In most accounts of the fight against Nazi Germany, the Americans and the British get to be the good guys. But in “The Newspaper Axis,” Kathryn S. Olmsted levels a damning indictment against six of the most powerful English-language publishers of the World War II era. Although they claimed to be patriots, they used their influence to downplay, condone and sometimes even promote Adolf Hitler’s rise.
The worst offender was Lord Harold Rothermere, publisher of London’s Daily Mail, a right-wing tabloid that sold more than 1 million copies a day. A supporter of Britain’s fascist Blackshirts, Rothermere gushed in print about how Hitler had “saved his country” from ineffectual leaders and had brought “immense benefits” to Germany (Rothermere was even more fawning in the private letters he addressed to “my dear Führer”).
Rothermere’s friend Lord Beaverbrook, whose Daily Express was the only British newspaper with a higher circulation than the Mail, also belongs in the newspaper axis, Olmsted says. Although he is generally celebrated for his role overseeing war industries for Winston Churchill’s government during World War II, Beaverbrook had previously insisted that Britain should stay out of Hitler’s way and that Hitler’s “exceptional astuteness” meant he wouldn’t launch a war. The bigger threat, Beaverbrook believed, was Churchill. The two were longtime friends, and Beaverbrook’s Evening Standard had employed Churchill as a columnist. But after Churchill’s speech denouncing Hitler’s annexation of Austria, Beaverbrook turned on him. Not content with canceling Churchill’s column, Beaverbrook also told one of his reporters to compile a file of Churchill’s statements that could be used to paint him as a warmonger, saying, “He must be stopped.” (The Washington Post: In the pages of their newspapers, they downplayed Hitler’s threat)
Let us take a closer look at some of the statements in print, made by the Daily Mail and begin in 1930 when Adolf Hitler made considerable gains in the German elections. Mein Kampf had already been written, making clear Hitler’s ideas on the racial supremacy of the supposed ‘Aryan’ race. And yet, for the Daily Mail, Hitler, his party and their success represented the “birth of Germany as a nation”.
Fast forward a few years to January 1934, when they ran with the headline “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” with an article celebrating Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Mosley was highly influenced by Benito Mussolini, so much so that members of the BUF were given the nickname of ‘Blackshirts’ as their uniform was modelled on that worn by those belonging to the National Fascist Party in Italy. Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail and author of the article, praised Mosley and the Blackshirts seeing them as the correct party to “take over responsibility for [British] national affairs”.
Not only did this positive reporting gain them exclusive access to publish interviews with Hitler, it also earned Lord Rothermere and his son a place at the dinner table as honoured guests of Hitler himself.
How many Jewish people died in Nazi concentration camps cos of The Daily Mail’s campaign against Jewish refugees? They’re still demonising refugees.
A move to disguised discrimination
As the Second World War loomed, the Daily Mail began to change its editorial line and moved away from explicitly supporting fascists and their regimes. But, the racism and xenophobia remained a key part of their ‘journalism’ and has continued through to this day.
A few weeks before the 2012 Olympics, the Mail claimed that the British team had 61 “plastic Brits” due to the fact they had been born oversees, ignoring the fact that the majority of the 61 were entitled to British citizenship from birth due to having British heritage. Also, this takes a very narrow, and frankly wrong, approach to what it means to be British.
The Mail was also outraged when the opening ceremony depicted a multicultural family. Because, according to Rick Dewsbury, it was “absurd” and “unrealistic” to show a “mixed-race middle-class family in a detached new-build home”. For him, this was done to appease the politically correct agenda that supposedly exists in Britain as he believes that in reality it would be a “challenge […] to find an educated white middle-aged mother and black father living together with a happy family in such a set-up”. After a flurry of complaints the Mail simply took the offending material off its website without uttering a word and definitely not an apology. However, an archived screen print can still be found. (Global Justice Now)
The effect of justifying hate and cruelty against minority groups in particular can be characterised clearly by these readers:
This sickness comes from multiple places but it is legitimated by media such as the Daily Mail. In the year ending March 2021, there were 124,091 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales.
If someone pays money to an offender who then utilises that money to keep offending then that someone is complicit. The Daily Mail and other media are historically and contemporaneously supporters of fascism and Nazism. Those ideologies brought and continue to bring death and destruction. Ignorance is not virtuous or a defence. The information is at our fingertips. Choosing not to find it is a choice. Choosing to support fascist and Nazi supporting media is a choice. Once that choice is made and the money changes hands or the click occurs then the hammer falls. Guilty!
Douglas James
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