“How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler” | History | Smithsonian

“Reports on the rise of fascism in Europe was not the American media’s finest hour.”

“Dorothy Thompson, who judged Hitler a man of ‘startling insignificance’ in 1928, realized her mistake by mid-decade when she, like Mowrer, began raising the alarm. ‘No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,’ she reflected in 1935. ‘He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will.” Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, ‘When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.’”

Source: How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler | History | Smithsonian

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