General Discussion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail

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1930–1939

Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and directed the Mail's editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s. Lord Rothermere took an extreme anti-Communist line, which led him to own an estate in Hungary to which he might escape to in case Britain was conquered by the Soviet Union. Shortly after the Nazis scored their breakthrough in the Reichstag elections on 14 September 1930, winning 107 seats, Rothermere went to Munich to interview Hitler. In an article published in The Daily Mail on 24 September 1930, Rothermere wrote: "These young Germans have discovered, as I am glad to note that the young men and women of England are discovering, that is no good trusting the old politicians. Accordingly, they have formed, as I should like to see our British youth form, a parliamentary party of their own...We can do nothing to check this movement [the Nazis], and I believe it would be a blunder for the British people to take up an attitude of hostility towards it." Starting in December 1931, Rothermere opened up talks with Oswald Mosley under which terms The Daily Mail would support his party. The talks were drawn out largely because Mosley understood that Rothermere was a megalomaniac who wanted to use the New Party for his own purposes as he sought to impose terms and conditions in exchange for the support of The Daily Mail. Mosley, who was equally egoistical, wanted Rothermere's support, but only on his own terms.

Rothermere's 1933 leader "Youth Triumphant" praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by them. In it, Rothermere predicted that "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". Journalist John Simpson, in a book on journalism, suggested that Rothermere was referring to the violence against Jews and Communists rather than the detention of political prisoners. Alongside his support for Nazi Germany as the "bulwark against Bolshevism", Rothermere used The Daily Mail as a forum to champion his pet cause, namely a stronger Royal Air Force (RAF). Rothermere had decided that aerial war was the technology of the future, and throughout the 1930s The Daily Mail was described as "obsessional" in pressing for more spending on the RAF.

Rothermere and The Mail were also editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Rothermere wrote an article titled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" published in The Daily Mail on 15 January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine", and stating that: "Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W." The Spectator condemned Rothermere's article commenting that, "the Blackshirts, like The Daily Mail, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average Daily Mail reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made. When Lord Rothermere tells his clientele to go and join the Fascists some of them pretty certainly will." In April 1934, The Daily Mail ran a competition entitled "Why I Like The Blackshirts" under which it awarded one pound every week for the best letter from its readers explaining why they liked the BUF. The paper's support ended after violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia in June 1934. Mosley and many others thought Rothermere had responded to pressure from Jewish businessmen who it was believed had threatened to stop advertising in the paper if it continued to back an antisemitic party. The paper editorially continued to oppose the arrival of Jewish refugees escaping Germany, describing their arrival as "a problem to which The Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed."

In December 1934, Rothermere visited Berlin as the guest of Joachim von Ribbentrop. During his visit, Rothermere was publicly thanked in a speech by Josef Goebbels for The Daily Mail's pro-German coverage of the Saarland referendum, under which the people of the Saarland had the choices of voting to remain under the rule of the League of Nations, join France, or rejoin Germany. In March 1935, impressed by the arguments put forward by Ribbentrop for the return of the former German colonies in Africa, Rothermere published a leader entitled "Germany Must Have Elbow Room". In his leader, Rothermere argued that the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh towards the Reich and claimed that the German economy was being crippled by the loss of the German colonial empire in Africa as he argued that without African colonies to exploit that the German economic recovery from the Great Depression was fragile and shallow.

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