Revealed: how Associated Press cooperated with the Nazis
German historian shows how news agency retained access in 1930s by promising not to undermine strength of Hitler regime
SS pamphlet “The Sub-Human”, using photographs by Associated Press.
SS pamphlet ‘The Sub-Human’, using photographs by Associated Press. Photograph: AP
Philip Oltermann in Berlin
@philipoltermann
Wednesday 30 March 2016 07.18 EDT
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The Associated Press news agency entered a formal cooperation with the Hitler regime in the 1930s, supplying American newspapers with material directly produced and selected by the Nazi propaganda ministry, archive material unearthed by a German historian has revealed.
When the Nazi party seized power in Germany in 1933, one of its first objectives was to bring into line not just the national press, but international media too. The Guardian was banned within a year, and by 1935 even bigger British-American agencies such as Keystone and Wide World Photos were forced to close their bureaus after coming under attack for employing Jewish journalists.
Associated Press, which has described itself as the “marine corps of journalism” (“always the first in and the last out”) was the only western news agency able to stay open in Hitler’s Germany, continuing to operate until the US entered the war in 1941. It thus found itself in the presumably profitable situation of being the prime channel for news reports and pictures out of the totalitarian state.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/30/associated-press-cooperation-nazis-revealed-germany-harriet-scharnberg
