Editing Daily Mail (section)

====1930–1934====
Lord Rothermere was a friend of [[Benito Mussolini]] and [[Adolf Hitler]], and directed the Mail's editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s.<ref>{{cite book|last=Griffiths|first=Richard|title=Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–9|year=1980|publisher=Constable|location=London|isbn=0-09-463460-2}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Taylor|first=S. J.|title=The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail|year=1996|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson|location=London|isbn=0-297-81653-5}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|p=34}} Shortly after the Nazis scored their breakthrough in the [[1930 German federal election|Reichstag elections on 14 September 1930]], winning 107 seats, Rothermere went to Munich to interview Hitler.<ref name="Lord Rothemere and Herr Hitler-1930">{{cite news |title=Lord Rothemere and Herr Hitler |url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/27th-september-1930/1/lord-rothermere-and-herr-hitler |publisher=The Spectator |date=27 September 1930 |access-date=21 January 2022 |archive-date=21 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220121071705/http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/27th-september-1930/1/lord-rothermere-and-herr-hitler |url-status=live }}</ref> In an article published in ''Daily Mail'' on 24 September 1930, Rothemere 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."<ref name="Lord Rothemere and Herr Hitler-1930"/> Starting in December 1931, Rothermere opened up talks with Oswald Mosley under which terms the ''Daily Mail'' would support his party.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=150}} 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''.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=150}} Mosley, who was equally egoistical, wanted Rothermere's support, but only on his own terms.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=150}}

Rothermere's 1933 leader "Youth Triumphant" praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by them.<ref>{{cite book|last=Giles|first=Paul|title=Atlantic republic: the American tradition in English literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t07NY0V0vzcC&pg=PT213|year=2006|publisher=OUP Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-920633-9|access-date=29 June 2015|archive-date=6 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206070540/https://books.google.com/books?id=t07NY0V0vzcC&pg=PT213|url-status=live}}</ref> 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 (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.<ref>{{cite book|last=Simpson|first=John|title=Unreliable Sources: How the 20th Century Was Reported|publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Pam Macmillan]]|place=London|year=2010|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8yT0O5RkbUYC&pg=PT307|isbn=978-0-230-75010-4|access-date=26 December 2021|archive-date=17 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217075511/https://books.google.com/books?id=8yT0O5RkbUYC&pg=PT307|url-status=live}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=August 2017}} 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).{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|p=33}} 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.{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|pp=33–34}}

Rothermere and the ''Mail'' were also editorially sympathetic to [[Oswald Mosley]] and the [[British Union of Fascists]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britishpapers.co.uk/midmarket/daily-mail/|title=Daily Mail|date=14 April 2014|website=British Newspapers Online|access-date=4 November 2008|archive-date=3 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210303023339/https://www.britishpapers.co.uk/midmarket/daily-mail/|url-status=live}}</ref> 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",<ref>{{cite book|title=Culture of the Europeans: From 1800 to the Present|first=Donald|last=Sassoon|date=2006|publisher=HarperCollins|page=1062}}</ref> and stating that: "Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W."<ref>{{cite book|title=The newspaper game: The political sociology of the press : an inquiry into behind-the-scenes organization, financing and brainwashing techniques of the news media|first=Paul|last=Hoch|year=1974|page=52|publisher=Calder & Boyars |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v4hZAAAAMAAJ|isbn=978-0-7145-0857-3|access-date=29 June 2015|archive-date=5 October 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151005120933/https://books.google.com/books?id=v4hZAAAAMAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> ''[[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."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/19th-january-1934/6/lord-rothermeres-hurrah-for-the-blackshirts-articl|title=A Spectator's Notebook|work=The Spectator|date=19 January 1934|page=6|access-date=5 October 2013|archive-date=12 October 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131012142148/http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/19th-january-1934/6/lord-rothermeres-hurrah-for-the-blackshirts-articl|url-status=live}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=150}}  The paper's support ended after violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia in June 1934.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Blamires|first1=Cyprian|editor1-last=Jackson|editor1-first=Paul|editor2-last=Blamires|editor2-first=Cyprian|title=World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia (Volume 1)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nvD2rZSVau4C&pg=PA435|date=2006|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-57607-940-9|pages=228, 435|edition=illustrated, reprint|access-date=29 June 2015|archive-date=28 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210228190700/https://books.google.com/books?id=nvD2rZSVau4C&pg=PA435|url-status=live}}</ref> 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 anti-Semitic party.<ref>{{cite book|title=Mosley|first=Nigel|last=Jones|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xxGSpXjUcvEC&pg=PA94|year=2004|page=92|isbn=978-1-904341-09-3|access-date=10 November 2020|archive-date=17 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217075454/https://books.google.com/books?id=xxGSpXjUcvEC&pg=PA94|url-status=live}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite web|last1=Karpf|first1=Anne|title=We've been here before|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices|website=The Guardian|date=8 June 2002|access-date=31 July 2015|archive-date=12 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150912122720/http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices|url-status=live}}</ref>

In December 1934, Rothermere visited Berlin as the guest of Joachim von Ribbentrop.{{sfn|Crozier|1988|p=61}} During his visit, Rothermere was publicly thanked in a speech by Josef Goebbels for the ''Daily Mail''<nowiki/>'s pro-German coverage of the [[1935 Saar status referendum|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.{{sfn|Crozier|1988|p=61}} 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".{{sfn|Crozier|1988|p=59}} 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.{{sfn|Crozier|1988|p=59}}

During the [[Spanish Civil War]], the ''Daily Mail'' ran a photo-essay on 27 July 1936 by Ferdinand Touchy entitled "The Red Carmens, the women who burn churches".{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=87}} Touchy took a series of photographs of Spanish women who joined the Worker's Militia marching up to the front with rifles and  ammunition pouches over their shoulders.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=87}} In an essay that has been widely criticised as misogynistic, Touchy wrote: "The Spanish women has been a creature to admire or make work domestically, to marry or let slip away into a religious order...65 percent were illiterate".{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=88}} Touchy declared his horror at the young Spanish women had rejected the traditional patriarchal system, writing with disgust that the "direct action girls" of the Worker's Militia do not want to be like their mothers, submissive and obedient to men.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=88}} Touchy called these young women "Red Carmens", associating them with the destructive heroine of the opera ''[[Carmen]]'' and with Communism, writing the "Red Carmens" proved the amorality of the Spanish Republic, which had preached gender equality.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=88}} For Touchy, women to fight in a war was to reject their femininity, leading him to label these women as monstrous as he accused the "Red Carmens" of "sexual depravity", writing with utter horror at the possibility of these women engaging in premarital sex, which for him marked the beginning of the end of "civilisation" itself.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|pp=89–90}} The British historian Caroline Brothers wrote that Touchy's article said much about the gender politics of ''The Daily Mail'', which ran his photo-essay and presumably of ''The Daily Mail'''s readers who were expected to approve of the article.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=90}}

In a 1937 article, [[George Ward Price]], the special correspondent of ''The Daily Mail'', approvingly wrote: "The sense of national unity-the ''[[Volkgemeinschaft]]''-to which the ''Führer'' constantly appeals in his speeches is not a rhetorical invention, but a reality".{{sfn|Stone|2003|p=118}} Ward Price was one of the most controversial British journalists of the 1930s, who was one of the few British journalists allowed to interview both [[Benito Mussolini]] and [[Adolf Hitler]] because both fascist leaders knew that Ward Price could be trusted to take a favorable tone and ask "soft" questions.{{sfn|Stone|2003|p=118}} Wickham Steed called Ward Price "the lackey of Mussolini, Hitler and Rothermere".{{sfn|Stone|2003|p=118}} The British historian Daniel Stone called Ward Price's reporting from Berlin and Rome "a mixture of snobbery, name dropping and obsequious pro-fascism of a most genteel 'English' type".{{sfn|Stone|2003|p=118}} In the 1938 crisis over the Sudetenland, ''The Daily Mail'' was very hostile in its picture of President [[Edvard Beneš]], whom Rothermere noted disapprovingly in a leader in July 1938 had signed an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1935, leading him to accuse Beneš of turning "Czechoslovakia into a corridor for Russia against Germany".{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|p=19}} Rothermere concluded his leader: "If Czechoslovakia becomes involved in a war, the British nation will say to the Prime Minister with one voice: 'Keep out of it!'"{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|p=19}}

During the [[Danzig crisis]], the ''Daily Mail'' was inadvertently used by the German Foreign Minister [[Joachim von Ribbentrop]] to persuade Hitler that Britain would not go to war for the defense of Poland. Ribbentrop had the German Embassy in London headed by [[Herbert von Dirksen]] provide translations from pro-appeasement newspapers like the ''Daily Mail'' and the ''Daily Express'' for Hitler's benefit, which had the effect of making it seem that British public opinion was more strongly against going to war for Poland than was actually the case.{{sfn|Watt|1989|p=385}}{{sfn|Rothwell|2001|p=106}} The British historian Victor Rothwell wrote that the newspapers that Ribbentrop used to provide his press summaries for Hitler such as the ''Daily Express'' and the ''Daily Mail'', were out of touch not only with British public opinion, but also with British government policy in regards to the Danzig crisis.{{sfn|Rothwell|2001|p=106}} The press summaries Ribbentrop provided were particularly important as Ribbentrop had managed to convince Hitler that the British government secretly controlled the British press, and just as in Germany, nothing appeared in the British press that the British government did not want to appear.{{sfn|Bloch|1992|p=169}}