The world's leading press agency, the 'Associated Press' (AP), willingly collaborated with Germany from 1935 to 1941 to disseminate Nazi propaganda photos in the United States and agreed to provide pictures for Nazi publications, including anti-Semitic SS manuals, a researcher has found.
In an article for the German journal 'Studies in Contemporary History', Harriet Scharnberg details how AP's office in Berlin colluded between 1935 and 1941 with the Hitler regime and provided it with photos while other American news agencies were already banned from operating in Germany.
According to the article, AP willingly accepted the censorship of the Reich Propaganda Ministry and even had an active member of the Nazi Party's SS as a photographer on its staff.
Scharnberg found that the world’s biggest news agency was only allowed to remain in Germany after the Nazis rose to power in 1933 because it signed a deal with the regime. AP photos were the single largest source for a Nazi pamphlet called 'The Jews in USA', and in a different publication entitled 'The Subhuman' the photo department of the American press agency provided the second-largest number of photographs, according to Scharnberg.
News agency rejects historian's allegations
The 'Associated Press' released a statement on Wednesday rejecting the allegations.
“AP rejects the suggestion that it collaborated with the Nazi regime at any time. Rather, the AP was subjected to pressure from the Nazi regime from the period of Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 until the AP’s expulsion from Germany in 1941.
“AP staff resisted the pressure while doing its best to gather accurate, vital and objective news for the world in a dark and dangerous time. AP news reporting in the 1930s helped to warn the world of the Nazi menace. AP’s Berlin bureau chief, Louis P. Lochner, won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for his dispatches from Berlin about the Nazi regime. Earlier, Lochner also resisted anti-Semitic pressure to fire AP’s Jewish employees and when that failed he arranged for them to become employed by AP outside of Germany, likely saving their lives. [...]
“US newspapers were supplied with some of these images through the German subsidiary. Those that came from Nazi government, government-controlled or government–censored sources were labeled as such in their captions or photo credits sent to US members and other customers of the AP, who used their own editorial judgment about whether to publish the images. Images of that time from Germany had legitimate news value as editors and the public needed to learn more about the Nazis.”
The 'Associated Press' was founded in 1846 as a non-profit cooperative by American newspapers. It is today owned by its contributing newspapers, radio, and television stations in the US, all of which contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its journalists.
The AP Photo service started in 1925. The Berlin office was opened in 1931, two years before the Nazis came to power in Germany.
