A New Book Seeks to Whitewash the Complicity of German Journalists in Supporting Hitler

After the Nazis came to power in Germany, hundreds of journalists fled the country; some who criticized the regime were sent to concentration camps or murdered. In his book Journalists between Hitler and Adenauer, the Columbia University historian Volker Berghahn focuses on several journalists who remained active in the Third Reich, arguing that they played a crucial role in West Germany’s “moral reconstruction” following World War II. Yet, argues Richard Evans, none of Berghahn’s subjects has the clean record he suggests. Take, for instance, Hans Zehrer, a prominent newspaperman in both the 1930s and the 1950s:

Under the Weimar Republic, as editor of the magazine Die Tat (“The Deed”), [Zehrer] criticized Hitler for trying to win power through the ballot box, proposing instead the establishment of a dictatorship that would bypass the moribund parliamentary system. He praised the Enabling Act, [which dramatically expanded then-Chancellor Hitler’s powers], for creating the legal basis for such a dictatorship. It would, he wrote, help the government “exterminate” liberalism and carry out “cleansing actions” in the civil service.

Since this is exactly what Hitler was doing, it hardly seems accurate to speak, as Berghahn does, of Zehrer’s “opposition to Hitler.” . . . In April 1933, . . . he condemned the “Golden International” of “Jewry, Money, and Trade” and called for the “removal of Jewish influence from the key institutions of the nation.” Anyone who considered this unjust, he added, should remember that “raison d’état can never be humanitarian.”

In 1938, . . . to underline his obedience, Zehrer agreed that his Jewish wife should emigrate to London. He didn’t go with her: that would mean, he said, “that I would be going over to the Jewish side, and I say no to that!” He divorced her. In 1943, he joined the Luftwaffe, staying there until the end of the war.

Returning to journalism after 1945, . . . had Zehrer learned his lesson and become an advocate of a democratic Germany? . . . . It is hard to resist the conclusion . . . that he had abandoned almost none of the hostility to democracy that had led him to support Hitler. But this pales before Berghahn’s attempt to rescue the reputation of [another] subject, Paul Sethe. . . .

Read more at London Review of Books

More about: Anti-Semitism, Germany, Nazism

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa