The Fourth Estate and the Third Reich

DISPATCHES FROM MIKE KUHLENBECK
SPECIAL ROVING CORRESPONDENT
working to impede war and social injustice through simple truth

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]merican historian Harriet Scharnberg recently uncovered evidence that the news agency Associated Press  (AP) was able to conduct business in an atmosphere of censorship and repression in Nazi Germany by collaborating with the regime.

Scharnberg provides documentation of this collaboration in the academic journal Studies in Contemporary History. Her study “Associated Press and the National Socialist image journalism,” (January 2016) informs readers how AP supplied American news publications with a steady flow of stories direct from the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. They even allowed some of their photos to be used in anti-Semitic publications with titles like “The Sub-Human” and “The Jews in the USA.”

.In an interview with The Guardian, Sharnberg went as far as to say the AP helped “portray a war of extermination as a conventional war.”

The AP has denied these allegations, but it is no secret that the US Media have provided ideological support for fascism (i.e. Rational Revolution, Chomsky and Herman)

The ruling class in the United States did not hide their admiration for Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco. one example of which is Prescott Bush (father of George H. W. Bush, and grandfather of George W. Bush) is renowned for his business dealings with the Third Reich (Aris and Cambell, 2004). For them, the rise of fascism would be beneficial to their interests. It secured the fortunes of plunderers who flourished from rigged trade markets and other economic advantages for the elite, costing the livelihood of millions of people during The Great Depression.

Not all members of the ruling class publicly fawned over the likes of “Der Fuhrer” as openly as the anti-Semitic automobile manufacturer Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company. Ford, whom Hitler personally admired as “one great man,” was awarded the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, the highest honor to be awarded by the Third Reich. As a matter of fact, he was the first American to be granted this dubious honor.

US Ambassador to Germany William E. Dodd told reporters he had “plenty of opportunity” in his post in Berlin to “witness how close some of the American ruling families are to the regime”:

“A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy.” (Seldes, Fact and Fascism, 1947:122)

Financial powerhouses such as Chase Manhattan Bank, Dupont, Ford, General Motors, ITT, Rockefeller and Standard Oil worked with the Nazi regime for monetary gain or out of class loyalty, usually both. (Randy Davis, TENC)

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]nvestigative author Charles Higham documented the ties between American industrialists and the Third Reich in his 1982 book Trading with the Enemy, named after the 1917 “Trading with the Enemy Act.”

Higham writes, “The tycoons were linked by an ideology: the ideology of Business as Usual. Bound by identical reactionary ideas, the members sought a common future in fascist domination regardless of which world leader might further that ambition.”

This area of study was explored decades earlier by American journalist George Seldes. He was stationed in Italy and Germany as fascism was on the march in Europe, its leaders entrancing the people of these nations under the spell of faux populism backed by the super-wealthy.

Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, for example, built a media empire through the format of “Yellow Journalism,” initially funded through the inheritance of his father’s mining fortune. At the height of his influence, he controlled seven daily newspapers, five magazines, two news services and a motion picture studio.

Hearst publications inflamed racial tensions (particular against Mexicans) and promoted American imperialist expansion during the Spanish-American War. Like other “self-made” men of his era, Hearst was an enemy to workers’ rights, calling the 1935 Wagner Act (designed to protect labor’s right to organize) “un-American to the core” and “one of the most vicious pieces of class legislation that could be conceived.”

As noted by journalist and Newspaper Guild co-founder Heywood Broun in May 1936, “…one of the first steps which Fascism must take in any land in order to capture power is to disrupt and destroy the labor movement…. I think it is not unfair to say that any business man in America, or public leader, who goes out to break unions, is laying foundations for Fascism.”(Heywood Broun: A Word of Warning From the Past )

It seemed inevitable that the paths of Hearst and Hitler, both powerful players on the world stage, would engage in a notorious meeting of the minds, or so to speak. After visiting Germany in 1934, Hearst writes:

“I flew up to Berlin and had a long talk with Hitler yesterday. Hitler is an extraordinary man. We estimate him lightly in America. He has enormous enthusiasm, a marvelous faculty for dramatic oratory, and great organizing ability.” (See autograph of the letter to Joseph Wilcolmbe, 1934)

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US Ambassador William E. Dodd, according to Seldes, said that when Hearst arrived in Germany in September 1934, “Hitler sent two of his most trusted Nazi propagandists to ask Hearst how Nazism could present a better image in the U.S.” (Randy Davis, TENC)

Shortly afterward, Hearst ordered all press correspondents in Germany to report on national matters in a “friendly manner.” Those who failed to do so were demoted or terminated from their jobs. Hearst even published editorials with Mussolini’s byline and propaganda items from Nazi Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels and Reichsmarschall (President of the Reichstag) Hermann Goering.

As Seldes writes in his 1943 book Facts and Fascism:

“The real Fascists of America are never named in the commercial press. It will not even hint at the fact that there are many powerful elements working against a greater democracy, against an America without discrimination based on race, color and creed, an America where never again will one third of the people be without sufficient food, clothing and shelter, where never again will there be millions unemployed and many more millions working for semi-starvation wages while the DuPont, Ford, Hearst, Mellon and Rockefeller Empires move into the billions of dollars.”

With Hearst and other opinion-makers shaping the national narrative on the state of the economy and the threat of another world war, many Americans embraced the notions of nationalism and jingoism as solutions to the daily agonies resulting from the stock market crash of 1929.

Labor historian Milton Meltzer describes the gloomy atmosphere of this painful period and some of the proposed solutions being discussed at the time in his book Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

“A sense of hopelessness gripped the nation,” Meltzer writes. “America was finished. Some looked for a dictator; others talked of a supercouncil of business leaders.”

Meltzer cites an editorial that appeared in the financial weekly Barron’s, which called for a kind of benevolent dictatorship of a politician, a military commander or an oligarchy of robber barons and monopoly men:

“Of course we all realize that dictatorships and semi-dictatorships in peace time are all quite contrary to the spirit of American institutions and all that. And yet—well, a genial and light-hearted dictator might be a relief.”

As early as 1925 Secretary of the US Treasury Andrew Mellon (one of America’s wealthiest men with control of the Mellon Bank, Gulf Oil and American Aluminum) showered praise on Mussolini by saying he was “a strong man with sound ideas and the force to make these ideas effective.”

Echoing similar sentiments to those of Mellon, even in the face of Mussolini’s mounting crimes against humanity, the editors of the May 1932 issue of Fortune magazine still thought it was appropriate to continue heaping praise on the dictator:

“In the world depression, marked by governmental wandering and uncertainty, Mussolini remains direct … He presents, too, the virtue of force and centralized government acting without conflict for the whole nation at once.”

In recent years, the staff at TIME magazine wrote about this rising popularity of pro-fascist sentiments in American society (Ben Cosgrove, Time, Sept 17, 2014):

“It’s unsettling to think that, well into the late 1930s, many German Americans—a few dozen here, a few hundred there, with occasional rallies featuring crowds in the thousands—were proudly parading through cities and towns across the country, proclaiming their support for Nazi Germany.”

This statement in the LIFE section of TIME magazine, is a complete inversion of the latter magazine’s editorial views decades earlier, where both Mussolini and Hitler adorned the covers of the magazine as TIME’s “Man of the Year,” respectively in 1937 and 1938.

The combined readership of the New York News (circulation of 2,000,000 daily), Saturday Evening Post (circulation of 3,000,000 weekly) and Reader’s Digest (circulation of 9,000,000 monthly) reached upwards of 50,000,000 readers. These three publications alone reached millions of readers, an advantage anti-fascist publications did not have. Reader’s Digest published pro-Hitler articles with such beaming titles as “The House That Hitler Built” and “What’s Good In Germany” both published in 1938.

BELOW: Watch George Seldes talk about the Reader’s Digest overt boosterism for fascism.

Given such glowing coverage in dark times, one can see how many Americans were swayed by the images of the fantasy world being depicted by fascist nations in Europe. Long before the Great Depression, there was a demographic in the American populace who were ready to take up arms in the name of reaction. This desire stemmed from the news they heard regarding current events (or at least a distorted version of it) from mainstream media.

One of the most prominent voices in news media of the 1930s and 40s was Westbrook Pegler. Known for his racist and anti-Semitic views, his reactionary voice was eagerly read by millions when his “Mister Pegler” newspaper column was nationally syndicated by Scripps-Howard in 1933. Eleven years later, Pegler moved his operations to the Hearst syndicate.

Westbrook Pegler.

Frank Marshall Davis

Journalist Frank Marshall Davis referred to Pegler as the “press prostitute,” or “presstitute” to use a more contemporary phrase. Additionally, Davis connects Pegler’s employer Scripps-Howard with what he calls the “McCormick-Patterson-Hearst newspaper axis,” referring to the collective Far-Right vitriol in the publications controlled by Hearst and Chicago Tribune owners Robert McCormick and Joseph Patterson (Writings of Frank Marshall Davis: A Voice of the Black Press, pg 114).

Pegler’s career started down a slow decline after journalist Quentin Reynolds, a foreign correspondent who attempted to warn Americans about Hitler early on, sued Pegler in 1949 after Pegler falsely accused him in his column of “lying,” “physical cowardice” and with the “immorality” of being a “Communist sympathizer,” all of which were denied by Reynolds. Toward the end of his lonely life, Pegler could only get his words published in outlets such as the John Birch Society magazine American Opinion and assorted white supremacist literature.

In the 1930s, print media started to lose its influence due to the advent of radio broadcasting where a single voice could reach millions of people in their homes, cars and local saloons. This powerful and relatively new form of mass communication provided listeners with the sense that the radio personality behind the microphone was as intimate in their lives as a close friend, a neighbor, or perhaps their local priest.

Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest turned radio personality, started his career supporting the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Over time, however, Coughlin condemned the New Deal as socialistic, favoring the policies of Mussolini and Hitler. Along with broadcasting his sermons to a national audience, he published original articles and even excerpts of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his hate-filled rag misleadingly called Social Justice.

Pegler could easily be dismissed as a hack scribbler and Coughlin as a loud soapbox preacher were it not for the fact that they found eager readers and listeners who were willing to follow their violent rhetoric with the same enthusiasm of the jackboots and goose-steppers in Europe.

Inspired by Hitler’s example, William Dudley Pelley founded the fascist “underground” organization the Silver Legion of America in 1933, also known as the “Silver Shirts” (paying homage to Hitler’s Brown-shirts). As its leader, Pelley preached racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Communism and Christian mysticism to his loyal following of Silver Shirts, who wore the scarlet letter “L” emblem on their uniforms in place of iron crosses, eagles and swastikas.

After Pelley’s death in 1965, The New York Times (date) described Pelley as “an agitator without a significant following.” One year after the group was founded, the Legion had 15,000 Silver Shirts (also known as the Christian Patriots) in its membership. He published these doctrines in his political organs Liberation, Pelley’s Silver Shirt Weekly, The Galilean and The New Liberator. He later founded the Christian Party and ran for president in 1936. The Silver Legion’s membership gradually declined to 5,000 members by 1938.

A former Silver Shirt and Pelley disciple named Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith, a self-described clergyman, developed his own rabid following for his anti-Semitic and Isolationist views. His nationalist and racist views provided the basis of his “America First Party,” founded in 1944.

Professor John Edgar Tidwell describes Smith’s influence by saying he “reached an audience of millions in the guise of a Christian crusader for national supremacy with his organizational and oratorical skills.”

Frank Marshall Davis called Smith “the hate-inciting Detroit rabble rouser who is held responsible in large measure” for the “race riots in the Michigan metropolis,” referring to the 1943 Detroit Riot which left 34 dead and resulted in the arrest of over 1,800 people, the majority of whom were black.

The power to broadcast lies and incite violence in times of economic and social unrest did not slip the minds of these men, nor did they let opportunity slip through their fingers.

The 2009 documentary Hitler: Anecdotes, Myths and Lies, one narrator from the program describes certain political conditions that enabled Hitler to “steal a march on his opponents, who were divided and disorganized.”

“[Hitler’s] harangues, full of popular patriotism, easily grabbed the headlines in a society in the midst of an economic slump where the media was terrified of the prospect of a Communist government.”

[Note: The full series is vailable on Youtube Episodes One … Two … Three … Four …. Five …. Six]

On February 20, 1939, a “Pro-America” rally was hosted at Madison Square Garden in New York City by the American Nazi group “the German-American Bund,” with over 20,000 members and supporters in attendance. The Bund is estimated to have had between 40,000 and 60,000 members at the height of its popularity.

 

The gathering was recounted in the magazine International Socialist Review (ISR):

“The Bund transformed the inside of the Garden to mimic Nazi Party rallies. The walls were festooned with a multitude of American flags, swastika-bearing Bund banners, and a thirty-three-foot high painting of George Washington dominated the stage.”

One speaker at the rally referred to Washington as “The First Fascist.” Such notions were reinforced by the likes of The New York Times in a piece printed in November 1923, reported that the concept of authority espoused by Il Duce (Italian for “The Leader”) “has many points in common with that of the men who inspired our own constitution – John Adams, Hamilton and Washington.”

The Nazis did not need to impress Americans by flying the Hindenburg zeppelin over New York, nor did they need them to witness the campy Josef Goebbels–Leni Riefenstahl spectacle of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The shill media, working for the ruling class, simply had to exploit the homegrown prejudices and the American people’s ignorance of political power to help shape the course of history according to the interests of the elites.

To see evidence of this today, one only needs to turn on a television set, browse the pages of a newsstand publication or scroll through articles on the internet.

The US Media ignored, manipulated or lied about the true nature of what has happened to Ukraine since its government succumbed to fascist control in 2014.

Fashion magazine Elle portrayed 19-year-old Vita Zaverukha of Ukraine as her nation’s “Joan of Arc” for her “brave” fight against Russian separatists in 2015. They failed to report that Zaverukha was a member of a Neo-Nazi gang linked to the attempted robbery of a petrol station in Kiev. She was later arrested in connection to the deaths of two police officers among other charges.

Sources also indicate that Zaverukha participated in the assault on the Odessa House of Trade Unions in May 2014, resulting in 46 dead and 200 more injured.

This is one of many stories regarding Ukraine where the fascists are glorified and those who oppose them are demonized.

Major media outlets in the US have also failed in reporting the rise of Fascism on the Homefront, especially the presidential candidacy of billionaire Donald Trump. Trump’s racist rhetoric and calls for a police state are not merely for show and should not be taken lightly because of his “celebrity status.”

Trump’s followers threaten political opponents and yell phrases like “Go Back to Africa!” and “Go to Auschwitz!” Campaign staff members are tattooed with fascist symbols like Odin’s Cross or wear T-Shirts resembling Hitler’s call of restoring Germany to Greatness: “Make America Great Again.” His Republican rival Ted Cruz agrees with his call for establishing “Muslim ghettoes” and other barbaric responses to the threat of terrorism as defined by The Pentagon.

The ties between American institutions and the forces of fascism are much deeper than what they appear, a fact that becomes more obvious when looking at the other stories being reported in the media: economic failures driving millions into destitution, racial tensions boiling over and violence erupting across the country.

Reading between the lines, one sees the parallels between those times and the present. Next time, there may not be anyone left to record what happens when Fascism completely engulfs the “land of the free.”

 

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