A more marked and militant opposition to the policies of Hitlerism has arisen in Milwaukee newspapers of late, particularly since the promulgation of the recent German law removing the last vestige of freedom from its press.
The Milwaukee Journal, largest newspaper of this city, launched into a bitter attack upon Hitler and his works in an editorial labelled “Die Kultur der Gegenwart.”
Other newspapers also branded the press law announced by Goebbels as a “gag law” and when a local Catholic priest, the Rev. Peter F. Dietz, defended Hitler’s “co-ordination” of the press, he was pounced upon in both editorials and speeches.
Bitingly, the Journal in its latest editorial pointed out that “the German people are being held in ignorance.”
“Their information, predigested by Hitler, is stuffed down their throats,” the editorial went on. “The nation goes in a Hitlerian goose-step toward a new future—of ‘uebermenschen’ committed to ‘militarismus’ and not disinclined toward ‘schrecklichkeit.’
BACK TO THE OLD GERMANY
“Those of us there who know the kindly nature of the German as a neighbor, his love of ‘gemuetlichkeit’, can only wonder why things as they are exist in the new Germany. The answer must lie in a new development of that pre-war ‘kultur’ which through its arrogant presumptions brought ruin to the old Germany of the Kaisers. The world is watching … for the inevitable denouement.”
The Rev. Mr. Dietz, who in a sermon defended Hitler’s suppression of the press and called the ideal of free press an “outworn fetish”, was denounced in editorials by the Milwaukee edition of the Chicago Tribune and by the Madison (Wis.) Capital Times. The Tribune wrote of the “German Catholic clergyman in Milwaukee who found the time propitious to tell his congregation Hitler was right in bringing the German press to heel” and assailed this stand as the view of “men who believe that conformity should be forced upon people in politics or religion.”
“Such men readily support the doctrine of suppression,” it went on.
The Capital Times, in an article by Ernest L. Meyer, columnist, pointed out in answer to Mr. Dietz that Hitler may at any time clamp down, too, on the Catholic press and challenged Dietz then to defend Hitler on the ground of national unity.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
