Allegedly the only man capable of holding the Führer's intense gaze, Rothay Reynolds was a leading foreign correspondent between the wars and ran the Daily Mail's bureau in Berlin throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The enigmatic former clergyman was one of the first journalists to interview Adolf Hitler, meeting the future Führer days before the Munich Putsch. While the awful realities of the Third Reich were becoming apparent on the ground in Germany, in Britain the Daily Mail continued to support the Nazi regime. Reynolds's time as a foreign correspondent in Nazi Germany provides some startling insights into the muzzling of the international press prior to the Second World War, as journalists walked uneasy tightropes between their employers' politics and their own journalistic integrity. As war approached, the stakes - and the threats from the Gestapo - rose dramatically. Reporting on Hitler reveals the gripping story of Rothay Reynolds and the intrepid foreign correspondents who reported on some of the twentieth century's most momentous events in the face of sinister propaganda, brazen censorship and the threat of expulsion - or worse - if they didn't toe the Nazis' line. It uncovers the bravery of the forgotten heroes from a golden age of British journalism, who risked everything to tell the world the truth.

The British Press -- Hitler Becomes Chancellor -- The Destruction of Democracy -- The Manchester Guardian and the Terror in Germany: A Special Case -- The Second Revolution? The Röhm Purge -- 'Cross and Swastika': The Struggle for the Churches in Germany -- The Nazi Persecution of the Jews.

Winner of the Barclay Book Prize, German Studies Association Winner of the Gomory Prize in Business History, American Historical Association and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Winner of the Fraenkel Prize, Wiener Library for the Study of Holocaust and Genocide Honorable Mention, European Studies Book Award, Council for European Studies To control information is to control the world. This innovative history reveals how, across two devastating wars, Germany attempted to build a powerful communication empire—and how the Nazis manipulated the news to rise to dominance in Europe and further their global agenda. Information warfare may seem like a new feature of our contemporary digital world. But it was just as crucial a century ago, when the great powers competed to control and expand their empires. In News from Germany, Heidi Tworek uncovers how Germans fought to regulate information at home and used the innovation of wireless technology to magnify their power abroad. Tworek reveals how for nearly fifty years, across three different political regimes, Germany tried to control world communications—and nearly succeeded. From the turn of the twentieth century, German political and business elites worried that their British and French rivals dominated global news networks. Many Germans even blamed foreign media for Germany’s defeat in World War I. The key to the British and French advantage was their news agencies—companies whose power over the content and distribution of news was arguably greater than that wielded by Google or Facebook today. Communications networks became a crucial battleground for interwar domestic democracy and international influence everywhere from Latin America to East Asia. Imperial leaders, and their Weimar and Nazi successors, nurtured wireless technology to make news from Germany a major source of information across the globe. The Nazi mastery of global propaganda by the 1930s was built on decades of Germany’s obsession with the news. News from Germany is not a story about Germany alone. It reveals how news became a form of international power and how communications changed the course of history.

Wesley K. Wark catalogs the many misperceptions about Nazi Germany that were often fostered by British intelligence.

How was it possible that almost all of the nearly 300,000 British and American troops who fell into German hands during World War II survived captivity in German POW camps and returned home almost as soon as the war ended? In Confronting Captivity, Arieh J. Kochavi offers a behind-the-scenes look at the living conditions in Nazi camps and traces the actions the British and American governments took--and didn't take--to ensure the safety of their captured soldiers. Concern in London and Washington about the safety of these POWs was mitigated by the recognition that the Nazi leadership tended to adhere to the Geneva Convention when it came to British and U.S. prisoners. Following the invasion of Normandy, however, Allied apprehension over the safety of POWs turned into anxiety for their very lives. Yet Britain and the United States took the calculated risk of counting on a swift conclusion to the war as the Soviets approached Germany from the east. Ultimately, Kochavi argues, it was more likely that the lives of British and American POWs were spared because of their race rather than any actions their governments took on their behalf.

What was known and understood about the nature of the Nazi dictatorship in Britain prior to war in 1939? How was Nazism viewed by those outside of Germany? The British Press and Nazi Germany considers these questions through the lens of the British press. Until now, studies that centre on British press attitudes to Nazi Germany have concentrated on issues of foreign policy. The focus of this book is quite different. In using material that has largely been neglected, Kylie Galbraith examines what the British press reported about life inside the Nazi dictatorship. In doing so, the book imparts important insights into what was known and understood about the Nazi revolution. And, because the overwhelming proportion of the British public's only means of news was the press, this volume shows what people in Britain could have known about the Nazi dictatorship. It reveals what the British people were being told about the regime, specifically the destruction of Weimar democracy, the ruthless persecution of minorities, the suppression of the churches and the violent factional infighting within Nazism itself. This pathbreaking examination of the British press' coverage of Nazism in the 1930s greatly enhances our knowledge of the fascist regime with which the British Government was attempting to reach agreement at the time.

"This book shows that the national British Press generally shared a common revulsion against Nazi barbarities, which were well known. Beyond this common denominator, however, the British Press reacted to Nazi Germany mainly along Left-Right political lines over issues formulated a decade before the Nazi came to power and in many ways having little or nothing to do with Germany itself. Basing himself upon a careful reading of the ten major British daily and Sunday newspapers supplemented with important new material from the archives of The Times, the Manchester Guardian, and several collections of personal papers, Dr Gannon concludes that Hitler and his demands were like a funnel into which British attitudes on every question from armaments to xenophobia were poured: what emerged from the funnel was the single policy of appeasement."--Book Jacket.