{"id":17565,"date":"2021-02-12T17:47:57","date_gmt":"2021-02-13T01:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=17565"},"modified":"2021-02-12T17:47:59","modified_gmt":"2021-02-13T01:47:59","slug":"how-journalists-covered-the-rise-of-mussolini-and-hitler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/02\/12\/how-journalists-covered-the-rise-of-mussolini-and-hitler\/","title":{"rendered":"HOW JOURNALISTS COVERED THE RISE OF MUSSOLINI AND HITLER"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reports on the rise of fascism in Europe were not the American media\u2019s finest hour<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Benito
Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler (Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By John Broich, The Conversation<\/a><\/strong> SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
DECEMBER 13, 2016<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to cover the rise of a political leader who\u2019s 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 \u201cnormal,\u201d because his leadership reflects the will of the people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A leader for life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Benito Mussolini secured Italy\u2019s premiership by marching on Rome<\/a> with 30,000 blackshirts in 1922. By 1925 he had declared himself leader<\/a> for life. While this hardly reflected American values, Mussolini was a darling<\/a> of the American press, appearing in at least 150 articles from 1925-1932, most neutral, bemused or positive in tone.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saturday Evening Post<\/em> even serialized<\/a> Il Duce\u2019s autobiography in 1928. Acknowledging that the new \u201cFascisti movement\u201d was a bit \u201crough in its methods<\/a>,\u201d papers ranging from the New York Tribune<\/em> to the Cleveland Plain Dealer<\/em> to the Chicago Tribune<\/em> credited it<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, while the media acknowledged that Fascism was a new \u201cexperiment,\u201d papers like The New York Times<\/em> commonly credited it<\/a> with returning turbulent Italy to what it called \u201cnormalcy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet some journalists like Hemingway<\/a> and journals like the New Yorker<\/em><\/a> rejected the normalization of anti-democratic Mussolini. John Gunther of Harper\u2019s, meanwhile, wrote a razor-sharp account of Mussolini\u2019s masterful manipulation of a U.S. press that couldn\u2019t resist him.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018German Mussolini\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Mussolini\u2019s success in Italy normalized Hitler\u2019s success in the eyes of the American press who, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, routinely called him \u201cthe German Mussolini.\u201d<\/a> Given Mussolini\u2019s 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 \u201920\u2019s to early \u201930\u2019s, going from a fringe party to winning a dominant share of parliamentary seats in free elections in 1932<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the main way that the press defanged Hitler was by portraying him as something of a joke. He was a \u201cnonsensical\u201d screecher<\/a> of \u201cwild words\u201d whose appearance, according to Newsweek<\/em>, \u201csuggests Charlie Chaplin.\u201d His \u201ccountenance is a caricature.\u201d He was as \u201cvoluble\u201d as he was \u201cinsecure,\u201d<\/a> stated Cosmopolitan<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Hitler\u2019s party won influence in Parliament, and even after he was made chancellor of Germany in 1933 \u2013 about a year and a half before seizing dictatorial power \u2013 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 \u201cimpressionable voters\u201d duped by \u201cradical doctrines and quack remedies,\u201d claimed The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>. Now that Hitler actually had to operate within a government the \u201csober\u201d politicians would \u201csubmerge\u201d this movement, according to The New York Times<\/a><\/em> and Christian Science Monitor<\/a><\/em>. A \u201ckeen sense of dramatic instinct\u201d was not enough. When it came to time to govern, his lack of \u201cgravity\u201d and \u201cprofundity of thought\u201d would be exposed.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, The New York Times<\/em> wrote<\/a> after Hitler\u2019s appointment to the chancellorship that success would only \u201clet him expose to the German public his own futility.\u201d Journalists wondered<\/a> whether Hitler now regretted leaving the rally for the cabinet meeting, where he would have to assume some responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, the American press<\/a> tended to condemn Hitler\u2019s well-documented anti-Semitism in the early 1930s. But there were plenty of exceptions. Some papers downplayed reports of violence against Germany\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journalists were aware that they could only criticize the German regime so much and maintain their access. When a CBS broadcaster\u2019s son was beaten up by brownshirts for not saluting the F\u00fchrer, he didn\u2019t report it<\/a>. When the Chicago Daily News\u2019<\/em> Edgar Mowrer wrote that Germany was becoming \u201can insane asylum\u201d in 1933, the Germans pressured the State Department to rein in American reporters. Allen Dulles, who eventually became director of the CIA, told Mowrer<\/a> he was \u201ctaking the German situation too seriously.\u201d Mowrer\u2019s publisher then transferred him out of Germany in fear of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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> a loving paean to \u201cChanging Berlin\u201d for National Geographic<\/em> in 1937.) Dorothy Thompson<\/a>, who judged Hitler a man of \u201cstartling insignificance\u201d in 1928, realized her mistake by mid-decade when she, like Mowrer, began raising the alarm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo people ever recognize their dictator in advance,\u201d she reflected<\/a> in 1935. \u201cHe never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will.\u201d Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, \u201cWhen 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.\u201d

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reports on the rise of fascism in Europe were not the American media\u2019s finest hour By John Broich, The Conversation SMITHSONIANMAG.COMDECEMBER 13, 2016 How to cover the rise of a political leader who\u2019s left a paper trail of anti-constitutionalism, racism and the encouragement of violence? Does the press take the position that its… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17565"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17566,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17565\/revisions\/17566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}