Talk:Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere

Hitler

Info on the support for Hitler from this story from the Independent, March 1, 2005: Rothermere urged Hitler to invade Romania (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=615718) Hotlorp 02:40, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC) Updating the dead link above with one that works as of 19 Dec 2019 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/rothermere-urged-hitler-to-invade-romania-485296.html

Needs more

This entry is a bit thin: more is needed on his influence and the publications he founded and developed --Cunningham (talk) 11:48, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Questionable dates

Does anyone find it curious that Rothermere is listed as "Chancellor of Memorial University of Newfoundland 1952-1961" though he died in 1940?--Death Bredon (talk) 14:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Death

What were the circumstances of his death? Drutt (talk) 10:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and it says he died in Bermuda. How was he there, when Britain was at war? Health? Advice to make himself scarce? 2.31.36.101 (talk) 10:39, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

[1] LORD ROTHERMERE DEAD IN BERMUDA; Noted British Publisher Had Gone There to Rest After Exhausting War Mission OWNED LONDON DAILY MAIL Early Advocate of Strong Air Force Backed Appeasement Policy Before Hostilities seems clear. He had started off backing appeasement, then became a backer of the war, and acted as an emissary to Canada and the US. Collect (talk) 16:47, 30 September 2015 (UTC) .

Hurrah for the Blackshirts

Is the full text of this much cited, but little read, article available online anywhere? Drutt (talk) 10:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=GDCS&u=webdemo&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CEE1865176558&asid=1705122000000~8863cd29 GWillGC (talk) 09:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Correction that link to the story may not work. This should:

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/EE1865176558/GDCS?u=webdemo&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=8566f52f GWillGC (talk) 09:41, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

If he died in 1940

how was he Chancellor of Memorial from 1952? CaptainCanada (talk) 17:42, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Parents?

Odd that neither the Rothermere article nor the Northcliffe article mentions who their parents were. 86.145.152.144 (talk) 21:42, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

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Contradiction

If he was describing Hitler’s work as ‘great and superhuman’ in 1939, why did he publish a book the same year, titled ‘My Fight to Rearm Britain’? Perhaps someone could find a copy of the book and make some sense of his conflicting views. Valetude (talk) 13:21, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

PS - Rothermere fought for increased defence spending by Britain... He seemed to regard the Fascist movement chiefly as a bulwark against Bolshevism, while apparently remaining blind to some of the movement's dangers. Those two sentences seem to contradict. Valetude (talk) 12:19, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Valetude That was probably written in good faith, but somebody did not phrase this very well. Rothermere regarded the Soviet Union as the principle danger to Great Britain, and his demands for rearmament related to his belief that the USSR and the United Kingdom were destined to go to war sooner or later. Likewise, his advocacy of anti-Soviet Anglo-German alliance was part of the same tendency. Rothermere wanted the RAF to have a force of long-range bombers in order to strike the Soviet Union, not Germany.

However, he feel there was a possibility of Anglo-German war. This has been ignored by historians (to say nothing of Wikipedia!), but the Nazis were most insistent that one of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that they wanted to see undone were the loss of Germany's colonial empire. It was accepted thinking at the time that European nations needed African colonies to exploit to allow their economics to function. This is precisely the argument that Rothermere made in his 1935 article "Germany must have elbow room", with the "elbow room" being the former German African colonies. Hitler was most vehement that all of Germany's former African colonies "go home to the Reich".

One of the most peculiar aspects of most British appeasers were that they always banging on about the Treaty of Versailles was awful and bad and needed to be revised in favor of Germany when it benefitted nations like France, Czechoslovakia and Poland. However, most of the appeasers were all for the Treaty of Versailles when it benefitted the British empire. Chamberlain and Lord Halifax were always self-righteous about how nations like France and Czechoslovakia should make concessions to Germany for the sake of the peace, but that did not apply to Britain. Chamberlain made it very clear that Britain was not going to return to Germany either Cameroon or Tanganyika. When the Treaty of Versailles benefitted Britain, then it was sacred and inviolate. I could say really nasty here about this hypocrisy about how the Sudetenland should go to Germany because the Treaty of Versailles was "unjust", but not Tanganyika; however, this double standard speaks for itself. To be fair to Rothermere, he at least was consistent with this, and did argue that Britain should return the former German colonies. However, he was very well aware that neither the Baldwin government nor the Chamberlain government had no intention of doing that, which led him to fear for an Anglo-German war. Rothermere's support for rearmament related to his fear that one day that Germany would try to take back via war its lost empire in Africa. Likewise, Rothermere's support for Germany having Eastern Europe as a kind of compensation for its lost empire in Africa related in least in part to the same fears. Andrew Crozier in his 1988 book Germany's Last Bid for Colonies is a very good source on the subject. I would not say there is a contradiction, but the article should explain this better. Best wishes and cheers! A.S. Brown (talk) 04:58, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Section heading

The section "Opposition to World War II" seems oddly titled, seeing as how the text mainly describes open support for fascism or even praise of Hitler. Perhaps we should not beat around the bush and retitle it "Support for fascism" or something similarly succinct? Incidentally, the section title was changed from "Appeasement", itself not very accurate, on 2020-01-03 by an account later permanently blocked from editing as a sockpuppet. Muad (talk) 20:04, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Done. It was a rather odd section, given most of it is about events that happened before 1939. I'm going to follow the definition adopted by Richard Griffiths in his seminal 1980 Fellow Travelers of the Right between "enthusiasts" for fascism vs. "appeasers". It is true that Rothermere did support appeasement, but he went much, much further in demanding an Anglo-German alliance and that Britain became a fascist dictatorship, which is well beyond what any of the ministers of the National Government ever envisioned or wanted. Rothermere may have not have actually belonged to a fascist party, but was very clearly a fascist in terms of his politics, and the section title should reflect that. Best wishes! --A.S. Brown (talk) 10:14, 30 September 2022 (UTC)