The Chief

by David Nasaw

  Hearst, never one to sit still for long—especially when on holiday—had gathered up his troops from St. Donat’s in mid-July, after the dust settled in San Francisco, and set off for the continent. He and his party drove through Belgium and Holland into Germany, then south through Switzerland to Rome and Venice, then north again “through Austria to Germany, stopping at Nuremberg ... and other marvelous medieval towns.” To his surprise—and delight—Hearst found Germany much as he had left it, “picturesque” and orderly. As he wrote in blue pencil to Julia Morgan on a postcard with a Nazi soldier on the front, “Everybody is for Hitler. We think he is a tyrant in America but his own people don’t think so. They regard him as a savior. Nine-tenths of the people are for him. Even the Communists—that is the working classes who were Communists—seem to be satisfied with him. His chief opposition is religious. The Catholics registered some objections in the recent elections and of course the Jews hate him. Everything is very quiet and orderly here. There are no evidences of disturbance.”16

  Hearst’s observations were not inaccurate. He returned to Germany at a moment when Hitler’s popularity—as the “restorer of order”—was greater than it had ever been. While the foreign press, including the Hearst papers, had been horrified by the brutality of the Nazi massacres in late June and early July, within Germany, as Hitler’s biographer Ian Kershaw has written, “it was a different matter.... What people saw for the most part was the welcome removal of a scourge ... There was great admiration for what was seen to be Hitler’s protection of the ‘little man’ against the outrageous abuses of power of the overmighty SA [Storm Trooper] leadership.”17

  Hearst was met in Munich by Putzi Hanfstaengl, who asked him for an interview. Though he later claimed that much of the text of the interview, as published on August 23 in the Munich edition of the Nazi party organ, Völkischer Beobachter, had been written by Hanfstaengl, the Chief assured Edmond Coblentz in New York that the final two paragraphs were “mine and exact.” Responding to a question about the plebiscite that had affirmed Hitler’s assumption of the powers of president and chancellor on the death of Field Marshal von Hindenburg, Hearst congratulated the Führer on his victory: “The sweeping majorities with which Hitler at first startled the world and which since we have learned to take for granted, have turned a new leaf in modern history....If Mr. Hitler will give his country peace, order, and opportunity for the civilized development which the Great War largely destroyed everywhere, he will benefit not only his own people but the people of the whole world.”18

  Though Hearst did not object to the republication of the interview, he was furious when he learned that the American papers were reporting that he and his three sons and their families had accepted Hanfstaengl’s invitation to attend the upcoming Party Congress in Nuremberg. Either because he had not accepted the invitation or hoped to be able to attend incognito, Hearst warned his American editors not to follow up on the story. “Chief directly ... telephonically says nobody’s business whether not he attends Nazi gathering. Chief hasn’t received invitation. Chief says, ‘Please say nothing and lay off story.’”19

  Hearst did not attend the Nuremberg rally. Instead he spent most of September at Bad Nauheim, taking his annual cure at the baths. He was visited there by Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, one of the Nazi party’s leading ideologues and most rabid anti-Semites. Hearst surely knew that he was being used by the Nazis to bolster their foreign standing at a time when they were under attack for the brutality of the Night of the Long Knives, but he allowed himself to be interviewed by Rosenberg anyway. The Völkischer Beobachter published the interview under the headline, “Confession of the American Newspaper-Baron: Under Adolf Hitler Germany has become a Land of Order.” Hearst’s own papers printed the interview almost verbatim, though under a very different headline, “W. R. Hearst Discusses a Free Press, Racial Issues, World Peace.” In both the German and English texts, Hearst put a positive gloss on Hitler’s seizure of power. Given the opportunity to comment on German anti-Semitism in response to Rosenberg’s question about American “racial problems,” the Chief referred instead to the threat Asia posed to European civilization and argued that since there were no racial differences between European peoples, they might well come together in a “United States of Europe, with all European peoples living in peace, and ready only to defend their Occidental civilization against Oriental invasion.”20

  Hanfstaengl returned to Bad Nauheim after the Nuremberg rally. He had invited Hearst to Nuremberg in the hope that he could arrange a meeting there between the publisher and the Führer. Hitler, Hanfstaengl told Marion, was so anxious to meet Hearst that he had volunteered to come to Bad Nauheim. Hearst was just as anxious to meet with Hitler. A private meeting and interview with the Führer would only enhance the Chief’s position as the nation’s leading publisher and a world leader of consequence.

  Hanfstaengl arranged for a private plane to take Hearst and Harry Crocker to meet the Führer in Berlin. Hanfstaengl went along to translate. Marion, who insisted that she too wanted to meet Hitler, was included. When they arrived in Berlin, Marion was sidetracked by a friend from Hollywood who had run out of money and needed Marion to pay her hotel bill. Marion rode with her friend to her hotel, paid her bill, and helped her pack her things.

  While she was still up in her friend’s room, the phone rang. It was Hearst: “We’re in the lobby, waiting.” Marion went downstairs, only to discover that the meeting with Hitler had occurred in her absence. “W. R. was not impressed by him,” Marion recalled later. “He wanted to talk about the persecution of the Jews, but Hitler’s answer was this: ‘There is no persecution of any sort.’ Hitler said that the Jews should not have taken over the industries that were supposed to be for Germans. W. R. answered back, ‘I should think industries would belong to every nationality.’ Then he said goodbye.”21

  Marion’s reminiscences, recorded twenty years after the fact, ring true. Hitler’s contradictory statements that there was no discrimination against the Jews but that they shouldn’t have been taking over German industries were in line with what others reported him as saying at the time.22 It is also likely that Hearst would have taken exception to what Hitler said. The Chief at this stage of his life was in awe of no one, certainly not a newly elected leader who had only recently been on the Hearst payroll and was mouthing anti-Semitic nonsense.

  Hearst’s own account of his meeting with Hitler, written in the third person, was published a year after his death in Edmond Coblentz’s William Randolph Hearst: A Portrait in His Own Words. According to Coblentz, so many questions had been raised about the interview with Hitler that Hearst felt obligated to dictate “the exact facts.” In the memorandum published by Coblentz, which unfortunately is undated, Hearst claimed that he had agreed to meet with Hitler only “after consulting his friend Louis B. Mayer as to the advisability of any discussion.... Mr. Mayer had advised Hearst to have the interview and had said: ‘You may be able to accomplish some good.’...After the usual exchange of formal civilities, Hitler speedily came to the point of his inquiries. He asked: ‘Why am I so misrepresented, so misunderstood, in America? Why are the people of America so antagonistic to my regime?’” When Hearst responded that Americans were “averse to dictatorship,” Hitler interrupted to say that he was “a product of democracy” and had been elected to the offices he held. Hearst then gave Hitler the “second reason” for American antagonism: “There is a very large and influential and respected element in the United States who are very resentful of the treatment of their fellows in Germany.” He was referring, of course, to the German Jews. Hitler replied that such treatment was a thing of the past. “All discrimination is disappearing and will soon entirely disappear. That is the policy of my government, and you will soon see ample evidence of it.”

  Hearst left the interview convinced that he had been “able to accomplish some good,” as his friend Louis B. Mayer had hoped.23

  There is no reason to doubt the essential elements in H
earst’s story. He remained close to Louis B. Mayer, who most likely had asked him to use his influence with Hitler. The Chief was now completely convinced of his powers of persuasion, both as an individual confidant and employer of world leaders and as a publisher whose papers reached twenty million Americans daily. He had no reason not to believe that Hitler was going to mend his ways and stop discriminating against the Jews of Germany. If the Davies and Hearst accounts of the meeting with Hitler err in any way, it is probably on the side of omission. It is difficult to believe that the Chief, given an occasion to speak privately with Hitler, would not have congratulated him on his courageous opposition to the League of Nations and his successful destruction of the German Communist party.

  When asked by American reporters to “comment on his conversations with Hitler,” Hearst claimed diplomatic immunity. “Visiting Hitler,” he asserted, “is like calling on the President of the United States—one doesn’t talk about it for publication.” Only on arriving in London the following week did he begin to report on his visit. In interviews and articles, written in London and in New York, he repeated what he had said on his postcard to Julia Morgan. The German people were fully behind Hitler. “They'regard him as a Moses leading them out of their bondage, and their bondage since the war has been utter and bitter.” In response to a question about whether Hitler’s policies regarding Jews, religion, et cetera, were satisfactory to the German masses, the Chief explained that while Hitler—and his policies—appeared to be popular with the German masses, he was in the process of modifying them “in some respects ... particularly with regard to the Jews....I think Germany made a great mistake in regard to the Jews. Furthermore I cannot see any reason for any hostility to the Jews in Germany.... The whole policy of ... anti-Semitism is such an obvious mistake that I am sure it must soon be abandoned. In fact, I think it is already well on the way to abandonment.”24

  The Chief’s confidence in Hitler was baffling. Though Hjalmar Schacht, who had become minister of the economy in July of 1934, had convinced Hitler that until the economy was in better shape there should be “no major interference with Jewish business,” no attempts had been made either before or after Hearst’s visit to revoke the 1933 laws that barred Jews from the civil service and most professions and limited their enrollment in German schools and universities. The Chief could not have failed to see the effects of these laws and the informal manifestations of Nazi anti-Semitism everywhere in Germany. Even Marion had been struck by the presence of the “Juden Verboten” signs.25

  Hearst’s public statements about the end of Nazi anti-Semitism were a hybrid mixture of wish fulfillment and press-agentry. In a protean version of “deterrence” theory, he had convinced himself that only the existence of a unified, militarized Germany could guarantee peace in Europe. His need to envision Hitler as the strong man of Europe who would deter aggression was so great that it blinded him—as it did many—to the realities of Nazi rule and Nazi anti-Semitism.

  On September 17, near the end of his stay in Germany, Hearst wrote Joe Willicombe in the United States, “The doctor says that I am no worse than I was three years ago. The doctor further reassuringly said that I would last a few years yet if I got thin and took all strain off my heart. So when you see me I will be a slender sapling. No doubt about the ‘sap’ anyhow. I flew up to Berlin and had a long talk with Hitler yesterday. Hitler certainly is an extraordinary man. We estimate him too lightly in America. He has enormous energy, intense enthusiasm, a marvelous faculty for dramatic oratory, and great organizing ability. Of course all these qualities can be misdirected.”26

  On returning to the United States, the Chief took upon himself the task of making sure that these “qualities” were not misdirected. On November 20, 1934, he wrote Karl von Wiegand of his fears that Hitler, by “becoming involved in religious disputes and antagonism,” was squandering the opportunity given him to rebuild Germany, restore the European balance of power, and prevent the outbreak of another world war. Putzi Hanfstaengl and other Nazi “extremists” were, Hearst worried, not giving their “boss the best advice on these religious situations. First the Jews were alienated, then the Catholics, and finally many Protestant sects. The most dangerous things to meddle with are people’s religious beliefs.... What Germany needs is political unity and that can best be obtained with religious liberty. Religious conflicts can disrupt any nation.... If I were dictator I would be firm on essentials and liberal otherwise. I would allow complete freedom of religious belief and I would allow political liberty too, barring only seditious activity to undermine by conspiracy or to overthrow by violence the established government.”

  Hearst asked von Wiegand not to be “displeased with Hanfstaengl and others in the Government who seem antagonistic. Give them good advice and try to guide them towards a greater liberality which will gain approval both at home and abroad.”27

  This was to be his policy for the next four years, until the events of “Kristallnacht” in November of 1938 convinced him that Hitler was not going to follow his—or anyone else’s—advice on Germany’s Jews.

  In December of 1934, the Chief instructed his chief correspondent in London, William Hillman, to “go to Berlin and deliver personally the following message to Dr. Hanfstaengl; and while there you might incidentally get a little talk with Hitler. QUOTE ‘Now that all citizens including Jews given political rights in Saar, why not grant this everywhere and give them representation in proportion to population? That is only one percent and surely the mouse need not terrify the elephant. Such action would strengthen Germany immensely in the United States and I think everywhere. But if you do this, do it strikingly by manifesto in way to compel publication and attention everywhere ... I think this would be wise, but please pardon me if I am unwarrantably interfering.’”28

  We do not know where Hearst got his information about the Jews in the Saar, but he was certainly wrong. The Chief, nonetheless, continued to believe that Hitler would, in due course, change his policies toward the Jews. As William Dodd, the American ambassador to Germany, wrote Roosevelt in March of 1935, he had been told by von Wiegand that Hearst correspondents had been instructed to “give only friendly accounts of what happened in Germany.” Hearst, it appeared, believed that by staying on the good side of the Nazis he would be able to retain access to Hitler and offer him the kind of advice he was not getting from extremists like Hanfstaengl. This did not mean however that the Chief was going to capitulate entirely to the Nazis. When the German government demanded that he replace von Wiegand as his correspondent in late 1934, he refused to do so.29

  32. The Last Crusade

  ALL SUMMER LONG, the Chief’s words and actions in Europe had been carefully monitored and analyzed by press, politicians, and the president in Washington. No one, not even Hearst, knew quite where he stood politically. “I do not write as a reactionary—good lord!...

  I am not even a Conservative,” he had declared in a front-page editorial cabled to his newspapers from Europe in August of 1934.1 Two weeks later, in a front-page interview with a New York Times correspondent in Germany, he assailed the New Dealers as visionary Pied Pipers who were “wasting the people’s money in futile and fantastic experiments.... We should end once and for all the NRA and its Nonsensical, Ridiculous, Asinine interference with national and legitimate industrial development.”2

  The president was concerned, as he should have been. “I am told that when Hearst returns he is going to attack the administration,” he warned Henry Morgenthau, his secretary of the treasury, the week after Hearst’s interview appeared in the New York Times. “Can’t you look up his income tax and be prepared.” Morgenthau did as requested and “found that there was plenty there; also plenty on Marion Davies. I told the President on Tuesday that we thought it would be much better to proceed at once on Hearst and Marion Davies income tax before he attacked because if we started something after he attacked us he would say that we were doing it to revenge and spite. The President agreed.”3
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br />   Though there might indeed have been “plenty” in Hearst’s and Marion’s tax returns, there is no record that the Roosevelt administration ever took any action against them. With a midterm election on the horizon, the president decided, in the end, that it made more sense to try to placate the Chief than to antagonize him.

  In late September, Roy Keehn, Hearst’s Chicago editor and a Roosevelt supporter, wrote the president to suggest that a direct appeal from him might succeed in bringing the Chief back into the Democratic camp. “A cable could be sent to him by you expressing your interest in the fact that he had spent the summer studying conditions in Europe ... and had acquired much information which you would like to share with him. An invitation to visit you at the White House on his return, for this purpose, would lead to discussion of other matters, and I believe would probably adjust the present difficulty.” Vincent Astor, a friend, neighbor, distant relative, and yachting partner of the president who was on excellent terms with Hearst, made the same suggestion.4

  Roosevelt agreed and had Stephen Early, his secretary, issue an invitation to the Chief to visit him. The Chief obliged, probably unaware that the president, who was sending a car to meet him at Union Station and take him directly to the White House “to dine informally at approximately eight o’clock,” had only a few weeks earlier initiated a top-level fishing expedition into his and Marion’s income tax returns.5

  By receiving Hearst as he would have one of his own diplomats and engaging him in colloquy on the state of European politics, Roosevelt was able to work his magic again and bring Hearst back into the Democratic fold. On leaving the White House, Hearst declared that a “genuine recovery” was on the way and saluted the president for the encouragement he had given the business community.6