«Έχω πει μερικές φορές στον εαυτό μου ότι αν υπήρχε μία μόνο πινακίδα στην είσοδο κάθε εκκλησίας που να απαγόρευε την είσοδο σε οποιονδήποτε με εισόδημα πάνω από ένα συγκεκριμένο ποσό , θα γινόμουν αμέσως χριστιανή» . Σιμόν Βέιλ, Γαλλίδα φιλόσοφος και πολιτική ακτιβίστρια (1909-1943)
Σάββατο, Σεπτεμβρίου 21, 2019
Δημοσιογραφικοί κάλαμοι υπέρ Μουσολίνι και Χίτλερ κατά την εποχή του Μεσοπολέμου
How to report on a fascist?
How to cover the rise of a political leader who’s left a paper trail
of anti-constitutionalism, racism and the encouragement of violence?
Does the press take the position that its subject acts outside the norms
of society? Or does it take the position that someone who wins a fair
election is by definition “normal,” because his leadership reflects the
will of the people?
These are the questions that confronted the U.S. press after the
ascendance of fascist leaders in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and
1930s.
Benito Mussolini speaks at the dedication ceremonies of Sabaudia on Sept. 24, 1934.
AP Photo
The Saturday Evening Post even serialized Il Duce’s autobiography in 1928. Acknowledging that the new “Fascisti movement” was a bit “rough in its methods,” papers ranging from the New York Tribune to the Cleveland Plain Dealer to the Chicago Tribune credited it
with saving Italy from the far left and revitalizing its economy. From
their perspective, the post-WWI surge of anti-capitalism in Europe was a
vastly worse threat than Fascism.
Ironically, while the media acknowledged that Fascism was a new “experiment,” papers like The New York Times commonly credited it with returning turbulent Italy to what it called “normalcy.”
Yet some journalists like Hemingway and journals like the New Yorker
rejected the normalization of anti-democratic Mussolini. John Gunther
of Harper’s, meanwhile, wrote a razor-sharp account of Mussolini’s
masterful manipulation of a U.S. press that couldn’t resist him.
The ‘German Mussolini’
Mussolini’s success in Italy normalized Hitler’s success in the eyes
of the American press who, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, routinely
called him “the German Mussolini.”
Given Mussolini’s positive press reception in that period, it was a
good place from which to start. Hitler also had the advantage that his
Nazi party enjoyed stunning leaps at the polls from the mid ‘20’s to
early ‘30’s, going from a fringe party to winning a dominant share of
parliamentary seats in free elections in 1932.
But the main way that the press defanged Hitler was by portraying him as something of a joke. He was a “nonsensical” screecher
of “wild words” whose appearance, according to Newsweek, “suggests
Charlie Chaplin.” His “countenance is a caricature.” He was as “voluble” as he was “insecure,” stated Cosmopolitan.
German youth study the newspaper on May 18, 1931.
AP Photo
When Hitler’s party won influence in Parliament, and even after he
was made chancellor of Germany in 1933 – about a year and a half before
seizing dictatorial power – many American press outlets judged that he
would either be outplayed by more traditional politicians or that he
would have to become more moderate. Sure, he had a following, but his
followers were “impressionable voters” duped by “radical doctrines and
quack remedies,” claimed the Washington Post.
Now that Hitler actually had to operate within a government the “sober”
politicians would “submerge” this movement, according to The New York Times and Christian Science Monitor.
A “keen sense of dramatic instinct” was not enough. When it came to
time to govern, his lack of “gravity” and “profundity of thought” would be exposed.
In fact, The New York Times wrote
after Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship that success would
only “let him expose to the German public his own futility.” Journalists wondered whether Hitler now regretted leaving the rally for the cabinet meeting, where he would have to assume some responsibility.
Yes, the American press
tended to condemn Hitler’s well-documented anti-Semitism in the early
1930s. But there were plenty of exceptions. Some papers downplayed
reports of violence against Germany’s Jewish citizens as propaganda like
that which proliferated during the foregoing World War. Many, even
those who categorically condemned the violence, repeatedly declared it
to be at an end, showing a tendency to look for a return to normalcy.
Journalists were aware that they could only criticize the German
regime so much and maintain their access. When a CBS broadcaster’s son
was beaten up by brownshirts for not saluting the Führer, he didn’t report it.
When the Chicago Daily News’ Edgar Mowrer wrote that Germany was
becoming “an insane asylum” in 1933, the Germans pressured the State
Department to rein in American reporters. Allen Dulles, who eventually
became director of the CIA, told Mowrer he was “taking the German situation too seriously.” Mowrer’s publisher then transferred him out of Germany in fear of his life.
By the later 1930s, most U.S. journalists realized their mistake in
underestimating Hitler or failing to imagine just how bad things could
get. (Though there remained infamous exceptions, like Douglas Chandler, who wrote a loving paean to “Changing Berlin” for National Geographic in 1937.) Dorothy Thompson,
who judged Hitler a man of “startling insignificance” in 1928, realized
her mistake by mid-decade when she, like Mowrer, began raising the
alarm.
“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” she reflected
in 1935. “He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship.
He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated
National Will.” Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, “When our
dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys,
and he will stand for everything traditionally American.”
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