Reporting on Hitler

by Wainewright, Will;

  The Daily Mail’s owner Lord Rothermere was too close to politicians in Berlin and London. The stance that resulted was a strident combination of support for Hitler and support for British rearmament. This gave Rothermere cover – when he died in 1940, it was his early demands for more spending on the British air force, rather than his boosting of Hitler, that was most heavily featured in reports. But the contradiction was acute. Rothermere’s newspaper ‘blesses and encourages every swashbuckler who threatens the peace of Europe – not to mention direct British interests – and then clamours for more and more armaments with which to defend Britain, presumably against his lordship’s pet foreign bully,’ wrote A. J. Cummings in the News Chronicle in August 1937, after Norman Ebbutt of The Times had been evicted from Berlin.579 It is hard to disagree with this piercing assessment.

  The achievements of Northcliffe and Rothermere in revolutionising the British press through their stewardship of the Daily Mail should not be overlooked. ‘Together the Harmsworth brothers found it an old-fashioned, ramshackle business and transformed it into a modern, stream-lined industry,’ according to one recent history. ‘They turned Grub Street into Fleet Street.’580 But Lord Rothermere’s support for the fascist movement and the dubious allegiances of his star reporter, G. Ward Price, form the basis of a regretful chapter in the paper’s long history.

  Reynolds’s assistant Izzard went on to greater things. After serving in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War, he enjoyed decades of adventures with the Daily Mail. In 1953 he rose to fame after reaching the Himalayan Base Camp soon after the men on their way to the first successful Everest expedition – wearing casual shoes and without any specialist equipment, compass or map.

  ‘All the papers have short, cold, and for the most deprecatory notices of my part in the international politics of the last few years,’ Chamberlain glumly noted in his diary after leaving the political stage. ‘Not one shows the slightest sign of sympathy.’581

  Chamberlain was replaced as Prime Minister by Churchill in May 1940. Six months later, Chamberlain died. His ambassador in Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, died two years later. Lord Halifax, another of the archappeasers, lived until 1959. The ‘Cliveden Set’ had wanted Halifax to replace Chamberlain. It is quite possible that, if he had been named Prime Minister, Halifax would have agreed a deal with Hitler in the summer of 1940 that allowed Germany control of continental Europe.

  Reynolds’s friendship with Frank Foley, the MI6 station chief in Berlin, was a relatively late discovery during the research for this book. The two men were close and Foley made the effort to send a letter of condolence and a newspaper clipping of Reynolds’s Times obituary (which Foley himself may have written) to his siblings in Cambridge after his death. It is unlikely Reynolds had been a spy. Like Foley, however, he certainly did his best to help the oppressed in Berlin.

  Foley’s efforts to help Jews escape Germany before the war were recognised decades later when he was named ‘Righteous Among the Nations’, an honour bestowed by Israel on non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination. In a quirk of history, a special burial took place on the dusty mountainside of Mount Zion in Jerusalem in 1974. It was thirty-four years after Reynolds had been laid to rest in the same location. The man being buried was a former Nazi Party member named Oskar Schindler, who had saved the lives of many Jews. Those efforts were later immortalised in Schindler’s List, the award-winning film about the Holocaust released in 1993.

  Reynolds’s life spanned the Victorian and Edwardian ages, the entirety of one world war and the first year of a second. He lived in a diverse range of societies at different times. His time in St Petersburg was a defining period in his life and set him up for a career as a foreign correspondent. By the 1930s, this man, who had seriously considered becoming a monk, was one of the first passengers to fly across the Atlantic on an airship. He went through an enormous personal change to transform himself from one tempted by an ascetic life of solitude and prayer to a man at ease with all manner of modern technology, customs and fashions.

  His convivial nature made him a perfect foreign correspondent. He had a wide network of friends and contacts. His commitment to the truth was utmost, despite being perfectly aware he was working for a newspaper that imposed a definite slant on reports. He berated any journalist who exaggerated or lied. Although his articles were sometimes prone to colourful language and superfluous details, he never inserted falsehoods. While reporting on the stone-faced locals during the British withdrawal from the Rhineland in 1929, he spoke to a young English reporter who planned to describe the opposite of this reality in his dispatch.

  ‘I shall put in cheers, because in England they want to create a friendly atmosphere.’

  Reynolds was not impressed. ‘My dear boy, do you not realise that you are writing a paragraph of history?’ he said.582

  This summed up his attitude to reporting. But was Reynolds too close to the Nazis? Certainly not in 1923, when he wrote a critical report of his first meeting with Hitler and described Nazi headquarters as a madhouse. But in his reporting from 1930 onwards, the pro-Nazi slant imposed on all Daily Mail reports dealing with Germany marred his own. He was too discreet a man to complain publicly about this. If he was unhappy about the running of the Mail he could have left the newspaper in the 1930s, but that was not Reynolds’s style. He knew his work gave him a unique vantage point on a crucial unfolding story. There would come a day when he could tell his side to it. Until his very final years in Berlin he had enjoyed life in Germany.

  He died before he could pass on the full truth of his dealings with the Mail. After the incident with the Catholic Herald, his close family were not keen to touch the subject again. A couple of years after his death they moved out of the Belvoir Terrace home they had shared with Reynolds. The sadness they had felt at the circumstances of his death passed with time. They only had to read the final sentences of When Freedom Shrieked to realise that he had been happy in his heart when he died. ‘The Christian paradox must never be forgotten, that peace comes through war,’ he had written decades earlier. And now, following the weak capitulation at Munich, Britain had decided to fight.

  ‘Never have I been so proud to be an Englishman as at this time,’ he wrote, ‘when all the men of my race, here and beyond the seas, have risen to restore freedom her rights.’583

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Rothay Reynolds was an extraordinary man and piecing together the facts of his life, more than three-quarters of a century after his death, has been no ordinary challenge. I am therefore thankful to a large number of individuals and institutions for assisting me with this endeavour.

  I should start with the handful of individuals who knew Reynolds personally and were happy to assist me. Anthony Hewson had just finished school when his mother, a first-cousin to Reynolds, organised his stay with him in Berlin in the summer of 1938. The young Englishman was riveted by the experience. He photographed Nazi swastikas displayed before the Brandenburg Gate, saw Hitler during a military procession and was present for parties with diplomats and reporters at Reynolds’s flat. Seventy-seven years later, in 2015, I tracked Hewson down and spoke to him for the first time. He, his wife Jean and son Edmund have been unfailingly warm and helpful and kind enough to provide pictures of Reynolds. I extend the same thanks to Herbert Kaden, Reynolds’s neighbour for a time in 1939, who has assisted with my research and welcomed me twice to his monastery in Turvey.

  I am grateful to archivists at Bromley Local Studies and Archives; Douai Abbey; Dulwich College; Durham University; Guardian News & Media; Lewisham Local History and Archives Centre; London School of Economics; Malvern College; Marlborough College; News UK; Pembroke College, Cambridge; Peterhouse College, Cambridge; Reading University; and The Tablet, for their help. I would like to thank Aelred Baker of Prinknash Abbey in particular for his help in piecing together the early parts of Reynolds’s career.

  Much of the core research for this bo
ok was done at the British Library and London Library, and staff at both illustrious institutions have been immensely helpful. The Newsroom service at the British Library, in particular, has been an essential resource and provided access to many of the news reports featured in this book.

  I was assisted on my travels by my good friend Vikas Hiremath, who provided a place for me to stay in Berlin, and I also thank Konstantin and Anna Kallas for a warm welcome on a cold night in St Petersburg.

  I would like to thank in particular several former colleagues from my time working for Bloomberg News and HFMWeek magazine for their help and encouragement: Kirstie Brewer, Tony Griffiths, Gwyn Roberts, Neil Callanan and Richard Partington. I would also like to thank Dominic Bedford, Lizzy Shipton and Jerome Kirby for their help along the way.

  I am grateful to Michael Smith at Biteback Publishing – the man who first brought Frank Foley’s story to light – for taking such a strong interest in this project. Olivia Beattie and her team at Biteback have been unfailingly helpful, and in particular I thank Laurie De Decker for her thorough and skilful copy edit.

  My family have been incredibly supportive throughout the endeavour. Thank you to my parents, Julia and Andrew, and siblings, Rebecca and Thomas. Mum is owed the biggest debt of thanks for her help with research into Reynolds’s life and a close proofreading of the manuscript. I was also lucky to benefit from the love and encouragement of my grandparents, John and Joan Reynolds, and my Aunt Catherine. I spent many enjoyable hours with them at Hatherley Road to discuss various aspects of the book as it progressed. Granpy, whose father, Cuthbert, had corresponded with Rothay, sadly passed away shortly before this book was published, but I will never forget his contributions and guidance.

  Finally, thank you to Britannia for your support, and for putting up with more conversations about the Third Reich than any girlfriend should reasonably have to face.

  A SHORT

  NEWSPAPER GUIDE

  Daily Express

  Run by Canadian industrialist Maxwell Aitken, better known as Lord Beaverbook, the Express was the Mail’s main rival in the popular press. Readers were drawn from all levels of society, but most were working class. It became a powerful paper under Beaverbrook, with a circulation of more than two million – the biggest in the world in the late 1930s. The Daily Express supported appeasement but boasted fine foreign correspondents.

  Daily Herald

  Formed in 1912, the Herald was the Labour Party newspaper and had a readership drawn from the lower and middle classes. Its treatment of foreign affairs was bound to an extent by Labour policy, and staff were split on many key issues in the 1930s. The Herald did not support rearmament but had little love for Hitler. It was succeeded by The Sun in 1964.

  Daily Mail

  Launched by Alfred Harmsworth (the future Lord Northcliffe) in 1896, the Mail quickly became one of the biggest newspapers in the world. He pioneered a populist brand of journalism that drew readers from the middle and upper classes. Harold Harmsworth (Lord Rothermere), a fervent supporter of Hitler, controlled the newspaper between 1922 and 1937, when his son Esmond took over. Reynolds worked for the paper in Berlin between 1921 and 1938. In 1937, the paper had a readership of 1.6 million people.

  Daily Telegraph

  A conservative title that supported the National Government in the 1930s, the Telegraph had a middle- and upper-class readership. The paper supported British rearmament and opposed appeasement, unlike many of its rivals. The Telegraph reported with great clarity and verve on life in Nazi Germany, and was the last newspaper of Reynolds’s career, sending him to Rome in 1940.

  Manchester Guardian

  Under the pioneering editorship of C. P. Scott, the Guardian had emerged as the leading liberal newspaper not just in Britain, but internationally. It carried great influence in liberal and intellectual circles. Coverage of Hitler and the Nazis was led by Frederick Voigt, who saw the regime for what it was from the start. Voigt did more than any other reporter to expose the truth about Nazi Germany.

  Morning Post

  Reynolds’s friend H. H. Munro, famous for his short stories written under the pen-name Saki, was working for this conservative newspaper when the pair met in St Petersburg. It maintained a stridently right-wing line until merging with the Telegraph in 1937. Both papers were among the most critical of Hitler in the 1930s, with the Morning Post being a strong early backer of rearmament.

  News Chronicle

  A leading liberal newspaper formed by the 1930 merger of the Daily Chronicle and Daily News, which had given Reynolds his first job in journalism in Russia, the News Chronicle reported bravely on Nazi excesses, but never backed rearmament. The author Michael Frayn described it as ‘the poor old News Chronicle, the decent liberal paper that everyone liked but no one read’.584 It became part of the Daily Mail in 1960.

  The Observer

  Owned by the well-connected Astor family, The Observer was founded in 1791, making it the oldest of the Sunday newspapers. James Garvin, its controversial editor in the 1930s, was an outspoken critic of the Treaty of Versailles and supported appeasement. When the Nazis marched into Prague in the spring of 1939, he reversed his position.

  Sunday Times

  Another influential Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Times overtook the Observer’s circulation in the 1930s. Lord Kemsley took control of the paper in 1937 and favoured negotiations with Germany. The Sunday Times published regular commentaries on foreign affairs under a column titled ‘Scrutator’, which repeatedly favoured appeasement. Its editor W. W. Hadley fervently supported Chamberlain.

  The Times

  The most important newspaper of the 1930s, The Times’s reports and editorials carried such influence that foreign governments read it for its insights into British policy. Its editor was Geoffrey Dawson, an old Etonian who enjoyed near-total control with little proprietorial interference. Norman Ebbutt in Berlin was one of the era’s great foreign correspondents, but the paper’s support for appeasement led to controversy.

  LIST OF CITED WORKS

  BY ROTHAY REYNOLDS

  The Gondola, Mills & Boon, 1913

  My Russian Year, Mills & Boon, 1915 (first published 1913)

  The Story of Warsaw, Hutchinson & Co, 1915

  My Slav Friends, Mills & Boon, 1916

  When Freedom Shrieked, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939

  BY OTHER AUTHORS

  Bartlett, Vernon, Nazi Germany Explained, Victor Gollancz, 1933

  Brendon, Piers, The Life and Death of the Press Barons, Secker & Warburg, 1982

  Chambers, Roland, The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome, Faber and Faber, 2010

  Cockett, Richard, Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain, Appeasement and the Manipulation of the Press, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989

  Colvin, Ian, Vansittart in Office, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1965

  Cooper, Alfred Duff, Old Men Forget: The Autobiography of Duff Cooper, Rupert Hart Davis, 1954

  Coote, Colin, Editorial: The Memoirs of Colin R. Coote, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1965

  Coulter, John, Sydenham and Forest Hill Past, Historical Publications, 1999

  Dalton, Hugh, The Fateful Years: Memoirs 1931–1945, Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957

  Delmer, Sefton, Trail Sinister, Secker & Warburg, 1961

  Dodd, William, Ambassador Dodd’s Diary, 1933–1938, Victor Gollancz, 1941

  Dunn, Dennis J., The Catholic Church and Russia, Texas State University, 2004

  Frayn, Michael, Towards the End of the Morning, Faber & Faber, 2000 (first published 1967)

  Gannon, Frank, The British Press and Germany, 1936–39, Oxford University Press, 1971

  Gilbert, Martin and Gott, Richard, The Appeasers, Phoenix Press, 2000

  Glenton, George and Pattinson, William, The Last Chronicle of Bouverie Street, Allen & Unwin, 1963

  Grant Duff, Shiela, The Parting of Ways: A Personal Account of the Thirties, Peter Owen, 1982

  Griffiths, Richard, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British En
thusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–1939, Constable, 1980

  Harvey, John (Ed.), Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, Collins, 1970

  Henderson, Sir Nevile, Failure of a Mission, Hodder & Stoughton, 1940

  Jay, Douglas, Change and Fortune, A Political Record, Hutchinson, 1980

  Kaden, Herbert, Some Memories of my Life, 2008

  Kershaw, Ian, Hitler, Penguin, 1999

  Kershaw, Ian, Making Friends With Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain’s Road to War, Allen Lane, 2004

  Langguth, A. J., Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1981

  Larson, Erik, In the Garden of Beasts, Doubleday, 2011

  Layton, Geoff, From Bismarck to Hitler: Germany 1890–1933, Hodder & Stoughton, 2004

  Layton, Geoff, Germany: The Third Reich 1933–45, Hodder & Stoughton, 1998

  Lonsdale, Sarah, The Journalist in British Fiction & Film, Bloomsbury, 2016

  MacDonogh, Giles, 1938: Hitler’s Gamble, Constable, 2010

  Martel, Gordon (Ed.), The Times and Appeasement, The Journals of A. L. Kennedy, 1932–1939, Cambridge, 2000

  McDonald, Iverach, The History of The Times: Struggles in War and Peace, Times Books, 1984

  Montefiore, Simon Sebag, Jerusalem: The Biography, Phoenix, 2011

  Muggeridge, Malcolm, The Thirties, Hamish Hamilton, 1940