Führer on Trial

This description of the Nazi dictator, which was written by a New York Times reporter in Germany in July 1933, was all too typical of American press coverage of Hitler during his first year in power.

The front-page article, “Hitler Seeks Jobs for All Germans,” presented the Nazi leader in sympathetic terms and provided him with a platform for long statements justifying his totalitarian policies and attacks on Jews.

The writer, Times correspondent Anne O’Hare McCormick, gave the Nazi leader paragraph after paragraph to explain his actions as necessary to deal with Germany’s unemployment, improve its roads, and promote national unity. McCormick lobbed the Nazi chief softball questions such as “What character in history do you admire most, Caesar, Napoleon, or Frederick the Great?”

The Times correspondent also described Hitler’s appearance and mannerisms in a strongly positive tone: Hitler is “a rather shy and simple man, younger than one expects, more robust, taller… His eyes are almost the color of the blue larkspur in a vase behind him.”