Observers of the current US election season have noted the prominent role of Rupert Murdoch’s reactionary Fox News Channel, which currently employs GOP and “Tea Party” partisans Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, and others. Some have alleged that a television network carrying so many potential political candidates and propagandists on its payroll is unprecedented. But there is a precedent for large-scale Fox intervention into a political campaign.

In 1932, the German newsreel subsidiary of Fox News Channel’s corporate ancestor, Fox Films, intervened in national elections in Germany.

The Candidate Fox Supported Was Nazi Leader Adolf Hitler

The basic facts are available in German historian Hans Mommsen’s authoritative study entitled The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, which is translated into English and widely available in over five hundred libraries in this country. Mommsen, one of the most distinguished postwar German historians, is now Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Bochum. In Mommsen’s account of Nazi propaganda techniques, we find the following: “There was nothing that escaped the ingenuity of Nazi propagandists. A case in point was the use of film. Under Goebbels’ influence the party had begun to exploit the potential of the political propaganda film to an unprecedented extent as early as 1930. Such films were shown mostly in places where Hitler and other prominent party leaders were not able to appear as speakers. For the manufacture of outdoor sound film, the NSDAP turned to an American company, Twentieth Century Fox.“1

Scholar William G. Chrystal confirms this account and provides further important details in his 1975 article on “Nazi Party Election Films, 1927-1938.” Chrystal writes: “Support for two additional 1932 election films, Der Führer (The Leader), and Hitlers Kampf um Deutschland (Hitler’s Struggle for Germany) came from the German-based subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Tönende Wochenschau (Fox Weekly Sound Newsreel [i.e., Fox Movietone News]). In addition, they also supplied some mobile sound film vans to be used during the campaign. Thus at least part of Hitler’s support in that critical time was the result of Fox’s help. The background for this assistance is unknown since Fox Tönende Wochenschau records were destroyed during the war,” according to a July 9, 1974 letter to Chrystal from Joseph Bellfort, who was at that time the vice president of the Twentieth Century Fox International Film Corporation.2

Fox Helped Hitler’s Voice to Reach Many Germans for the First Time

Of the first of these two films, Chrystal writes: “…Der Führer (The Leader) was one of two sound films subsidized by Fox Tönende Wochenschau. Released on April 13, 1932, it was originally titled Volk und Führer (Nation and Leader). It was a relatively short film, 263 meters long, but it provided many people with their first opportunity to hear Hitler speak. These films were accompanied by an apparently popular tide which enabled their wider dissemination. In his diary on March 6, 1932, [Nazi propaganda boss Joseph] Goebbels noted: ‘We now also win the movie theater for our propaganda.’”3

This film lasts about five minutes. In it Hitler, speaking in Berlin on April 4, 1932, develops his characteristic theme that the German army was betrayed and stabbed in the back in November 1918 by the Weimar politicians, especially the Social Democrats. This speech was part of Hitler’s campaign for president, in which he was defeated on April 10, 1932 by von Hindenburg but nevertheless received almost 37% of the votes, which represented a new high in Nazi support up to that time. In the subsequent parliamentary election held on July 31, 1932, the Nazis added 19% to their previous totals to emerge for the first time as the largest single party in Germany with 38% of the votes — thanks in part to the assistance rendered to Hitler by Fox Movietone News.

Concerning the second film Fox made for Hitler, Chrystal writes: “…new Reichstag elections were called for November 6, 1932…. The second of the Fox-subsidized productions, Hitlers Kampf um Deutschland (Hitler’s Struggle for Germany), appeared on August 30. It comprised 606 meters of Hitler’s July, 1932 Eberswalde speech. An indication of the effectiveness of this speech and its film record can be found in its later use. When Reichstag elections were held again in March 1933, this same film was re-issued under a new title, Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler Spricht (Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler Speaks).”4

Hitler’s speech in the Brandenburg Stadium in Eberswalde on July 27, 1932, one of three he gave that day, is a classic demagogic performance. As Mommsen points out, “in the hectic 1932 election campaign” the Nazis organized mass rallies featuring “speeches that Hitler tailored specifically to the psychotic public mood that had been created by the deepening crisis.” (Mommsen, p. 338) “We are intolerant,” raved Hitler, promising to drive more than thirty other political parties out of Germany. “We have one goal before us, to fanatically and ruthlessly shove all these parties into the grave,” he added. This was the message which Fox Movietone News helped deliver to the German public. Six months after he gave this speech, Hitler seized power as chancellor and began consolidating his power as dictator — once again thanks in part to the help of Fox Movietone News.

Note that Chrystal speaks of Fox has having “subsidized” Hitler’s critical 1932 election campaigns. This can be considered as the 1930s equivalent of illicit contributions in kind to a politician under current US election law, which is the charge often made against Fox News today, as for example in a recent filing by the Democratic Governors’ Association in regard to the Kasich gubernatorial campaign in Ohio.

Fox Movietone News and the Rise of European Fascism

Robert Edwin Herzstein, in his article entitled “Movietone News and the Rise of Fascism in Europe, 1930-1935,” explored the partial archive of Fox Movietone News for these years now at the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina. It is clear from this article that the regular weekly Fox Movietone newsreels also played into the hands of the Nazi and fascist media strategy. Proud of this record, “Fox called its newsreel operations ‘the mightiest of them all.’” (Herzstein, p. 314)

In the Fox Movietone newsreels and outtakes of Nazi rallies, says Herzstein, “one senses the enthusiasm, the communion between leader and masses…. Hitler is often seen standing in the presence of his friend and foreign press chief Ernst Hanfstaengl, apparently oblivious to the prying movie camera…. Hitler, in part a media creation, was better equipped to manipulate the masses by putting them on the movie screen. He made them part of the media action, and the outtakes show us how that was done.” (Herzstein, p. 317) Hitler’s rivals and adversaries, including his predecessor as chancellor, von Papen, the Austrian leader Dollfuss, and the Social Democrat Dittman all appear in the Fox footage in a negative or unflattering light by comparison.

One big fan of Fox Movietone News was the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who was given the opportunity to make one of his famous bravura speeches for the Fox camera. According to Herzstein, one of the first sound newsreels shown in the United States depicted Mussolini in March 1929 speaking in English directly to the American people, saying: “Your talking newsreel has tremendous possibilities. Let me speak through it in twenty cities in Italy once a week and I need no other power.” (Herzstein, p. 318) In the mind of the Duce, newsfilm was thus already the handmaiden of fascist power. Herzstein’s extensive survey of the Fox Movietone archive for 1930-1935 apparently yielded no examples of any criticism or unfavorable coverage of the fascist dictators, since none is mentioned in his article.6

The last Fox Movietone newsreels appeared in the United States in 1963. According to the Wikipedia article on Movietone News, parts of the Fox Movietone newsreel collection are still “owned and managed by the Fox Film Corporation’s corporate successor (and namesake), Fox News Channel. The majority of the collection is stored in New Jersey, mostly unseen since the newsreels were originally shown in theatres. During its early years, Fox News Channel had a weekend show which played the newsreels.”7

As the philosopher George Santayana rightly observed in 1905, “when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

References:

[1] Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996, p. 339. emphasis added. Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures to form Twentieth Century Fox in May, 1935.

[2] William G. Chrystal, “Nazi Party Election Films, 1927-1938,” in Cinema Journal XV:1, Autumn 1975, p. 32, published by the University Texas Press for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, emphasis added. See also Hans Barkhausen, “Kurzübersicht: Filme der NSDAP, 1927-1945,” and “Die NSDAP als Filmproduzentin,” in Günter Moltmann and Karl Friedrich Reimers, Zeitgeschichte im Film- und Tondokument: 17 historische, pädagogische, und sozialwissenschaftliche Beiträge, edited by Günter Moltmann and Karl Friedrich Reimers (Göttingen: Musterschmidt-Verlag, 1970).

[3] Chrystal, p. 33.

[4] Chrystal, p. 35.

[5] Robert Edwin Herzstein, “Movietone News and the Rise of Fascism in Europe, 1930-1935: A Guide for the Researcher, Teacher, and Student,” The History Teacher XXI:3 (May 1988), pp. 313-320, published by: Society for History Education.

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/10/03/in-1932-fox-helped-make-propaganda-films

Thats all ancient history now, and has nothing to do with the current political climate in the USA.

like people aren't whores for money now either...

I think it was Lib. Dem.,John Kennedy, the Grandpa who was a hitler sympathizer also.

Ronald Kestler, The Sins of the Father

"In 1937, Kennedy began hinting to Roosevelt that he still deserved a reward for his role in the election. Roosevelt, who had become mistrustful of Kennedy, chose not to give him eye cabinet post, instead appointed him ambassador to the court of St. James, England. Kennedy's ambassadorship coincided with the beginning of World War II in Europe and throughout his three-year tenure, Kennedy argued against American and British involvement in the war. Even as the Nazis rolled into France, Joe Kennedy expressed his support for Hitler and maintained his position of appeasement toward Germany. In May of 1940, Winston Churchill was the elected British prime minister. The rise of Churchill brought an end to appeasement and hastened Joe Kennedy's decline and when Kennedy publicly proclaimed that "democracy is finished in England," and he did, Roosevelt called him home, and called for his resignation.

"A day without a lay," Joseph P. Kennedy once said, "is a day wasted." Apparently his sons took him literally, as Martin (Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill) points out repeatedly in this gossipy, well-documented anecdotal biography of Kennedy and his sons, Joe Jr., Jack, Bobby and Ted. We see the dynamic senior Kennedy as the mythical moneymaker, as SEC chairman, as the seducer of Gloria Swanson and as the anti-Semitic, Nazi-appeasing ambassador to England. His wife, Rose, is portrayed as a frigid, self-absorbed religious fanatic who would rather attend a Paris fashion show than look after her family. The rivalry between Joe Jr. and Jack is detailed, with the contention that Joe died trying to emulate Jack's heroism on PT 109. Much of the book centers on the President and his humongous sex drive? which prompted actress Angie Dickinson to comment that it was "the most memorable 15 seconds of my life"?and his affair with Marilyn ("What an ***!") Monroe. The President's illnesses, amphetamine addiction and pot smoking in the White House are also related. Ted is pictured as a ne'er-do-well and Bobby as the moralistic "sexual policeman" of the administration.

Egads, post of the year...Thank you for tying this together.

"Hitler’s speech in the Brandenburg Stadium in Eberswalde on July 27, 1932, one of three he gave that day, is a classic demagogic performance. As Mommsen points out, “in the hectic 1932 election campaign” the Nazis organized mass rallies featuring “speeches that Hitler tailored specifically to the psychotic public mood that had been created by the deepening crisis.” "

Just like the T-bagger's corporate sponsored rallies...the GOP with their POX propaganda machine certainly appealed to the RWers and other haters....no doubt.

Great find dude!

No one is listening, most people in any sort of political arena will just as quick stab their right-hand man in the back to get a step forward...I honestly don't think they care if their favorite news station sold off to Hitler, hell, they don't seem to care that their favorite news station is lying to them (yes, this goes for all of them).

Don't matter what station it is. They all spin it their way.

They have but one objective.

Make stockholders money.

........in 1932 Hitler was showing no signs of wanting to rule the world....he became a German hero because he pulled Germany out of a crippling debt from WW1....with that....in 1939 when he took some of Czheckoslovakia...Chamberlain ( PM of Britain ) ASWELL as the AMERICAN president allowed it.... Fear and Loathing....do you not know that before 1939 Hitler was allies with all of us? Propaganda for Hitler then is no different then the persecution of the African Americans in the U.S at the same time....and even to this day. Your history is a little hazy. Is that Jeff Dahmer as your profile pic??? Really??

Yes, I knew Hitler was allies with us before 1939. Of course, then again...I didn't bring anything historical up in my post. And yes, that is Jeffrey Dahmer as my profile picture.

you brought up things of a historical nature....u said fox did propaganda for Hitler. Isn't that history? hahaha anyway...I have to ask....Why Dahmer as your pic?

More US supporters of Hitler;
Another elusive case of reported financing of Hitler is that of Fritz Thyssen, the German steel magnate who associated himself with the Nazi movement in the early 20s. When interrogated in 1945 under Project Dustbin,11 Thyssen recalled that he was approached in 1923 by General Ludendorf at the time of French evacuation of the Ruhr. Shortly after this meeting Thyssen was introduced to Hitler and provided funds for the Nazis through General Ludendorf. In 1930-1931 Emil Kirdorf approached Thyssen and subsequently sent Rudolf Hess to negotiate further funding for the Nazi Party. This time Thyssen arranged a credit of 250,000 marks at the Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. at 18 Zuidblaak in Rotterdam, Holland, founded in 1918 with H.J. Kouwenhoven and D.C. Schutte as managing partners.12 This bank was a subsidiary of the August Thyssen Bank of Germany (formerly von der Heydt's Bank A.G.). It was Thyssen's personal banking operation, and it was affiliated with the W. A. Harriman financial interests in New York. Thyssen reported to his Project Dustbin interrogators that:

I chose a Dutch bank because I did not want to be mixed up with German banks in my position, and because I thought it was better to do business with a Dutch bank, and I thought I would have the Nazis a little more in my hands.13

Thyssen's book I Paid Hitler, published in 1941, was purported to be written by Fritz Thyssen himself, although Thyssen denies authorship. The book claims that funds for Hitler — about one million marks — came mainly from Thyssen himself. I Paid Hitler has other unsupported assertions, for example that Hitler was actually descended from an illegitimate child of the Rothschild family. Supposedly Hitler's grandmother, Frau Schickelgruber, had been a servant in the Rothschild household and while there became pregnant:

And he did it with the help of, The Union Banking Corporation of New York City. E. Roland HARRIMAN Vice president of W. A. Harriman & Co., New York

The largest contributor to the fund was I.G. Farben, which como mitted itself for 80 percent (or 500,000 marks) of the total. Director A. Steinke, of BUBIAG (Braunkohlen-u. Brikett-Industrie A.G.), an I.G. Farben subsidiary, personally contributed another 200,000 marks. In brief, 45 percent of the funds for the 1933 election came from I.G. Farben. If we look at the directors of American I.G. Farben — the U.S. subsidiary of I.G. Farben — we get close to the roots of Wall Street involvement with Hitler. The board of American I.G. Farben at this time contained some of the most prestigious names among American industrialists: Edsel B. Ford of the Ford Motor Company, C.E. Mitchell of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Walter Teagle, director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Georgia Warm Springs Foundation.

Paul M. Warburg, first director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and chairman of the Bank of Manhattan, was a Farben director and in Germany his brother Max Warburg was also a director of I.G, Farben. H. A. Metz of I.G. Farben was also a director of the Warburg's Bank of Manhattan. Finally, Carl Bosch of American I.G. Farben was also a director of Ford Motor Company A-G in Germany.

Three board members of American I.G. Farben were found guilty at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials: Max Ilgner, F. Ter Meer, and Hermann Schmitz. As we have noted, the American board members — Edsel Ford, C. E. Mitchell, Walter Teagle, and Paul Warburg — were not placed on trial at Nuremburg, and so far as the records are concerned, it appears that they were not even questioned about their knowledge of the 1933 Hitler fund.

FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO HITLER:
Feb. 23-Mar. 13, 1933:

I.G. Farbenindustrie (Edsel Ford, C.E. Mitchell, Walter Teagle, Paul Warburg)

Vatican Bank had an active roll in laundering Nazi holdings and circumventing records on Jewish funds and gold. At the end of the war, even Vatican documents note what has become known as a 'ratline' in which the Vatican used their neutrality to help key officials in the 3rd Reich escape with confiscated wealth to open countries, usually with strong political ties to the Catholic Church, including Argentina and other South American ports. Vatican ties to the Reich came not only from political support but from opposition to intrusions of communism. The Nazis and the Catholic Church had a schizophrenic relationship: at one with each other towards the agenda of each, and opposed to each other in their ultimate goals.

What FOX news might have done is pretty minor compared to the other corporations here and around the world did to support Hitlers cause.

I didn't bring it up, I was just agreeing with the OP on a more wider scale. CNN, MSNBC, all of them in one way or the other lie to the public to gain viewers. I was just making the point that I don't think political candidates care much if Fox sold off to Hitler pre-WWII.

I study serial killers as a hobby, not too long ago I used to trade out a serial killer picture for my profile picture on a weekly basis.

Ah i see!! Forgive me, I just thought it was strange to see Dahmer ahaha. I was unaware that you studied the mind. That's cool.

No problem, mate. Not everyday you see some dude sporting one of the most infamous serial killers as his profile picture.

Haha...true. That guy was wacked!