© APThe Associated Press photographs the third anniversary of National Socialism's accession to power in 1933 widely celebrated throughout Germany on Feb. 11, 1936. At noon, Adolf Hitler assembled 25,000 of his oldest stormtroop comrades in the Lustgarten in Berlin. In his address, Hitler reiterated Germany’s will to peace. This is a general view of the banner and flag bearers in Berlin.
News agency and Third Reich said to have made mutually beneficial deal, with AP providing countless photos for Nazi propaganda; AP denies collaboration
The Associated Press news agency willingly cooperated with Nazi Germany, submitting to the regime's restrictive rulings on the freedom of the press and providing it with images from its photo archives to be used in its anti-Semitic and anti-Western propaganda machine, a new report reveals.
When Adolf Hitler's National Socialists rose to power in 1933, all international news agencies but the US-based AP were forced to leave Germany. The AP continued to operate in the Third Reich until 1941, when the United States joined World War II.
According to German historian Harriet Scharnberg, the world's biggest news agency was only allowed to remain in Germany because it signed a deal with the regime.
The news agency lost control over its copy by submitting itself to the Schriftleitergesetz (editor's law), agreeing not to print any material "calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home," she wrote in an article published in the academic journal Studies in Contemporary History.
Scharnberg's research was first reported by the UK-based Guardian newspaper.
According to the paper, the Nazis' so-called editor's law forced AP employees to contribute material for the Nazi party's propaganda division. One of the four photographers working for the company in the 1930s was Franz Roth, a member of the SS paramilitary unit's propaganda division. His pictures were handpicked by Hitler, the Guardian writes.
Photocollage cover of Der Untermensch (The Subhuman), a 52-page SS pamphlet that used images taken by the Associated Press (Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin)
It is possible to argue that the AP's agreement with the Nazis allowed the West a "peek into a repressive society that may otherwise have been entirely hidden from view," the Guardian writes. On the other hand, the deal allowed to Nazis to cover up their war crimes. The cooperation with the prestigious American news agency allowed Hitler to portray his "war of extermination as a conventional war," Scharnberg told the Guardian.
"Instead of printing pictures of the days-long Lviv pogroms with its thousands of Jewish victims, the American press was only supplied with photographs showing the victims of the Soviet police and 'brute' Red Army war criminals," Scharnberg, a historian at Halle's Martin Luther University, told the paper, citing one example of the agency's work helping the Nazis.
"To that extent it is fair to say that these pictures played their part in disguising the true character of the war led by the Germans," she added. "Which events were made visible and which remained invisible in AP's supply of pictures followed German interests and the German narrative of the war."
Responding to the Guardian's report, the AP said it would research the matter but rejected the notion that it deliberately collaborated with the Nazis.
Comment: AP would deny it now, that's to be expected. But facts are facts. And when someone in the future researches AP's anti-Russia bias of today, or it's anti-Muslim 'war on terror' (to take but two examples), they will see how, yet again, this colossus news agency has consistently chosen to support the aims of the worst geopolitical forces in the interest of serving its true masters, and making a buck at humanity's expense. And, of course, they aren't alone in these crimes.
"An accurate characterization is that the AP and other foreign news organizations were subjected to intense pressure from the Nazi regime from the year of Hitler's coming to power in 1932 until the AP's expulsion from Germany in 1941. AP management resisted the pressure while working to gather accurate, vital and objective news in a dark and dangerous time," the agency stated.
Comment: With this story, we now see how Western collaboration with the Nazis was 'complete'. Prescott Bush (George W. Bush's grandfather), IBM, Ford Motors, Standard Oil and the Bank of England - all did business with and helped build up the most monstrous and murderous regime of the twentieth century. And now we learn that the 'reality creators' of the Western media also 'did their part' by shaping the big lies which led to one of the most destructive wars in known history.