Burning the Reichstag by Benjamin Carter Hett Read Free Book Online

exceptions of the
Frankfurter Zeitung
(Frankfurt newspaper) and the
DAZ
were little more than official mouthpieces. Yet the foreign correspondents were still able to operate with considerable, though far from absolute, freedom, so thatGermany did still have something of a free press, albeit only for foreign consumption. American, British, Swiss, French, and other international papers could report on the Reichstag fire and the investigation and trial concerning it, as well as on the brutalities of the SA, the worsening situation for Jews, and the rapid disintegration of political and civil freedoms. Or at least they could to the extent they wanted to. The
Manchester Guardian
was especially fearless and aggressive in its reporting on Nazi Germany. Indeed the
Guardian
emerged from the 1930s with an impressive record: George Orwell, who in
Homage to Catalonia
wrote scathingly about the accuracy of papers of left and right alike, recorded that the
Guardian
was the sole exception; its coverage of the Spanish Civil War left him with “an increased respect for its honesty.” The other British “quality” papers, on the other hand, were often reluctant to print what they knew about Nazi Germany, out of political and diplomatic calculation. The
Times
was the worst offender, which was the fault of its editors and not of its correspondents in Germany, Norman Ebbutt and Douglas Reed. Sometimes reporters hesitated to report stories out of well-founded fear of what would happen to their sources or to those already victimized. Louis P. Lochner, head of the Berlin bureau of the Associated Press, decided that his priority was to keep his bureau open so that at least some information from Germany could flow to the United States and elsewhere. This meant that he often kept to himself stories of Nazi atrocities. 7
    Reporters like Knick, and other Americans in Berlin such as the new Ambassador William E. Dodd, who like Knick saw Diels as something of an ally, would have been shocked to learn what Diels really thought of the foreign press. “Immediately after the Reichstag fire,” Diels wrote to Goebbels in July, the majority of foreign news outlets had begun a “purposeful and skillful” propaganda campaign to present the fire as a “deceptive maneuver by the leaders of the national movement, especially by Herr Prime Minister Göring,” to influence the outcome of the elections and solidify their hold on power (Göring had been named Prussian prime minister in April, while remaining Prussian interior minister). This campaign of lies continued unabated, said Diels, with the result that public opinion abroad took the guilt of the government as a given and even expected the coming trial in Germany to demonstrate this guilt. Blaming the new government for the fire constituted “the mainstay of Jewish-Marxist publicity against the national revolution.” A few weeks later, writing to Göring, Diels was even blunter. “The heretofore careful treatment of the foreigncorrespondents” from newspapers that indulged in such lies and distortions would, he said, have to end. 8
    Diels was therefore exasperated that, despite his efforts, German counter-propaganda had proven a complete failure. He complained that even foreign outlets that might be willing to consider the official German perspective on the fire, either for ideological or “purely journalistic” motives, had not been given the information Diels could have provided “with ease.” Bringing van der Lubbe to trial quickly would help, but Diels also had the temerity to urge on Goebbels the need for propaganda that took account of the “sentiments” of people abroad. 9
    Diels bluntly advocated, and the Gestapo carried out, telephone and postal surveillance of the foreign correspondents attending the trial of van der Lubbe and the other Reichstag fire suspects in Leipzig. He even suggested that all reporters be housed in