The Associated Press news agency entered a formal cooperation with the Adolf Hitler-led Third Reich regime in the 1930s, supplying American newspapers with material directly produced and selected by the Nazi propaganda ministry, reports the Guardian quoting archived material revealed by a German historian.
When the Nazi party seized power in Germany in 1933, British-American agencies such as Keystone and Wide World Photos were forced to close their bureaus after coming under attack for employing Jewish journalists. Associated Press was the only western news agency able to stay open in Hitler’s Germany, continuing to operate until the US entered the war in 1941.
In an article published in academic journal Studies in Contemporary History, historian Harriet Scharnberg shows that AP was only able retain its access by entering into a mutually beneficial two-way cooperation with the Nazi regime.
The New York-based agency ceded control of its output by signing up to the so-called Schriftleitergesetz (editor’s law), promising not to publish any material “calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home”.
This law required AP to hire reporters who also worked for the Nazi party’s propaganda division. One of the four photographers employed by AP in the 1930s, Franz Roth, was a member of the SS paramilitary unit’s propaganda division, whose photographs were personally chosen by Hitler. AP has removed Roth’s pictures from its website since Scharnberg published her findings.
AP also allowed the Nazi regime to use its photo archives for its virulently anti-semitic propaganda literature. Publications illustrated with AP photographs include the bestselling SS brochure “Der Untermensch” (“The Sub-Human”) and the booklet “The Jews in the USA”.
Approached with these allegations, AP said in a statement that Scharnberg’s report “describes both individuals and their activities before and during the war that were unknown to AP”, and that it is currently reviewing documents in and beyond its archives to “further our understanding of the period.”
