Before the Nazis seized control of Germany, American journalist Dorothy Thompson described Adolf Hitler as a “little man.” She said he was impossible to talk to because he spoke as if he was addressing a crowd. “… a hysterical note creeps into his voice, which rises sometimes almost to a scream.”
Hitler did not forget Thompson’s portrayal when he became chancellor of Germany in January 1933. He personally ordered her removal from the country the next time she visited. Within days of Thompson’s arrival in August 1934, the German Secret Police, the Gestapo, presented her with an expulsion order to leave within 24 hours.
“My offence was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all,” Thompson said later. “That is a crime in the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr Hitler is a messiah sent of God to save the German people.”
After leaving Germany, Thompson travelled to France, where she gave a speech about the importance of freedom of the press. She railed against the treatment of foreign correspondents in Germany and said that the domestic press was only allowed to publish news “in support of the present regime.”
“It’s the business of journalism to report everything that happens regardless of whether it’s to the glory or not of one regime or another …”
Photo: USHMM, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, source Holocaust Museum.
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