Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere

Harold Harmsworth, the son of an English barrister, was born in London in 1868. Harold joined with his brother, Alfred Harmsworth, to publish Answers to Correspondents. The brothers told his readers that every question sent in would be answered by post, and the answers of those of general interest would be published in the magazine. It was a great success and helped them finance the children's paper, Comic Cuts and a woman's magazine, Forget-Me-Nots.

It has been claimed that the partnership worked well because whereas Alfred had good journalistic skills, Harold was an impressive accountant. In 1894 the Harmsworth brothers purchased the Evening News. With the help of Kennedy Jones, the brothers dramatically changed the fortunes of the newspaper.

After the success of the Evening News, Alfred Harmsworth suggested producing a newspaper like those being published in the USA. The Daily Mail was published for the first time on 4th May, 1896. The eight page newspaper cost only halfpenny. Slogans used to sell the newspaper included "A Penny Newspaper for One Halfpenny" and "The Busy Man's Daily Newspaper". It was the first newspaper in Britain that catered for a new reading public that needed something simpler, shorter and more readable than those that had previously been available. One new innovation was the banner headline that went right across the page. Considerable space was given to sport and human interest stories. It was also the first newspaper to include a woman's section that dealt with issues such as fashions and cookery.

The Daily Mail was an immediate success and circulation quickly achieved 500,000. With the strong interest in the Boer War in 1899 sales went to over a million. The brothers continued to expand and purchased the Sunday Dispatch and several other provincial newspapers.

In 1903 the brothers produced the first newspaper aimed at women. Kennedy Jones was put in charge of the project and spent £100,000 in publicity, including a gift scheme of gilt and enamel mirrors. On its first day, the circulation of the Daily Mirror was 276,000. However, sales dropped dramatically after the initial launch and by January, 1904, circulation was down to 24,000 and the newspaper was losing £3,000 a week.

Alfred Harmsworth decided to change his original plan. The editor, Mary Howarth, was replaced by Hamilton Fyfe, who changed it to a picture paper for men as well as women. As Harmsworth later recalled: "Some people say that a woman never really knows what she wants. It is certain she knew what she didn't want. She didn't want the Daily Mirror. I then changed the price to a halfpenny, and filled it full of photographs and pictures to see how that would do." Within a month sales had increased sevenfold.

Fyfe also experimented with using different types of photographs on the front-page. On 2nd April, 1904, the Daily Mirror published a whole page of pictures of Edward VII and his children, Henry, Albert and Mary. This was a great success and Harmsworth now realised the British public had an intense interest in photographs of the Royal Family.

Another successful innovation was the sponsorship of special events. In June, 1904, the Daily Mirror paid D. M. Weigal to drive a twenty-horse power Talbot on a 26,000 mile motor run. A month later the newspaper offered a hundred guinea prize for the first person to swim the Channel. This approach was popular and later that year the circulation of the newspaper had reached 350,000.

In 1914 Alfred, now Lord Northcliffe, decided to sell his share in the Daily Mirror to Harold Harmsworth. In the First World War the Daily Mirror became the most popular newspaper on the Western Front. The soldiers particularly liked the fact that the newspaper included so many pictures of life back home. The newspaper also published a large number of pictures of the war. Probably the most dramatic example was the German daylight air raid over London in 1917.

Rothermere loyally gave support to the British government in the war and in 1917 David Lloyd George appointed Rothermere as his Air Minister. The war was an unhappy time for Rothermere with two of his sons, Vyvan Harmsworth and Vere Harmsworth, being killed in action.

In November 1918, at the end of the war, he was invited to a Downing Street luncheon by Winston Churchill to gather press support for David Lloyd George. He was made a viscount in 1919, but by 1922 he turned against the Lloyd George coalition. According to his biographer, D. George Boyce: "In 1922 he was believed to be seeking a step in the peerage as the price of his support for a Conservative government led by Andrew Bonar Law." After the death of Lord Northcliffe in 1922, Rothermere took full control of the Daily Mail as well as the Daily Mirror. He also ran the Evening News, the Sunday Pictorial and the Sunday Dispatch.

In the 1923 General Election, the Labour Party won 191 seats. Although the Conservatives had 258, Ramsay MacDonald agreed to head a minority government, and therefore became the first member of the party to become Prime Minister. As MacDonald had to rely on the support of the Liberal Party, he was unable to get any socialist legislation passed by the House of Commons. The only significant measure was the Wheatley Housing Act which began a building programme of 500,000 homes for rent to working-class families.

Members of establishment were appalled by the idea of a Prime Minister who was a socialist. As Gill Bennett pointed out: "It was not just the intelligence community, but more precisely the community of an elite - senior officials in government departments, men in "the City", men in politics, men who controlled the Press - which was narrow, interconnected (sometimes intermarried) and mutually supportive. Many of these men... had been to the same schools and universities, and belonged to the same clubs. Feeling themselves part of a special and closed community, they exchanged confidences secure in the knowledge, as they thought, that they were protected by that community from indiscretion." This was definitely true of Lord Rothermere who announced his anti-socialist views.

In September 1924 MI5 intercepted a letter signed by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union, and Arthur McManus, the British representative on the committee. In the letter British communists were urged to promote revolution through acts of sedition. Hugh Sinclair, head of MI6, provided "five very good reasons" why he believed the letter was genuine. However, one of these reasons, that the letter came "direct from an agent in Moscow for a long time in our service, and of proved reliability" was incorrect.

Vernon Kell, the head of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson the head of Special Branch, were also convinced that the letter was genuine. Kell showed the letter to Ramsay MacDonald. It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret but someone leaked news of the letter to the Times and the Daily Mail. Four days before the 1924 General Election Rothermere decided publish what became known as the Zinoviev Letter and contributed to the defeat of MacDonald and the Labour Party. In a speech he made on 24th October, MacDonald suggested he had been a victim of a political conspiracy: "I am also informed that the Conservative Headquarters had been spreading abroad for some days that... a mine was going to be sprung under our feet, and that the name of Zinoviev was to be associated with mine. Another Guy Fawkes - a new Gunpowder Plot... The letter might have originated anywhere. The staff of the Foreign Office up to the end of the week thought it was authentic... I have not seen the evidence yet. All I say is this, that it is a most suspicious circumstance that a certain newspaper and the headquarters of the Conservative Association seem to have had copies of it at the same time as the Foreign Office, and if that is true how can I avoid the suspicion - I will not say the conclusion - that the whole thing is a political plot?"

After the election it was claimed that two of MI5's agents, Sidney Reilly and Arthur Maundy Gregory, had forged the letter. According to Christopher Andrew, the author of Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985): "Reilly played an active part in ensuring that the letter was publicised. A copy of the Russian version of the letter has been discovered in what appears to be Reilly's handwriting, and there can scarcely have been another past or present SIS agent with so few scruples about exploiting it in the anti-Bolshevik cause."

It later became clear that Major George Joseph Ball (1885-1961), a MI5 officer, played an important role in leaking it to the press. In 1927 Ball went to work for the Conservative Central Office where he pioneered the idea of spin-doctoring. Later, Desmond Morton, who worked under Hugh Sinclair, at MI6 claimed that it was Stewart Menzies who sent the Zinoviev letter to the Daily Mail.

In his book, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009), Christopher Andrew argues that on 9th October 1924 SIS forwarded the Zinoviev letter to the Foreign Office, MI5 and Scotland Yard with the assurance that “the authenticity is undoubted” when they knew it had been forged by anti-Bolshevik White Russians. Desmond Morton, the head of SIS, provided extra information about the letter being confirmed as being genuine by an agent, Jim Finney, who had penetrated Comintern and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Andrew claims this was untrue as the so-called Finney report does not make any reference to the Zinoviev letter. Finney was also employed by George Makgill, the head of the Industrial Intelligence Bureau (IIB).

Rotheremere's newspapers continued to increase their circulation. By 1926 the daily sales of the Daily Mail had reached 2,000,000. Lord Rothermere personal wealth was now £25 million and he was estimated to be the third richest man in Britain. Rothermere became increasingly nationalistic in his political views and in 1929 joined with Lord Beaverbrook to form the United Empire Party. Rothermere urged the Conservative Party to remove its leader, Stanley Baldwin, and replace him with Beaverbrook. He also argued for a reform of the House of Lords to make it possible for peers to be elected to the House of Commons. This dispute divided conservative voters and this enabled the Labour Party to win the 1929 General Election.

In the General Election that took place in September 1930, the Nazi Party increased its number of representatives in parliament from 14 to 107. Adolf Hitler was now the leader of the second largest party in Germany. James Pool, the author of Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler's Rise to Power (1979) points out: "Soon after Adolf Hitler Shortly after the Nazis' sweeping victory in the election of September 14, 1930, Rothermere went to Munich to have a long talk with Hitler, and ten days after the election wrote an article discussing the significance of the National Socialists' triumph. The article drew attention throughout England and the Continent because it urged acceptance of the Nazis as a bulwark against Communism... Rothermere continued to say that if it were not for the Nazis, the Communists might have gained the majority in the Reichstag." According to Louis P. Lochner, Tycoons and Tyrant: German Industry from Hitler to Adenauer (1954) Rothermere provided funds to Hitler via Ernst Hanfstaengel.

Lord Rothermere disposed of his shares in the Daily Mirror in 1931. He now concentrated on the Evening News and The Daily Mail. In the 1930s Rothermere moved further to the right. When Hitler became Chancellor on 30th January 1933, Rothermere produced a series of articles acclaiming the new regime. The most famous of these was on the 10th July when he told readers that he "confidently expected" great things of the Nazi regime. He also criticised other newspapers for "its obsession with Nazi violence and racialism", and assured his readers that any such deeds would be "submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing on Germany."

Rothermere now began a campaign in favour of the Nazi Party. The Daily Mail criticized "the old women of both sexes" who filled British newspapers with rabid reports of Nazi "excesses." Instead, the newspaper claimed, Hitler had saved Germany from "Israelites of international attachments" and the "minor misdeeds of individual Nazis will be submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany."

Rothermere also had several meetings with Adolf Hitler and argued that the Nazi leader desired peace. In one article written in March, 1934 he called for Hitler to be given back land in Africa that had been taken as a result of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler acknowledged this help by writing to Rothermere: "I should like to express the appreciation of countless Germans, who regard me as their spokesman, for the wise and beneficial public support which you have given to a policy that we all hope will contribute to the enduring pacification of Europe. Just as we are fanatically determined to defend ourselves against attack, so do we reject the idea of taking the initiative in bringing about a war. I am convinced that no one who fought in the front trenches during the world war, no matter in what European country, desires another conflict."

As Richard Griffiths, the author of Fellow Travellers of the Right (1979) has pointed out: "Rothermere visited Hitler on a number of occasions, and corresponded with him. As we have seen, Hitler's first major dinner party for foreigners, on 19th December 1934, had as its guests of honour Rothermere, his son Esmond Harmsworth, and Ward Price, together with Ernest Tennant. Rothermere's subsequent article in the Daily Mail was violently enthusiastic about what Hitler had done for Germany. Hitler wrote a number of important letters to Rothermere in 1933 and 1934, but the most interesting of them, because of its subsequent fate, was the one written on 3 May 1935 in which he advocated Anglo-German understanding as a firm combination for peace. Rothermere circulated this to many politicians, convinced that his personal contact with Hitler had produced a real breakthrough."

Lord Rothermere also gave full support to Oswald Mosley and the National Union of Fascists. He wrote an article, Hurrah for the Blackshirts, on 22nd January, 1934, in which he praised Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine". Rothermere added: "Timid alarmists all this week have been whimpering that the rapid growth in numbers of the British Blackshirts is preparing the way for a system of rulership by means of steel whips and concentration camps. Very few of these panic-mongers have any personal knowledge of the countries that are already under Blackshirt government. The notion that a permanent reign of terror exists there has been evolved entirely from their own morbid imaginations, fed by sensational propaganda from opponents of the party now in power. As a purely British organization, the Blackshirts will respect those principles of tolerance which are traditional in British politics. They have no prejudice either of class or race. Their recruits are drawn from all social grades and every political party. Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W."

The Daily Mail continued to give its support to the fascists. George Ward Price wrote about anti-fascist demonstrators at a meeting of the National Union of Fascists on 8th June, 1934: "If the Blackshirts movement had any need of justification, the Red Hooligans who savagely and systematically tried to wreck Sir Oswald Mosley's huge and magnificently successful meeting at Olympia last night would have supplied it. They got what they deserved. Olympia has been the scene of many assemblies and many great fights, but never had it offered the spectacle of so many fights mixed up with a meeting."

In July, 1934 Lord Rothermere suddenly withdrew his support for Oswald Mosley. The historian, James Pool, argues: "The rumor on Fleet Street was that the Daily Mail's Jewish advertisers had threatened to place their adds in a different paper if Rothermere continued the profascist campaign." Pool points out that sometime after this, Rothermere met with Hitler at the Berghof and told how the "Jews cut off his complete revenue from advertising" and compelled him to "toe the line." Hitler later recalled Rothermere telling him that it was "quite impossible at short notice to take any effective countermeasures."

Lord Rothermere continued to support Hitler but tried to keep it secret from the general public. It later emerged that Rothermere was paying a retainer of £5,000 per year (£200,000 in today's money) to Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, a close confidante of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler and Joachim von Ribbentrop. According to The Daily Telegraph: "In 1933, the year that Hitler gained power, MI6 circulated a report stating that the French secret service had discovered documents in the princess's flat in Paris ordering her to persuade Rothermere to campaign for the return to Germany of territory ceded to Poland at the end of First World War. She was to receive £300,000 – equal to £13 million today if she succeeded."

Jim Wilson, the author of Nazi Princess: Hitler, Lord Rothermere and Princess Stefanie Von Hohenlohe (2011) has argued: "After arriving in London in 1932, she moved in the most exclusive circles, arranging the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to Nazi Germany in 1937, and being involved in diplomatic intrigue between Lord Halifax and the Nazis in 1938." By 1938 MI6, was becoming very concerned about the princesses's activities. A report said: "She is frequently summoned by the Fuhrer who appreciates her intelligence and good advice. She is perhaps the only woman who can exercise any influence on him."

Rothermere and his newspapers supported Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement. When Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia in March 1938 he sent a telegram to Adolf Hitler saying: "My dear Fuhrer everyone in England is profoundly moved by the bloodless solution to the Czechoslovakian problem. People not so much concerned with territorial readjustment as with dread of another war with its accompanying bloodbath. Frederick the Great was a great popular figure. I salute your excellency's star which rises higher and higher."

MI6 continued to investigate Stephanie von Hohenlohe. In March 1939 the MI6 passport control officer at Victoria Station arrested her Hungarian lawyer, Erno Wittman. The arresting officer reported what he discovered that Wittman was carrying: "This was astonishing; it appeared to be copies of documents and letters which passed between Lord Rothermere, Lady Snowden, Princess Stephanie, Herr Hitler and others. In the main, the letters referred to the possible restoration of the throne in Hungary and shed a good deal of light on the character and activities of the princess." It was decided to pass on this information to MI5. Amongst the documents were several letters from Lord Rothermere to Adolf Hitler. This included a "a very indiscreet letter to the Fuhrer congratulating him on his walk into Prague". The letter urged Hitler to follow up his coup with the invasion of Romania.

On 24th September 1939 Lord Rothermere had his close colleague and "ghost", Collin Brooks, draft a letter to Neville Chamberlain urging the futility of trying to save Poland and warning that "whether victorious or not, Britain will emerge from such a conflict with her social and economic fabric destroyed", which could mean "a revolution of the Left in these islands, which might be more deadly than the war itself". According to Rothermere's biographer, D. George Boyce: "But the letter was never sent (despite Rothermere's fear that Britain was ‘finished’), because of the ‘national mood and temper’, a nice example of the would-be opinion leader and press baron being led by the public itself."

On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Stephanie von Hohenlohe, fearing that she would be arrested, fled to San Francisco. Tipped off by MI6, the FBI put her under surveillance. A memo to President Franklin D. Roosevelt described her as a spy "more dangerous than ten thousand men".

Lord Rothermere decided to move to Bermuda during the Blitz where he died on 26th November 1940.

Primary Sources

(1) Lord Rothermere, The Daily Mail (10th July, 1933)

I urge all British young men and women to study closely the progress of the Nazi regime in Germany. They must not be misled by the misrepresentations of its opponents. The most spiteful distracters of the Nazis are to be found in precisely the same sections of the British public and press as are most vehement in their praises of the Soviet regime in Russia.

They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call "Nazi atrocities" which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consists merely of a few isolated acts of violence such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalized, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny.

The German nation, moreover, was rapidly falling under the control of its alien elements. In the last days of the pre-Hitler regime there were twenty times as many Jewish Government officials in Germany as had existed before the war. Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine. Three German Ministers only had direct relations with the Press, but in each case the official responsible for conveying news and interpreting policy to the public was a Jew.

(2) Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mirror (22nd January, 1934)

Timid alarmists all this week have been whimpering that the rapid growth in numbers of the British Blackshirts is preparing the way for a system of rulership by means of steel whips and concentration camps.

Very few of these panic-mongers have any personal knowledge of the countries that are already under Blackshirt government. The notion that a permanent reign of terror exists there has been evolved entirely from their own morbid imaginations, fed by sensational propaganda from opponents of the party now in power.

As a purely British organization, the Blackshirts will respect those principles of tolerance which are traditional in British politics. They have no prejudice either of class or race. Their recruits are drawn from all social grades and every political party.

Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W.

(3) Lord Rothermere wrote an article for The Daily Mail where he argued that Germany should be given back Tanganyika, the Camerons and Togoland (21st March, 1934)

Though this proposal may not be popular, I am convinced that it is wise. We cannot expect a nation of "he-men" like the Germans to sit forever with folded arms under the provocations and stupidities of the Treaty of Versailles. To deny this mighty nation, conspicuous for its organizing ability and scientific achievements, a share in the work of developing backward regions of the world is preposterous.

(4) George Ward Price described how the Black Shirts dealt with anti-fascist demonstrators in , The Daily Mail (8th June 1934)

If the Blackshirts movement had any need of justification, the Red Hooligans who savagely and systematically tried to wreck Sir Oswald Mosley's huge and magnificently successful meeting at Olympia last night would have supplied it.

They got what they deserved. Olympia has been the scene of many assemblies and many great fights, but never had it offered the spectacle of so many fights mixed up with a meeting.

(5) Adolf Hitler, letter to Lord Rothermere (7th December, 1933)

I should like to express the appreciation of countless Germans, who regard me as their spokesman, for the wise and beneficial public support which you have given to a policy that we all hope will contribute to the enduring pacification of Europe. Just as we are fanatically determined to defend ourselves against attack, so do we reject the idea of taking the initiative in bringing about a war. I am convinced that no one who fought in the front trenches during the world war, no matter in what European country, desires another conflict.

(6) James Pool, Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler's Rise to Power (1979)

The wealthy newspaper magnate, Viscount Rothermere, gave the Nazis pages of praise and accolades in his paper the Daily Mail. There is also some indication that Rothermere gave actual financial support to Hitler through Putzi Hanfstaengl, the Nazis' foreign press chief but the publicity he gave Hitler was worth more than money.

Shortly after the Nazis' sweeping victory in the election of September 14, 1930, Rothermere went to Munich to have a long talk with Hitler, and ten days after the election wrote an article discussing the significance of the National Socialists' triumph. The article drew attention throughout England and the Continent because it urged acceptance of the Nazis as a bulwark against Communism...

Rothermere continued to say that if it were not for the Nazis, the Communists might have gained the majority in the Reichstag. The tremendous success of the Nazi "German Party of Youth and Nationalism" should receive the closest possible attention from the statesmen of Britain, Rothermere advised.

Lord Rothermere was a man of large stature, with a high forehead and such an extreme conservative political attitude that some people said he was "very near to being unbalanced on the issue of Communism". Although he was not the only one with an obsession about the dangers of Communism, he was one of the few who devoted so much money to the anti-Communist cause. In England he was a well-known backer of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), whose members wore black shirts. On January 8, 1934, when Rothermere decided to help the BUF, the headlines of the Daily Mail shouted "Hurrah for the Blackshirts." The front-page article following claimed that Italy and Germany were; "beyond all doubt the best governed nations in Europe today." The leader of the BUF; Sir Oswald Mosley, could do the same for Britain, replacing the "inertia and indecision" of the present government. Generous space, plus pictures, were given to cover the fascist activities. Leading articles and editorials were devoted to commending the efforts of the BUF.

Suddenly in July of that year Rothermere withdrew his support. The rumor on Fleet Street was that the Daily Mail's Jewish advertisers had threatened to place their adds in a different paper if Rothermere continued the profascist campaign. Sometime after this, Rothermere met with Hitler at the Berghof and told how the "Jews cut off his complete revenue from advertising" and compelled him to "toe the line." Hitler later recalled Rothermere telling him that it was "quite impossible at short notice to take any effective countermeasures."

As for the Nazis, it has already been shown that Rothermere started to give them favorable press coverage in 1930. The Daily Mail criticized "the old women of both sexes" who filled British newspapers with rabid reports of Nazi "excesses." Instead, the newspaper claimed, Hitler had saved Germany from "Israelites of international attachments" and the "minor misdeeds of individual Nazis will be submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany."

Rothermere encouraged his journalists to write articles favoring the Nazis. For example, on September 21, 1936, Ward Price, the most outstanding correspondent for the Daily Mail, wrote that Bolshevism was a greater threat to the British Empire than the Nazis, and said that if Hitler did not exist, "all Western Europe might soon be clamouring for such a champion. 1160 In 1938, one British newspaper told its readers that it was the Daily Mail which had spent the last five years assuring the people that 'Dolfie' Hitler is a wonderfully good fellow and is very fond of Britain."

A reviewer for the Sunday Times once tried to explain Rothermere's political viewpoint: "He saw Hitler as a sincere man who had defeated Communism in his own country and whose programme was now to reverse the Diktat of Versailles. He did not see him as a conqueror whose ambitions for world power inevitably mean, if not conflict with, then hostility to, the British Empire. IIn fact, Rothermere hoped that England and Germany would be allies. Hitler said that the "Beaverbrook-Rothermere circle" came and told him: "In the last war we were on the wrong side." In one of his conversations with Hitler, Rothermere explained that he and Beaverbrook were "in complete agreement that never again should there be war between Britain and Germany.

Before Rothermere's visit to Germany, he and Hitler exchanged a series of letters. Rothermere wrote saying that he would gladly use his press "to further a rapprochement between Britain and Germany." His offer was of course eagerly accepted. Later Hitler expressed his gratitude for the Daily Mail's "great assistance" to the Nazis at the time of their reoccupation of the Rhineland, as well as its favorable attitude to Germany over the question of her naval program. Perhaps Hitler should have said that he was grateful for the Daily Mail's pro-Nazi stance in general over the past decade.

Each morning almost two million people, mostly of the upper and middle class, were exposed to Rothermere's pro-Nazi ideas in the Daily Mail. The value of this publicity campaign for Hitler is inestimable. The favoritism shown toward Hitler in one of Britain's most popular daily papers assured the German ruling elite that there would be no complaints in Britain if Hitler were selected as the German Chancellor.

(7) Lord Rothermere, The Daily Mail (10th July, 1933)

These young Germans have discovered, as I am glad to note the young men and women of England are discovering, that it is no good trusting to 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.... We must change our conception of Germany... The older generation of Germans were our enemies. Must we make enemies of this younger generation too? If we do, sooner or later another and more terrible awakening is in store for Europe.

Let us considerwell before we lay our course toward that peril. If we examine this transfer of political influence in Germany to the National Socialists we shall find that it has many advantages for the rest of Europe. It sets up an additional rampart against Bolshevism. It eliminates the grave danger that the Soviet campaign against civilization might penetrate to Germany, thus winning an impregnable position in the strategical center of Europe.

Rothermere continued to say that if it were not for the Nazis, the Communists might have gained the majority in the Reichstag. The tremendous success of the Nazi "German Party of Youth and Nationalism" should receive the closest possible attention from the statesmen of Britain, Rothermere advised.

Lord Rothermere was a man of large stature, with a high forehead and such an extreme conservative political attitude that some people said he was "very near to being unbalanced on the issue of Communism"s' Although he was not the only one with an obsession about the dangers of Communism, he was one of the few who devoted so much money to the anti-Communist cause. In England he was a well-known backer of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), whose members wore black shirts. On January 8, 1934, when Rothermere decided to help the BUF, the headlines of the Daily Mail shouted "Hurrah for the Blackshirts." The front-page article following claimed that Italy and Germany were: "beyond all doubt the best governed nations in Europe today." The leader of the BUF; Sir Oswald Mosley, could do the same for Britain, replacing the "inertia and indecision" of the present government. Generous space, plus pictures, were given to cover the fascist activities. Leading articles and editorials were devoted to commending the efforts of the BUF.

Suddenly in July of that year Rothermere withdrew his support. The rumor on Fleet Street was that the Daily Mail's Jewish advertisers had threatened to place their adds in a different paper if Rothermere continued the profascist campaign.

(8) Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right (1979)

Rothermere visited Hitler on a number of occasions, and corresponded with him. As we have seen, Hitler's first major dinner party for foreigners, on 19th December 1934, had as its guests of honour Rothermere, his son Esmond Harmsworth, and Ward Price, together with Ernest Tennant. Rothermere's subsequent article in the Daily Mail was violently enthusiastic about what Hitler had done for Germany.

Hitler wrote a number of important letters to Rothermere in 1933 and 1934, but the most interesting of them, because of its subsequent fate, was the one written on 3 May 1935 in which he advocated Anglo-German understanding as a firm combination for peace. Rothermere circulated this to many politicians, convinced that his personal contact with Hitler had produced a real breakthrough.

(9) The Daily Telegraph (1st March, 2005)

The proprietor of the Daily Mail congratulated Adolf Hitler on his annexation of Czechoslovakia and urged him to capitalise on the "triumph'' with a march into Romania, newly released documents have revealed.

The first Lord Rothermere – the great-grandfather of the current owner of the newspaper – made the remarks in a letter intercepted by the security service during surveillance of a suspected German agent. But MI5 shied away from taking action against the press baron, whose sympathy for Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts was already well-known.

Rothermere's apparent support for the Nazi cause as late as 1939 came to light during an investigation into the activities of Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe. The daughter of a Viennese dentist of Jewish origins, she had married into the aristocracy of the Austro-Hungarian empire and, although divorced, continued to move in exclusive circles in London society.

Her close friends included Lady Asquith, the wife of the former Liberal prime minister, Lady Snowden, the wife of a Labour chancellor of the exchequer, and the extreme Right-wing Lord and Lady Londonderry.

Her connections earned her the admiration of Hitler, Himmler and Von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador in London.

In 1933, the year that Hitler gained power, MI6 circulated a report stating that the French secret service had discovered documents in the princess's flat in Paris ordering her to persuade Rothermere to campaign for the return to Germany of territory ceded to Poland at the end of First World War. She was to receive £300,000 – equal to £13 million today – if she succeeded. Rothermere, meanwhile, was paying the princess £5,000 a year – £200,000 today – to act as his emissary in Europe.

By 1938 MI6 was becoming very concerned about the princesses's activities. A report said: "She is frequently summoned by the Fuhrer who appreciates her intelligence and good advice. She is perhaps the only woman who can exercise any influence on him."

But then she and Rothermere fell out. He cut off her retainer and in December 1938 she sued him for breach of contract. In March 1939 the MI6 passport control officer at Victoria Station intercepted her Hungarian lawyer, Erno Wittman.

He was carrying correspondence relating to the case, including a letter from Rothermere to the German government that Berlin had given to the lawyer to help the princess's case. The officer wrote: "This was astonishing; it appeared to be copies of documents and letters which passed between Lord Rothermere, Lady Snowden, Princess Stephanie, Herr Hitler and others. In the main, the letters referred to the possible restoration of the throne in Hungary and shed a good deal of light on the character and activities of the princess.

"It was decided to give MI5 the opportunity of seeing this considerable correspondence."

Details of the correspondence from Rothermere were circulated in the intelligence services. It included a "a very indiscreet letter to the Fuhrer congratulating him on his walk into Prague" – Hitler having sent troops into the Czech capital in early 1939 in breach of the Munich agreement of the previous year. The note urged Hitler to follow up his coup with the invasion of Romania.

Three weeks after Britain's declaration of war on Germany, the press baron's lawyers attempted to have the legal action stopped. They informed the Home Office that the princess's action was not in the national interest. The Home Office declined to help and the case went to court in November 1939, but it was thrown out without the highly-compromising contents of the letters being revealed. The princess left for America, where she was later arrested for violation of visa conditions.

(10) Lord Rothermere, telegram to Adolf Hitler (1st October, 1938)

My dear Fuhrer everyone in England is profoundly moved by the bloodless solution to the Czechoslovakian problem. People not so much concerned with territorial readjustment as with dread of another war with its accompanying bloodbath. Frederick the Great was a great popular figure. I salute your excellency's star which rises higher and higher.