British Newspaper Reporting of Appeasement and Nazi Germany

Appeasement provides an interesting way to look at how the subject was reported in British newspapers. The two major press barons, Lord Rothermere (The Daily Mail, The Sunday Dispatch and The Evening News) and Lord Waldorf Astor (The Times and The Observer) were both strong supporters of appeasement and so the public had a very distorted picture of the negotiations. Rothermere and Astor both used their newspapers to provide a positive image of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. So much so that their activities were being monitored by MI5. In doing so, they discovered that both men were seen on a regular basis in the company of Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, a Nazi spy who had been under observation as a German agent since receiving information from French Intelligence in 1928.

One of the most important journalist in this campaign was George Ward Price. There is virtually nothing available on the web on the activities of Ward Price. I have therefore produced a very detailed page on his reporting. He was the Daily Mail's foreign correspondent. During the 1930s he developed a close relationship with Adolf Hitler. According to the German historian, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen: "The famous special correspondent of the London Daily Mail, Ward Price, was welcomed to interviews in the Reich Chancellery in a more privileged way than all other foreign journalists, particularly when foreign countries had once more been brusqued by a decision of German foreign policy. His paper supported Hitler more strongly and more constantly than any other newspaper outside Germany."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/George_Ward_Price.htm

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