Posted on 12/02/2020 10:24:09 AM PST by Impala64ssa
German historian shows how news agency retained access in 1930s by promising not to undermine strength of Hitler regime
Associated Press, which has described itself as the “marine corps of journalism” (“always the first in and the last out”) was the only western news agency able to stay open in Hitler’s Germany, continuing to operate until the US entered the war in 1941. It thus found itself in the presumably profitable situation of being the prime channel for news reports and pictures out of the totalitarian state.
In an article published in academic journal Studies in Contemporary History , historian Harriet Scharnberg shows that AP was only able to retain its access by entering into a mutually beneficial two-way cooperation with the Nazi regime.
The New York-based agency ceded control of its output by signing up to the so-called Schriftleitergesetz (editor’s law), promising not to publish any material “calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home”.
This law required AP to hire reporters who also worked for the Nazi party’s propaganda division. One of the four photographers employed by the Associated Press in the 1930s, Franz Roth, was a member of the SS paramilitary unit’s propaganda division, whose photographs were personally chosen by Hitler. AP has removed Roth’s pictures from its website since Scharnberg published her findings, though thumbnails remain viewable due to “software issues”.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
That was before WW2 started, so this was not ‘trading with the enemy’ or anything that.
Lots of folks did business with the Germany and the Nazis. They were pretty popular as an alternative to Communism at the time.
Only if they did business after the start of the war, were they wrong (*cough*Standard Oil*cough*).
By supporting antifa.
Nazis were pussycats, compared to the evil SOB’s who actually won WW2. The evil commie bastards that murdered 66 million Christians in Russia/Ukraine/Eastern Europe, plus 60 Million Chinese, should be the real boogeyman, because they are actually still in power.
Patton was right. We defeated the wrong enemy.
This is fairly common. Walter Duranty told the State Department that the New York Times had a similar agreement with Stalin.
Jordan Eason wrote an op-ed in the New York Times entitled “The News We Kept to Ourselves.” In it he explained how CNN intentionally distorts the news. In order to maintain access a reported must not offend Saddam Hussein.
Rats for a long long time, looks like.
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AP is evil
HUH? The AP worked with Trump supporters? /$
No- they were never couched as an “alternative to Communism”... they were part and parcel in the FOLD of the US State Department, and multiple financial/industrialists who supported the Ruhr Valley industrialists and who had prior profiteered from WWI. For a “you are there” understanding of the attitude and level of deception and collaboration with the Weimar German elevation of herr hitler— going on in the State Department in first term of FDR. The time period before 1939, and yes, us firms (oil particularly) traded with the ascending nazis.
“In the Garden of the Beasts”— Eric Larson. FDR’s first ambassador to Germany, Amb. Dodd, and his whacked out family, daughter who was whore (slept with the first head of the Gestapo- protected by Goering). Understand that this was a world socialist, FDR, hands off of a national socialist (hitler) at the advice of the harvahhd and yalie pro-socialist/anti-semites and deep Soviet agents within the “Club” inside the State Department. All documented at this point and proven. The same prez who tried to stack the Supreme Court in his quest to be a dictator of the US. A socialist and democrat— world socialist who wrote an entire new additional bill of rights (that were never in the Constitution).
well well
notice how ap scrubs away its unpleasant history
more like OP , Orwellian Press
Thank you!
William Shirer was in Berlin almost until the end of ‘41 if I remember correctly. (The Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich.)
Howard K. Smith took one of the last trains out, to Switzerland, IIRC.
Back in the day the reporter who worked in those countries would get information out through third parties or diplomatic pouches. They would be reported in the US as “sources say.”
This has been standard since reporting was a thing. Its not really a shock.
I will have to go back and give it a look. I remember listening to the audiobook on my long drives. I recall thinking to myself, “You must have gotten out of there to write this thing...but you are cutting it close.”
I think the final straw was the Russian invasion. That kind of was the icing on the “creep” cupcake. If he was crazy enough to do that...the US wasn’t far behind.
Had to look it up:
Howard K. Smith - Last Train from Berlin
Excellent resource as well— Shirer was present at many of the US Embassy gatherings described in “In the Garden of the Beasts”... by Eric Larson. Both of their books are astounding depth of knowledge resources in regards to Weimar, nazis & communists, and the rise of the national socialist german workers party (a Left labor socialist party, supported in their efforts, by the industrial sector— who believed that the communists, who outnumbered nazis 3 to 1- could be removed as a labor issue for manufacturing and for the disaster that was Weimar pre-War Germany).
Hitler was their man vs. millions of communists. The huge rise in the depression following WWI was accompanied by the opportunistic blow-back from the Kaiser sponsoring Lenin and Bolsheviks (backed with money, gold, etc) destroying the Russian Empire. The Kaiser and the General staff backed Lenin— saying this would remove Russia from the war and Germany could then win by fighting on only one front. They didn’t win— Russia was destroyed and the empowered German Communist party rose in size to demand the fall of the Weimar Republic. Militarist/socialists/nationalists were supported against the death of the German Republic— and they were all about hitlers “culture” and revenge and blame.
And, they won—and Germany lost... again.
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