Type Weekly Political alignment Social Democrat Headquarters Munich | Founded 1888 Language German language | |
Ceased publication January 1, 1933 (1933-01-01) | ||
The Münchener Post (Engl. Munich Post) was a socialist newspaper published in Munich, Germany, from 1888 to 1933. The paper was notable for its decade-long campaign against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party before their accession to power. It was shut down by Hitler in March 1933 immediately after he became the Reich Chancellor.
Contents
1920s and 30s
Münchener Post closely followed Hitler and his party, exposing their crimes, internal intrigues, and scandals. Hitler considered the paper, which he called "the poison kitchen", one of his most vexing public adversaries, and it was the target of several libel actions taken by the Nazi Party. The Post wrote from a populist perspective, viewing Hitler and his party as a dangerous band of gangsters rather than as ideological enemies, or as a bona fide political movement at all. The coverage was notable for being the first to publish information on the so-called "Final Solution" - this information was published in December 1931, more than ten years before the infamous 1942 Wannsee Conference. Included in its reportage was its chilling prediction of the Final Solution (Endlösung), saying it had uncovered a "secret plan" to solve the Jewish question. It listed restrictions that would later become the Nuremberg Laws, and a final solution “to use the Jews in Germany for slave labor...”
Closure
In 1933, as part of the Nazi elimination of media opposition, they ordered the closure of a number of news outlets across Germany. All Socialist newspapers' buildings were taken over by the government. Writers and editors at the Münchener Post were arrested and imprisoned and its premises turned over to an SA squad who destroyed its offices and printing presses and burned its files.
Research
Very little had ever been written about the Münchener Post until 1998 when American journalist Ron Rosenbaum published his book Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil. Rosenbaum considers "the running battle between Hitler and the courageous reporters and editors of the Post...one of the great unreported dramas in the history of journalism", and challenges contemporary journalists to do justice to the "men who brought so much honor to the profession with their courage and investigative zeal" (Rosenbaum 37, 58).
The Poison Kitchen ("Giftküche") was the name Adolf Hitler gave to a group of journalists of the newspaper who were highly critical of Hitler and ran a series of extremely negative investigative exposés about Hitler in the 1920s and early 1930s, before Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933.
The newspaper had been founded by the Bavarian Social Democratic Party, and its initial opposition to Hitler was based on ideological grounds, but quickly acquired a personal dimension both for the journalists involved and for Hitler himself. Ron Rosenbaum writes in his 1998 book about The Poison Kitchen:
"Their duel with Hitler lasted a dozen years and produced some of the sharpest, most penetrating insights into his character, his mind and method, then or since. Much of their work has been forgotten, but not much has been surpassed. And, as the name Poison Kitchen suggests, they succeeded in getting under Hitler's skin ...."
The Poison Kitchen group became one of the few early warning voices regarding the dangers posed by the rise of the Nazi party, although their warnings went largely unheeded at the time.
When Hitler finally came to power in 1933, The Munich Post offices were subject to a final ransacking by the S.A. on March 9, 1933 and all the members of the paper were imprisoned in concentration camps. The very street address was stricken from the map and remains so to this day.
The Poison Kitchen group included Martin Gruber, Erhard Auer, Edmund Goldschagg, and Julius Zerfaß, and others.