The British Press And Nazi Germany

Allegedly the only man capable of holding the Führer's intense gaze, Rothay Reynolds was a leading foreign correspondent between the wars and ran the Daily Mail's bureau in Berlin throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The enigmatic former clergyman was one of the first journalists to interview Adolf Hitler, meeting the future Führer days before the Munich Putsch. While the awful realities of the Third Reich were becoming apparent on the ground in Germany, in Britain the Daily Mail continued to support the Nazi regime. Reynolds's time as a foreign correspondent in Nazi Germany provides some startling insights into the muzzling of the international press prior to the Second World War, as journalists walked uneasy tightropes between their employers' politics and their own journalistic integrity. As war approached, the stakes - and the threats from the Gestapo - rose dramatically. Reporting on Hitler reveals the gripping story of Rothay Reynolds and the intrepid foreign correspondents who reported on some of the twentieth century's most momentous events in the face of sinister propaganda, brazen censorship and the threat of expulsion - or worse - if they didn't toe the Nazis' line. It uncovers the bravery of the forgotten heroes from a golden age of British journalism, who risked everything to tell the world the truth.

"This book shows that the national British Press generally shared a common revulsion against Nazi barbarities, which were well known. Beyond this common denominator, however, the British Press reacted to Nazi Germany mainly along Left-Right political lines over issues formulated a decade before the Nazi came to power and in many ways having little or nothing to do with Germany itself. Basing himself upon a careful reading of the ten major British daily and Sunday newspapers supplemented with important new material from the archives of The Times, the Manchester Guardian, and several collections of personal papers, Dr Gannon concludes that Hitler and his demands were like a funnel into which British attitudes on every question from armaments to xenophobia were poured: what emerged from the funnel was the single policy of appeasement."--Book Jacket.

The British Press -- Hitler Becomes Chancellor -- The Destruction of Democracy -- The Manchester Guardian and the Terror in Germany: A Special Case -- The Second Revolution? The Röhm Purge -- 'Cross and Swastika': The Struggle for the Churches in Germany -- The Nazi Persecution of the Jews.

What was known and understood about the nature of the Nazi dictatorship in Britain prior to war in 1939? How was Nazism viewed by those outside of Germany? The British Press and Nazi Germany considers these questions through the lens of the British press. Until now, studies that centre on British press attitudes to Nazi Germany have concentrated on issues of foreign policy. The focus of this book is quite different. In using material that has largely been neglected, Kylie Galbraith examines what the British press reported about life inside the Nazi dictatorship. In doing so, the book imparts important insights into what was known and understood about the Nazi revolution. And, because the overwhelming proportion of the British public's only means of news was the press, this volume shows what people in Britain could have known about the Nazi dictatorship. It reveals what the British people were being told about the regime, specifically the destruction of Weimar democracy, the ruthless persecution of minorities, the suppression of the churches and the violent factional infighting within Nazism itself. This pathbreaking examination of the British press' coverage of Nazism in the 1930s greatly enhances our knowledge of the fascist regime with which the British Government was attempting to reach agreement at the time.

An account of Nazi preoccupation with Britain as a role model, even during the war.

Originally published in 1991, The Roots of Appeasement outlines the attitudes of the British weekly press and its editors to Nazism and to German and British foreign policies during the 1930s. It analyses and interprets the reasons which underlay those attitudes. Aided by the evidence of the weeklies, it sheds additional light on the roots and development of appeasement. After introducing the weeklies and their editors, the study conveys and examines their attitudes to the European crises of 1935-9 and one chapter focusses on the popular fear of air attack as reflected in the journals. The major conclusion of the book is that a consensus supporting appeasement emerged in the weeklies in the course of 1935 and that it remained virtually intact until September 1938.

Fighter, Worker, and Family Man explores how German-Jewish men tried to maintain their understandings of masculinity under Nazi rule.