ABSTRACT
The advent of the Third Reich resulted in a considerable variety of reactions abroad, ranging from admiration to condemnation. The Swiss historian Walther Hofer 1 summarized the positive and negative aspects of the régime, as perceived by outsiders:
[1] From the very beginning there was a bright side and a dark side to Nazi Germany: there were the festivals, receptions and parades, the Olympic Games and the KdF-travels, the monumental buildings, Autobahnen and the social institutions, success in foreign policy, national enthusiasm, and later stunning military victories; and, behind this brilliant exterior a nationally united, industrious and disciplined people with a genial leadership, moving from success to success and erecting a glamorous Reich.
Yet there was, on the other hand, and right from the beginning, a brutal police force, ill-treatment of political opponents, the Jews being deprived of their civic rights and being persecuted, there was the odious and despicable fight against the Church, there was repression and persecution of any liberal utterance – unless it was bent under the yoke of the State’s official ideology. Further, there was the deliberate planning of a war of aggression aimed at the subjugation of other nations and their eventual complete suppression and elimination. 2
[2] On one very special occasion the régime took inordinate care to preserve that brilliant exterior, at least in the capital, and that was in the summer of 1936, when the public relations exercise was undertaken solely for the benefit of the many foreign visitors who had flocked to Berlin to attend the Olympic Games. During that period the persecution of the Church was temporarily suspended, and the Storm troopers were ordered to refrain from anti-Semitic excesses. 3 However, the respite for the Church and the Jews did not last very long, and so gave rise to the English pun about the ‘barb-Aryans being the inhabitants of Nazi Germany’. 4
[3] A small number of foreigners, especially diplomats and press correspondents, were resident in Berlin until the war, and thus had an ideal vantage point from which to observe the régime in action. Hitler’s link man with the representatives of the foreign press was E.F. Hanfstaengl. Half-American, and Harvard-educated, he was at the same time an ideological follower of Hitler. He had promoted the Führer socially in his early days and had even given him financial support in the early 1920s. Hanfstaengl used his privileged position and background to counteract foreign criticism of Hitler and his régime. In 1933 he compiled a selection of anti-Nazi cartoons and slogans, both from Germany and abroad, and contrasted these with a long list of all the good deeds Hitler and the Nazis had done and the wicked lies told about them by their enemies. This book, Hitler in der Weltkarikatur (‘Hitler seen by caricaturists from all over the world’), had the sub-title Tatgegen Tinte (‘fact versus fiction’), but it was far too obviously biased to be an effective antidote to any anti-Hitler point of view. At the same time, it was too naive to be acceptable to Hitler, who lacked any sense of humour. Although Hitler had officially approved of the publication of the book, it contributed to Hanfstaengl’s downfall. This became apparent to him by 1937, when Hitler increasingly found fault with his Auslandspressechef, who was by then nicknamed Reichslückenbüsser. 5 Hanfstaengl did not foresee Hitler’s attempt on his life in 1937, but in any event he fled Germany shortly afterwards and found refuge in the USA. 6
