chamberlain returned to Germany to inform Hitler that their outlined deal had been approved. They met in the western German city of Bad Godesberg, where Hitler had an unpleasant surprise for his guest. He was no longer happy with their previously proposed settlement and wanted all of the Sudetenland. Chamberlain refused. The failure of the second meeting meant that war looked likely. Price, who was reporting on the meeting, received a blunt message from the London office:

  From every part of Germany we are getting news of troops marching, and ordinary trains held up to make way for military transport. The Czech army is being mobilised. It looks as though war may start at once. When are you getting out of Germany yourself? It won’t be a good place for an Englishman after the Prime Minister has left.475

  It was a similar situation in Berlin. On 26 September, three days after Chamberlain’s departure, Reynolds was sitting in a coffee-house listening to Hitler speak on the radio. It was a live transmission of a speech he was making in the Sportpalast, a huge indoor sports arena in Berlin. He attacked Czechoslovakia in the harshest terms and demanded freedom for its Sudeten population. Reynolds thought the game was up. The faces of the men and women around him were ‘grave, like masks,’ he wrote. ‘Once a woman clapped her hands feebly, but nobody followed her example.’476

  Believing war to be inevitable, Reynolds left Berlin. He did not have the time to organise his belongings or say goodbye to his many acquaintances. Other members of the British press pack in Berlin did the same. ‘Some went one way and some another,’ wrote Reynolds. ‘The train taking several of us westwards went through the night across the German plain. It was a relief to wake early in the morning and find oneself in Belgium, in freedom and in safety.’477

  Reynolds spent his first night outside Germany in Amsterdam, where he had been instructed to open an office. Taking breakfast the next morning, he read in his newspaper the news that the governments of Britain, France, Germany and Italy were to meet in Munich to discuss the situation. ‘There was to be no war,’ Reynolds later wrote. ‘I ordered a place in an aeroplane and returned to Berlin.’478

  Chamberlain had taken events at Bad Godesberg terribly. ‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing,’ he said in a public address on 27 September. But talks at Munich offered a small window of hope. He was desperate and felt no option but to reach again for a settlement, despite Hitler’s dishonourable actions. The House of Commons greeted the announcement of more talks with fevered cheers.

  ‘The whole place was on its feet. A huge prolonged cheer and a tempest of waving order papers,’ wrote Robert Barrington-Ward, deputy editor of The Times, who was watching from the public gallery. ‘It was electrifying.’ He returned to the office and penned an editorial titled: ‘On to Munich’.479

  On Thursday 29 September, Chamberlain rose at 6.30 a.m. He shaved and dressed before joining his wife for an early breakfast. At 7.50 a.m., he walked to a waiting car that took him to Heston Airport, to the west of London. He arrived forty minutes later and was surprised to find that most of his Cabinet had gathered to see him off. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,’ he said in a short, light-hearted speech.480 The mood was positive.

  Price lingered on the sidelines. Lord Halifax beckoned him over, holding up one of the day’s newspapers, which had ‘Hitler Sees the Red Light’ splashed across its front page. ‘If you hear any reference to that in Germany today,’ said Halifax, ‘tell them that it does not at all represent the point of view of the British public.’481 The instruction gave away the mood of the British government ahead of the Munich talks – its priority was to keep Germany happy. The best way of doing this was by appeasing Hitler.

  Some of the press had been sceptical of a third round of talks. ‘The nation cannot prudently afford to purchase present ease at the expense of future trouble,’ the Telegraph wrote in a leading a
rticle in the days beforehand. ‘With the will to peace it is possible to make accommodation. It is vain to ignore the fact that throughout this crisis all the concessions have come from one side.’482 But most were supportive of the attempt to find a solution at Munich. The alternative to success appeared to be war.

  Chamberlain met with Hitler, Mussolini and Daladier at Munich. The deal that emerged gave Hitler exactly what he wanted: the Sudetenland. Vernon Bartlett, reporting for the News Chronicle, was among the first to learn of the proposed settlement, which required Hitler to sign a commitment to future peace. He rang the office in London to pass on the news. He said it was as bad as could be – that Chamberlain had sold out the Czechs. The editor Gerald Barry wanted to do a strongly critical leader, but his chief, Walter Layton, refused. ‘If that’s the news, it’s too yellow to print,’ he said.483

  There were rumours in the press that Chamberlain despised Hitler at the time of agreement but felt he had no option but to negotiate. On his return from Munich, the Prime Minister apparently said Hitler was the ‘most dreadful man’ he had ever met. He also knew Hitler may well break his vow of peace, but felt that securing it was important so that the American government would subsequently realise the extent of his bad faith.484 Whatever the truth, Chamberlain returned to London a hero. He was able to wave Hitler’s commitment to peace in the air as evidence that he had secured ‘peace for our time’. Henderson wrote him a glowing letter of praise. ‘Millions of mothers will be blessing your name tonight for having saved their sons from the horrors of war. Oceans of ink will flow hereafter in criticism of your action.’485 Both statements proved accurate. But in the immediate aftermath of the Munich Agreement, criticism was drowned out by praise.

  The Sunday Times, edited by Chamberlain supporter W. W. Hadley, was the most uncritical. Even the Telegraph and Daily Herald, papers that had criticised government policy over relations with Germany, were initially applauding. ‘Journals were all but unanimous in their expression of the warmest gratitude to the government, and especially to the Prime Minister, for the maintenance of peace,’ Hadley later wrote. ‘In not one of them was it suggested that in the discussion with Germany about Czechoslovakia any issues were raised which justified war.’486

  Pressure was brought to bear on the News Chronicle, the paper that, along with the Guardian, infuriated the Nazis most. The Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare had made a special effort with the newspaper, owned by the conservative Cadbury brothers and managed by Layton. The News Chronicle had criticised Britain’s approach to the question of Germany and Czechoslovakia right up until 27 September. Hoare had then made a series of direct interventions to try and persuade it to tone down its coverage. These interventions made an impact on Layton, blunting the paper’s coverage around the time of the Munich Agreement.

  Shortly after the talks began, a News Chronicle correspondent had brought back a leaflet bearing a purported timetable of Hitler’s planned conquest of Europe. Layton blocked publication that night, but promised the paper could print it within twenty-four hours. He then changed his mind and sent it to Chamberlain, who asked for it to be withheld. The document was not reported until March 1939. After the Munich Agreement, Bartlett described it as ‘an almost complete capitulation to Hitler’. Layton’s intervention ensured this message, too, was not printed.487

  On another occasion, the Chronicle’s Berlin correspondent H. D. Harrison, who had worked in Germany since his expulsion from Yugoslavia in 1937, received information about plans in the Brown House in Prague for a Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia and other territories. Layton asked Chamberlain, just as he returned from Munich, whether to publish. He was advised not to and obeyed.488

  A poll after Munich revealed that 86 per cent of the British public did not believe Hitler when he said he had no further territorial ambitions – but Layton, the News Chronicle editor, refused to publish it. Instead, he wrote to Chamberlain to explain the reasons behind his decision. ‘I fear that so blunt an advertisement of the state of British public opinion on this matter would exacerbate feelings in Germany.’489 Again, German feelings took precedence over the freedom of the press.

  The Daily Mail remained unwavering in its support of the government’s efforts at Munich, though Rothermere’s attitude to the discussions veered. He was stunned by German demands at Bad Godesberg for the complete secession of all the Sudetenland on 26 September, but his faith in the process was quickly restored. The Munich Agreement ‘brings to Europe the blessed prospect of peace’, was the Mail’s verdict on the day the agreement was struck.

  Rothermere and other newspaper proprietors fell over themselves in attempts to praise Chamberlain following the Munich Agreement to such an extent that the Prime Minister started to consider himself untouchable. On a visit to Paris later in the year, he was booed as he walked the streets with the French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier. The press in Britain reported on this, much to his annoyance. That a Prime Minister should take umbrage at perfectly legitimate reporting of booing perhaps demonstrates just how thin his skin had become in office.

  The Times welcomed the Munich Agreement, to the great upset of several staff members. Some junior staff resigned, seeing it as the outcome of a process started by The Times editorial on 7 September, which mooted the possibility of border changes.490 Times coverage of German relations and the Munich Conference led to the resignation of its parliamentary correspondent, Anthony Winn, in October 1938. He had worked for the Yorkshire Post before joining The Times at a young age, where he was highly regarded. Soon after assuming day-to-day control at the Daily Mail in 1937, Lord Rothermere’s son Esmond Harmsworth tried to recruit him.

  Winn’s dismay about Chamberlain’s efforts to negotiate with Hitler was shared by his friend Alfred Duff Cooper, who served in the government as the First Lord of the Admiralty. Several senior members of the Cabinet considered resigning in the wake of the Munich Agreement, but only Cooper took the step. Informing Chamberlain of his desire to leave the government, Cooper said he would have accepted ‘war with honour or peace with dishonour’, but not a situation that he felt would lead to war with dishonour. After his speech in Parliament, Churchill leaned forward with a note. ‘Your speech was one of the finest parliamentary performances I have ever heard.’491 In the same House of Commons debate, Churchill expressed his sorrow at the deal made in Munich. ‘Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness,’ he intoned. ‘We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat.’492

  Winn submitted his account of Cooper’s speech to be published in his lobby correspondence column the next day. The Times editor overseeing the piece altered it and described the speech as a ‘damp squib’. When the piece appeared the next day, this damning verdict appeared as Winn’s own opinion.493 He resigned from the paper, telling Dawson that he could no longer work for a newspaper that had advocated Sudeten secession and supported the Munich Agreement. Dawson, who had been something of a father figure to the young journalist, took it personally. The paper closed ranks after that. Dawson sought solace by writing to Lady Astor, the beating heart of the ‘Cliveden Set’, informing her that he had discovered Winn had been offered a job at the Daily Telegraph before quitting The Times. His meaning was clear – though Winn supposedly left over Munich, he was only ever focused on his own career.

  Another man who resigned in the wake of the Munich Agreement was Douglas Reed, who had worked for The Times in Vienna. He joined the News Chronicle in December. The newspaper’s leadership took their staff’s resistance personally. ‘Most of the office is against Dawson and me!’ wrote Barrington-Ward after discussions with staff in October had revealed the extent of the unhappiness.494

  The government continued its efforts to influence what newspapers wrote about British foreign policy. It was not just politicians such as Chamberlain and Halifax who pondered how this could be achieved. In October 1938, just days after Munich, Rothermere cabled Halifax to highlight German fears that newspapers in L
ondon, ‘with their cartoons and comments will provoke war between Britain and Germany’. His worry was palpable. ‘Can nothing be done?’ For a newspaper owner to lobby a government minister about taking steps to censor the press was surely a unique moment in history.495

  Some newspapers would not be swayed. Less than a fortnight after its initially warm response to Munich, the Telegraph had reverted to a critical position. In a leader the newspaper pointed out that Hitler had ‘obtained, through the machinery of Munich, a still larger slice of Czechoslovakia than he had sought by the method of the ultimatum at Godesburg’.496 Its more independent mindset compared to other newspapers on the right of politics in this period stemmed in part from the independence of its owner. Of all the press barons in the 1930s, the Daily Telegraph’s owner Lord Camrose had the least contact with the governments of the day. This was curious, since the Conservatives had held power for much of the decade and the paper was regarded as a respected defender of conservative values in the press (more so than The Times, which had a tendency to ally itself with the current government, whatever its colour). But Camrose ensured his newspaper’s independence. It is perhaps telling that he was one of the proprietors to have enjoyed a close relationship with the ever-hawkish Churchill.

  The Guardian finally started arguing for more rearmament after Munich. ‘No government can discharge its duty or protect its interests unless it has behind it material strength and confidence,’ it said in a leader on 29 October. At this point the News Chronicle, despite its criticisms, was still not arguing for rearmament. Bartlett, who had become a star reporter for the newspaper, responded to the Munich Agreement by standing as an independent candidate at a by-election in the Somerset seat of Bridgwater later in 1938. Campaigning solely on the basis of opposition to the deal with Germany, he won the hitherto safe Conservative seat and held onto it for a further twelve years.