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The New York Times' 'Nazi Correspondent'
This is from this past June. It seems that the NY Times has a long history of being bad at reporting and kowtowing to fascists, racists and anti-semites...
At the outbreak of the Second World War, The New York Times bureau chief in Berlin, Guido Enderis, was known to sit in the bar of the city’s famous Adlon Hotel spouting “a loudmouthed defense of Nazism,” eventually provoking another reporter to complain to the Times’ publisher: “Isn’t it about time that The New York Times did something about its Nazi correspondent?”
But the Times had no intention of doing anything about Enderis. In fact, it valued his close connections to the Nazi government, as it had throughout the 1930s. All American newspapers found reporting in Nazi Germany difficult. The government tightly controlled information and harangued and threatened reporters who managed to publish what it didn’t like. The Nazi regime also didn’t hesitate to use its strongest weapons—banning a newspaper from distribution in Germany, kicking a reporter out of the country, or denying a reporter’s reentry. As a putatively “Jewish-owned” newspaper, The New York Times considered itself a special target. Bureau chief Enderis’ job therefore was “administering reasonably soothing syrup” to Nazi officials, as another Times reporter put it.
Yet, Enderis’ actions weren’t purely strategic and their consequences were grave. Throughout the 1930s, Enderis helped steer Times coverage to play down Jewish persecution and play up Germany’s peaceful intentions. He kowtowed to Nazi officials, wrote stories presenting solely the Nazi point of view, and reined in Times reporters whose criticism he thought went too far, shaping the news in favor of a genocidal regime bent on establishing a “Thousand Year Reich.”
Other New York Times reporters, most conspicuously Walter Duranty—who deliberately minimized the Soviet famine that took millions of Ukrainian lives in the 1920s—have become notorious for misreporting the news, once time had passed and archives had opened. Enderis, however, has remained largely under the radar. I wrote about him in my 2005 book, Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper, but Enderis’ personal perfidy likely got lost in the transgressions of his employer.
To be clear, the Times had no agenda to bolster Nazism. In fact, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the Times publisher during most of the Nazi era, detested Hitler and advocated U.S. intervention to stop German aggression. Nor was Enderis a Nazi collaborator—a charge that should be leveled carefully, given that Nazi propaganda services actually enlisted American correspondents.
Instead, what crippled the Times coverage of Hitler and the Nazis was a timidity and deference to authority born of being an institution controlled by Jews who desperately wanted to fit into WASP society. Rather than run the slightest risk of being tossed out of Nazi Germany and causing a ruckus over its Jewish ownership, the Times let a figure like Enderis—a pitiful ally of some of history’s greatest villains—lead its Berlin bureau during its most consequential decade.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/new-york-times-nazi-correspondent
But the Times had no intention of doing anything about Enderis. In fact, it valued his close connections to the Nazi government, as it had throughout the 1930s. All American newspapers found reporting in Nazi Germany difficult. The government tightly controlled information and harangued and threatened reporters who managed to publish what it didn’t like. The Nazi regime also didn’t hesitate to use its strongest weapons—banning a newspaper from distribution in Germany, kicking a reporter out of the country, or denying a reporter’s reentry. As a putatively “Jewish-owned” newspaper, The New York Times considered itself a special target. Bureau chief Enderis’ job therefore was “administering reasonably soothing syrup” to Nazi officials, as another Times reporter put it.
Yet, Enderis’ actions weren’t purely strategic and their consequences were grave. Throughout the 1930s, Enderis helped steer Times coverage to play down Jewish persecution and play up Germany’s peaceful intentions. He kowtowed to Nazi officials, wrote stories presenting solely the Nazi point of view, and reined in Times reporters whose criticism he thought went too far, shaping the news in favor of a genocidal regime bent on establishing a “Thousand Year Reich.”
Other New York Times reporters, most conspicuously Walter Duranty—who deliberately minimized the Soviet famine that took millions of Ukrainian lives in the 1920s—have become notorious for misreporting the news, once time had passed and archives had opened. Enderis, however, has remained largely under the radar. I wrote about him in my 2005 book, Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper, but Enderis’ personal perfidy likely got lost in the transgressions of his employer.
To be clear, the Times had no agenda to bolster Nazism. In fact, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the Times publisher during most of the Nazi era, detested Hitler and advocated U.S. intervention to stop German aggression. Nor was Enderis a Nazi collaborator—a charge that should be leveled carefully, given that Nazi propaganda services actually enlisted American correspondents.
Instead, what crippled the Times coverage of Hitler and the Nazis was a timidity and deference to authority born of being an institution controlled by Jews who desperately wanted to fit into WASP society. Rather than run the slightest risk of being tossed out of Nazi Germany and causing a ruckus over its Jewish ownership, the Times let a figure like Enderis—a pitiful ally of some of history’s greatest villains—lead its Berlin bureau during its most consequential decade.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/new-york-times-nazi-correspondent
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