Beyond Belief (6 page)

The
New York Times
also expressed its faith in the correspondents in an editorial in May 1933. The editorial countered public doubts about the trustworthiness of the reports from Germany by citing the findings of a “group of eminent American lawyers,” including “leaders of the American bar and two former Secretaries of State,” who had studied the situation in Germany. They confirmed, according to the
Times
, that judges had been “violently dragged from the bench and lawyers forced out of practice for no reason except hatred of their race or religion.”
⁴⁹
Despite these expressions of confidence in the reports of persecution, explicit and implicit expressions of doubt continued to be voiced in the American press.

Sometimes reporters defended themselves by letting the Nazis
condemn themselves. This was what
New York Times
reporter Otto Tolischus did in August 1935 when he quoted extensively from the official German news agency's press releases describing the Nazi campaign against the Jews, which included picketing in front of stores, physical attacks on individuals, insults to customers who frequented Jewish firms, and an array of other incidents. Because it was unusual for a correspondent, Tolischus in particular, to rely so heavily on quotes from an official news source, Tolischus felt obligated to explain why he did so: “Next to the Jews the foreign correspondents in Berlin are now under fire from the National Socialist authorities.” Therefore, to avoid being accused by German authorities of telling falsehoods, he used the Nazis' own words to describe the condition of the Jews.

Most of the reporters who were stationed in Germany were personally conversant with the Nazi
modus operandi
and understood Germany's deep commitment to antisemitism. They also knew that “fanaticism was the essence of fascism.”
⁵⁰
Many of them had interviewed Hitler and had personally watched him at close range on numerous occasions. Foreign reporters often were placed adjacent to Hitler at mass meetings and public occasions. Every year at the Nuremberg rally the press cars were, by Hitler's personal orders, “sandwiched” in between his own car and the car carrying his closest advisers—Goering, Goebbels, Hess, and Himmler.
⁵¹
Most of the foreign correspondents did not doubt that those at the very apex of power were either directly or indirectly responsible for the violence and were unequivocally committed to antisemitism. However, as we have seen, their observations were often discounted by those in the United States. Throughout the period of the Third Reich this pattern repeated itself: reliable sources told at least a portion of what was happening, and those far from the scene and unfamiliar with Nazism discounted the news as exaggerated or dismissed it as not quite possible.
⁵²

A variation on this theme was the disagreement between Sigrid Schultz, the
Chicago Tribune's
bureau chief in Berlin, and her employer, Colonel Robert R. McCormick. A highly venerated journalist, she was fiercely anti-Nazi and as early as 1932 warned that there would be dire consequences for Germany and for Europe
if Hitler came to power. McCormick and the
Tribune
had a very different view of Germany under Hitler: it was an obstacle to the “communist menace” and therefore deserving of strong American support. McCormick attributed antisemitism to the shortcomings of Versailles and the economic hardships created by the treaty's inequities. He explained that antisemitism was a “national psychological reaction to being officially blamed for World War I.” Schultz absolutely disagreed with her boss on this point. “Our alleged unkindness at Versailles had nothing to do with Germany's dedication to another war.” It also had nothing to do with Nazi antisemitism. Those who made this claim were, according to Schultz, in “quest of an alibi.” Neither the publisher nor the paper explicitly approved of German antisemitism, but they were willing to tolerate it because of Germany's value as a bulwark against Russia. As late as 1938 the
Tribune
was still ignoring Germany's internal persecution and calling for a “square deal for the Germans.” Incidentally, although her views were diametrically opposed to McCormick's, Schultz's articles generally appeared uncensored. And even George Seldes, the former
Chicago Tribune
correspondent who made a career of exposing the duplicity of the press and who on frequent occasions launched vitriolic attacks on McCormick, admitted that most of the foreign correspondents for the
Chicago Tribune
enjoyed “full freedom,” and were not given orders on what to write and how to treat the facts—or the falsehoods.”
⁵³

Other reporters who understood the true nature of Nazism and its fanatical hatred of Jews included Ralph Barnes of the
New York Herald Tribune;
Edgar Ansel Mowrer, Berlin correspondent for the
Chicago Daily News
until his forced departure in late August 1933; H. R. Knickerbocker of the
New York Evening Post;
Louis Lochner of Associated Press, the reporter who had been in Berlin longest and who also maintained social contacts with German leaders and seemed particularly careful to avoid antagonizing the Nazi authorities; William Shirer of CBS, who according to Martha Dodd was among the most fiercely anti-Nazi of the American correspondents; Pierre van Paassen of the
New York World;
Fred Oeschner of the United Press, and
New York Times
correspondent Otto Tolischus.
⁵⁴
Norman Ebbutt, the senior
London Times
correspondent in Berlin, was also among the reporters who were most appalled by Nazi behavior. His intimate knowledge of Germany and his extensive contacts with different groups in the country gave him background for reports which, according to Franklin
Gannon, who has studied the British Press and Germany, “undoubtedly riled the Nazi authorities.” But Ebbutt ran into a serious obstacle when his publisher, Geoffrey Dawson, refused to publish “anything that might hurt their [German] susceptibilities.” When Ebbutt discovered that his most exhaustive, comprehensive, and critical reports did not appear in the paper, he began to feed information to Shirer, who used it in his own reports.
⁵⁵

Some reporters required only a short interaction with the Nazi system and with Hitler in order to understand them, others took longer. In certain cases initial impressions changed dramatically. Such was the case with Dorothy Thompson, whose popular syndicated column appeared in a variety of different newspapers, including the
Philadelphia Public Ledger
and the
New York Evening Post
. In 1932 Thompson visited Germany and was granted a personal interview with Hitler. She was unimpressed by the man and wrote that before she first “walked into Adolf Hitler's salon in the Kaiserhof Hotel, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something less than fifty seconds I was quite sure that I was not. It took just that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man.” (For many years Thompson's journalist colleagues reminded her of this startlingly wrong evaluation.) In March 1933 she returned to Germany for a brief visit. In her reports on this visit she confirmed that the stories of persecution were not exaggerated. She returned once again in August 1934. Ten days later she was ordered out of the country. According to Ambassador Dodd the reason for her dismissal lay in her interview with Hitler in 1932 and her reports in 1933 condemning Hitler's antisemitic campaign. Thompson explained her expulsion to readers as follows:

My first offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man . . . . That is a crime against the reigning cult . . . which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people—an old Jewish idea. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American so I merely was sent to Paris.
⁵⁶

While most of the reporters stationed in Germany had little, if any, enthusiasm for the Nazi regime, they still maintained social ties with the German hierarchy. Some, such as Louis Lochner, whose wife was German and who spoke German in his home, held many famous elaborate parties attended by high-ranking Nazi leaders. He went to great lengths to maintain cordial contacts
with German authorities. Sigrid Schultz's
Bier Abends
(beer evenings) were renowned for the array of people—from the most powerful to the “just plain common folk”—who attended. Schultz, in an interview, acknowledged that entertaining politicians such as Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, and other members of Hitler's immediate circle was a most useful way to “collect news from them.” And the fact that she socialized with these people did not compromise her reputation as an anti-Nazi.
*

There were, of course, reporters such as Karl von Wiegand of the Hearst chain, who maintained close ties with Nazi and Prussian officials and was considered by some of his colleagues to be somewhat
too
sympathetic to German interests. Even Lochner, who certainly was no friend of the Nazis, was criticized by some of his colleagues for his strong identification with Germany. Shirer believes that Lochner occasionally “compromised” his journalistic integrity in order to ensure that he would get scoops from German authorities. In his autobiography Lochner described how, when he once discussed the “Jewish question” with Hitler during a visit to his famous mountain retreat, Berchtesgaden, the Reich leader became so agitated that Lochner “saw white, foamy saliva exude from the corners of his mouth.” This description does not seem to have been included in any of Lochner's dispatches from Germany.

As I have noted, other reporters, while not sympathetic, did choose at times to mute their criticism of Nazi Germany. First of all, they desired to avoid expulsion or arrest. Second, they feared that if they told too much, they might reveal their sources, who then might be arrested, sent to concentration camps, or even killed. This was particularly the case when inmates who had been released from the camps told reporters about life inside them. Their descriptions were especially valuable because reporters were
not allowed to visit the camps except on rare and orchestrated occasions. Ironically, these descriptions were often not included in reports. Finally, reporters recognized that the more they were known to have an anti-Nazi attitude, the more they would be excluded from access to inner government circles. Fearful of being designated “uncooperative” by the Nazis, some reporters did not report all the information they obtained. Over the years of his stay in Germany, as his reputation of being unfriendly to Nazi interests grew, William Shirer found his access to news sources increasingly limited.
⁵⁸

Reporters who understood the deep and fervent Nazi commitment to antisemitism and knew that, despite occasional respites, persecution would persist had some astute backers in their field. There were editorial boards, such as the
Philadelphia Record's
, and magazines such as
The New Republic
and
The Nation
which accepted the reporters' analyses and accurately predicted that while “Jewish beatings may stop . . . . the ‘law' will be used to deprive Jews of personal and political rights.”
⁵⁹
There were publishers such as Frank Knox of the
Chicago Daily News
, who after his visit to Germany had no doubt about the veracity of the most extreme reports. There were commentators and authors such as John Gunther, whose immensely popular
Inside Europe
noted that the “basic depth and breadth of Hitler's antisemitism” was clear to anyone who read
Mein Kampf
.
⁶⁰
Visitors such as these men understood, after a face-to-face encounter with Nazi Germany, that the country had undergone a fundamental transformation. A dispatch from the
New York Times
bureau in Berlin noted that though Nazi actions might “appear incomprehensible to observers in Western democracies,” it had to be remembered that “Nazism's prestige rests on complete fulfillment of its antisemitic dogma in all its ramifications”; consequently Germany would “use all means at its disposal” to advance its antisemitic goals.
⁶¹
Yet there was in general a dichotomy in the ranks of the press between reporters stationed in Germany, who because of where they were recognized the insidious nature of the National Socialist Party, and editors, publishers, and commentators witnessing Germany from afar, who tended to be more skeptical and optimistic.

This split was mirrored in the diplomatic corps, though it was
far less striking there.
⁶²
A number of the American diplomats stationed in Germany, including Ambassador Dodd, Consul General George Messersmith, Commercial Attaché Douglas Miller, and Consul Raymond Geist, understood the nature of this regime. Even before the Nuremberg Laws were issued, Dodd and some of his colleagues contended that any amelioration in the Jews' situation, including the order against
Einzelaktionen
, or individual acts of terror, was simply a “camouflage for more drastic action based upon the plan of proceeding against the Jews by orderly, lawful means.”
⁶³
Many State Department officials at home were more optimistic about the future course of German affairs in general and the fate of the German Jews in particular. This split, which became even more striking as the situation grew more severe, may have resulted in part from the unprecedented nature of Germany's behavior, which was particularly hard to fathom when one heard about it from a distance. Never before, even in states which were unquestionably antisemitic, e.g., Czarist Russia, had the demonization of the Jew been made the
raison d'être
of the regime. Antisemitism was a fundamental element of Nazism. While officially sanctioned antisemitism was not new, the fact that this was taking place in Germany, a country where Jews were fully integrated into the fabric of society, was difficult to comprehend. It was also hard to comprehend that this was occurring in a land which attached considerable importance to foreign opinion, especially in “those countries from which she hopes to gain political or financial advantage.”
⁶⁴