Rothermere urged Hitler to invade Romania: UK national archives

Indpendent
By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
01 March 2005


The former owner of the Daily Mail wrote to Adolf Hitler congratulating Germany on its annexation of Czechoslovakia, and urging the Führer to march into Romania, British secret service files, released by the National Archives for the first time today, reveal.

Lord Rothermere even hired a glamorous German spy to introduce him to leading Nazi figures in the run-up to the Second World War. MI5 papers, reveal how Rothermere, owner of Associated Newspapers, paid Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst to further his contacts with Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Ribbentrop. The Austrian-born princess, described as London's leading Nazi hostess, was closely watched by the secret services after she arrived in Britain in the 1920s and began "worming her way into society circles".

The MI5 file describes her as an intriguer who "must be regarded as an extremely dangerous person" because of close connections with Nazi leaders.

But as war with Germany became inevitable Rothermere stopped paying her retainer. She in turn sued him for breach of contract, and threatened to publish his letters to Hitler and other Nazi leaders.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=615718

Col. McCormick (Chicago Tribune) and William Randolph Hearst also admired and courted Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler and then Goebbels were columnists for the Hearst chain. Luce (Time-Life)was also an unabashed admirer of the fascist dictators.

Very little was written until the end of the 1930s about the actual horrors of fascism, and little has been written since about the role of Fifth Columnists in the US and UK media in fostering the rise of the international fascist movement.

That legacy of Right-wing deception and omission in the mass media is still very much with us.

It fought with Germany in Russia, and had as much as 20 divisions fighting at one time. Romanian soldiers had some important victories fr the Germans including the capture of Odessa. They also provided most of the troops that captured the Crimea, and also had large contingents in the invasion into the Caucuses.

The disaster came at Stalingrad where Hitler used the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies to guard the German Sixth Army's long flanks. It was a job they were not up to. Their equipment, especially the lack of tank fighting equipment was not up to the task, and when the carefully planned Rusian counteroffensive hit them, their armies were shattered.

The Romanian soldiers and divisions fought well when given jobs they could accomplish. I've heard it argued that Romania was Germany's most important European ally, more helpful to Hitler than Italy was.