Press

The Ghost of Goebbels

few

One day a fewweeks ago, Germans crowded, surprisedand unbelieving,around their news-stands. Their eyehad been caught byan authentic replica

of Voelkischer Beo-bachter, the official

Nazi paper, adorned with swastika andeagle. It carried a black- and- red head-line: IT IS BEGINNING AGAIN! LICENS-ING ENDS IN BIZONIA ! Now AT LASTWE CAN SPEAK OUT AGAIN! A specialfront- page editorial referred to an arti-cle by Dr. Goebbels somewhere inside.

This startling exhibit turned out tobe a satirical comment by the politicalhumor magazine Wespennest( Hor-nets' Nest) on the recent Allied deci-sion to relinquish control of the Ger­ man press. The hoax was more than apublicity stunt. It sounded an S.O.S.It gave notice that, in the opinion ofthe non- Nazi press, the end of Allied licensing would brighten the lives ofthe until now unemployed newspaper-men who had followed the Nazis .

The Western Allies announced theirdecision to the accompaniment ofhopes and admonitions from the high-est levels. The change was sudden.Military Government had made pains-taking efforts, after stamping out alltraces of the Nazi press, to select themen licensed to operate papers. Inthe American Zone this" screening,"in the early days of the occupation,had involved a soul- searching whichsometimes became ridiculous.British had occasionally preferred pro-fessional qualifications to a clean polit-ical record. But in the British andAmerican Zones, the freedom of an edi-tor, once licensed, had been limited onlyby the rarely exercised Allied power torevoke his right to publish. Only theFrench had continued, until recently, to

The

maintain rigid censorship and control.An increasing number of licensednewspapers appeared, and what had atfirst seemed austerity fare grew into anabundant diet. Even though one thirdof the people, according to a public-opinion survey, regard existing news-papers as no more trustworthy than theNazi press, the three hundred or solicensed papers sounded an almostpurely democratic note. When the Al-lies suddenly announced their retire-ment from the field, many German democrats joined the Wespennest inits fear that the music would soonchange.

Far from eliminating the Nazi prob-lem, de- Nazification had merely forcedthe publishers, editors, and reporters ofGoebbels ' time into an unwilling, bit-terly resented retirement. A conspiracy

of outright Nazis , and the opportunists

who had followed them, had beenawaiting the day of come- back. Someof them had managed to infiltrate thefield beforehand; an" expert" on theDanish- German border problem, whohad written for a number of papers,turned out to have been the Nazi pressattaché in occupied Copenhagen , anda high- ranking officer in the S.S.

But most unemployed Nazi journal-ists clearly had to wait for the signal ofthe" freedom of the press ." For quitesome time, strange" press committees"had been attacking the licensed papersand posturing as the champions of freeenterprise. These groups were financedby publishers of old standing, such asWalther Jaenecke, who had been or-dered in 1945 to lease their presses tothe licensed papers. They were, ofcourse, paid good money by their non-Nazi" tenant- successors"; but, strange-ly, they resented the Allied order,whereas they had obeyed enthusiastic-ally the orders of Dr. Goebbels . Thefeeling of the newly licensed editors,was expressed bluntly by one of themas long ago as 1947." We are not really

editors and publishers," he said." Weare just temporary caretakers. Andwhen military government withdrawsits protection, we will be at the mercyof the very men whose presses we arenow using against their will. In themeantime we are filling their treasuriesagainst the day when they will be ourbosses and we their employees. Person-ally I expect to be unemployed themorning they take over."

Two years later, another Allied-licensed editor was asked what hethought about the de- controlling of thepress. He looked up from the manu-script of one of those rare German edi-torials which speak out against nation-alism." One of these days I shall gohome for lunch and stay home," wasall he said.

That day may have come already.

With the end of licensing in the Amer-ican zone, a swarm of new paperssprang up. Marshall Plan imports hadsolved the newsprint problem. Withinone month more than sixty new papers,over twice the number of the licensedones, appeared in Württemberg- Bad­ en . In Bavaria 106 papers got started;the existing twenty- seven had been.struggling along with a combined cir-culation of 2,100,000. Many of the newones are, of course, small- town jour-nals that emphasize local matters; butamong their traditions is that of sub-scribing to monopolistic, ready- madenews and editorial services, of the typethat Alfred Hugenberg once used soskillfully to flood small towns with hisanti- Weimar chauvinism.

Some of the old newspaper magnateshave voluntarily pledged their coopera-tion in the Allied fight against Nazi tendencies. But while they neverstopped extolling the freedom of thepress when they themselves were tem-porarily hit by the licensing laws, theylong ago proved their unwillingness todefend freedom when it needed de-

The Reporter, October 11, 1949

36