The (free) German press during National Socialist government

[lazycat1984]

Seeing the proliferation of censorious behaviour in western governments, I'm struck that in the EU and UK, particularly, but to some extent the US as well, thr 'free press' works precisely like the press in Germany 33-45. I always read that journos were able to write whatever they liked but were guided by regularly issued circulars from the Propaganda Ministry which provided guidance on how to discuss varous events. Also, journalists were likely patriotic generally. Those inclined to anti-NS views were pushed out before war censorship became ironclad. The UK is not at war but there are wide topics that may not be discussed online. The EU is not at war, yet an even more draconian regime obtains.

But try to find any discussion of this aspect of European/German/WW2 history and all you can find it cookie cutter, copy/paste slabs of text from various Holocaust sites and the like. You get more useful information from open communists on spartacus than you can in something like Wikipeia which just repackages 'and they thought they were free' type stuff.

[CraigM]

The UK is not at war but there are wide topics that may not be discussed online.

Really? Please elaborate. Be specific. Then I will start an online discussion on it.

The EU is not at war, yet an even more draconian regime obtains.

Ditto.

[pugsville]

Seeing the proliferation of censorious behaviour in western governments, I'm struck that in the EU and UK, particularly, but to some extent the US as well, thr 'free press' works precisely like the press in Germany 33-45. I always read that journos were able to write whatever they liked but were guided by regularly issued circulars from the Propaganda Ministry which provided guidance on how to discuss varous events. Also, journalists were likely patriotic generally. Those inclined to anti-NS views were pushed out before war censorship became ironclad. The UK is not at war but there are wide topics that may not be discussed online. The EU is not at war, yet an even more draconian regime obtains.

But try to find any discussion of this aspect of European/German/WW2 history and all you can find it cookie cutter, copy/paste slabs of text from various Holocaust sites and the like. You get more useful information from open communists on spartacus than you can in something like Wikipeia which just repackages 'and they thought they were free' type stuff.

No, there was No free press under the Nazi dictatorship from the start.

" Louis P. Lochner, the doyen of the Berlin press corps, described the German media scene in a 1937 dispatch for The Associated Press this way:
“Freedom of the press as understood in America died on the night of Jan. 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler took the government of Germany into his authoritarian hands.”"

"On March 14, 1933, just six weeks after seizing power, Hitler established the Reich Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda and put the virulently anti-Semitic Joseph Goebbels, who was to be Nazi Germany’s chief propagandist until the ruinous end of World War II, in charge.
Hitler’s dictatorship was to change dramatically not only who could report, edit and publish news and photos in Germany — and later in German- occupied countries — but also precisely what news would be covered and how. Similar controls were put on news and photos entering Germany from abroad"

"The Propaganda Ministry, through the Reichpressekammer, took control of the Reich Association of the German Press, which regulated entry into the profession. No German could serve as editor or correspondent unless admitted to the Reichpressekammer. Expulsion from the organization was tantamount to losing the right to write for a living."

"To impose control on the domestic press, the regime subjected journalists
and publishers to strict oversight. The Nazi party’s publishing house, the Franz Eher Verlag, acquired the ownership directly or indirectly of most of the German press, and the Propaganda Ministry maintained control of everything published by newspapers through the Deutsches Nachrichtenbuero (DNB), the state-controlled press agency, including its photo service, Welt Bild. The ministry issued constant directives at daily 11 a.m. press conferences.5 By 1944, no more than 1,100 newspapers of the 4,700 published when the Nazis came to power in 1933 remained, but of these, many managed to publish until the end of the war."

“More than that: the German newsman is under oath not to reveal information divulged at the press conference as confidential matter, nor even to reveal information which he may himself have gathered but which the ministry decides may not be published,” Lochner wrote in an article for The Quill magazine. “The laws for the punishment of treason under which such revelations fall are extremely severe.”"


"The law included a sweeping passage defining what could not be published domestically, placing immense power into the hands of top officials of the Propaganda Ministry, unaffectionately referred to as the Promi by the foreign press corps. “Experience has abundantly shown that Dr. Goebbels does not hesitate to use his power,” Lochner wrote."

"Explaining the new law to his headquarters in New York, Lochner wrote:
“I, as Geschaeftsfuehrer [managing director], must call together the entire staff of the AP GmbH [AP’s photo operation] and in their presence pledge the Nazi representative on the Council of Confidence to live up to all the principles of this organization, and I in turn must pledge that our GmbH will obey the rules and regulations of the Nazi state.”
“As a foreigner, I must not end my pledge with the customary ‘Heil Hitler,’” he added, “but in spirit I must accept the regulations or else our company is threatened with dissolution.”"

"Under Dietrich, the Ministry of Propaganda’s focus was not just aimed at solidifying domestic support for the Reich, but guarding against unsavory news about Germany being spread abroad and news and photos contrary to the Nazi narrative entering Germany.
In 1933, the year Hitler took power, Lochner reported to New York why he had rejected using a picture offered by a photographer in Munich showing a Jewish businessman being led in his shorts through the streets of the city with an anti-Semitic placard hanging from his neck.12
The photographer had sold it to others and it appeared in publications abroad prompting a Nazi raid on AP’s photo office where it became evident AP did not have and had not distributed the photo."

pages 6-9 from
" Covering Tyranny - The AP and Nazi Germany "