‘My relative was an intrepid British journalist in Nazi Germany’
Will Wainewright is connected to one of the first foreign correspondents to interview Adolf Hitler – who was capable of holding the Führer’s gaze
Rothay found his position with the Daily Mail increasingly untenable, and he was sidelined by the newspaper
On an assignment in Munich in October 1923, British journalist Rothay Reynolds decided to seek out a local political firebrand named Adolf Hitler. Although unknown outside of Bavaria, the war veteran was rapidly gaining attention for his fierce verbal attacks on Germany’s elites.
“He stared at me straight into the eyes,” Rothay later recalled. “I thought that was a game two could play at, so I stared back. We stared until it became ridiculous and until at last he sat down, and I sat down.”
For the rest of their meeting, Hitler barely let his guest speak, ranting about the weakness of the country’s leadership. Rothay was not impressed and left believing his interviewee to be an “odd type of unbalanced fanatic”.
While merely a footnote in the wider history of Nazi Germany, the tale of how a British reporter held Hitler’s gaze has always captivated Will Wainewright, a distant cousin of Rothay Reynolds.
“I first learned about my connection to Rothay Reynolds when I was a teenager,” explains Will. “The fact he was one of the first foreign correspondents to interview Hitler was instantly fascinating, and I became even more interested in his life after following in his footsteps and becoming a journalist myself.”
Born in 1872 to a middle-class Kent family, there was little evidence from Rothay’s formative years to suggest that he would become a reporter. Initially, the Cambridge graduate planned to devote himself to religion.
“Rothay had an incredibly varied life,” says Will, who has written a book about his relative. “He originally trained for the clergy in the Church of England, which sent him to support its outpost in St Petersburg at the start of the 20th century.
“He soon acquired his taste for living abroad, and took the momentous decision to convert to Catholicism. He left the Church of England, but remained in Russia as a journalist, filing dispatches for the Daily News.”
After spending six years in Russia, Rothay moved around Europe, dabbling in writing fiction. Following the outbreak of the First World War, he lent his talents to the secretive government agency MI7, penning propaganda alongside the likes of AA Milne.
But the most important connection that Rothay forged at MI7 was with Daily Mail proprietor Lord Northcliffe, who hired him to work as the newspaper’s Berlin correspondent in 1921. Rothay would spend the next 18 years stationed in the German capital, witnessing the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of a new fascist state.
Although his employers openly supported the Nazi regime (the Mail would publish its notorious “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!” editorial in 1934), Rothay remained sceptical. His bizarre early encounter with Hitler, combined with several meetings over the years, did little to endear him to the Third Reich.
“Rothay knew exactly what the Nazis meant for Germany: reduced freedoms, increased attacks on minorities and the end of democracy,” says Will.
“The Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels and other arms of the Nazi state made life difficult – even dangerous – for foreign correspondents in Germany, and many were expelled. It was impossible for him to report in objective terms on Hitler and the Nazis.”
Rothay found his position with the Daily Mail increasingly untenable, and he was sidelined by the newspaper in the mid-1930s. He returned to Britain in February 1939, and shared his true feelings in a memoir entitled When Freedom Shrieked, published later that year.
Sadly, any further hopes of exposing the horrors of Nazi Germany ended in 1940, when he died of pneumonia aged 67.
“It is easy to look back and say he should have fought harder to force the Daily Mail to report differently on the Nazis – but ultimately the owner was in overall control,” says Will.
“Yet Rothay did all he could to help the afflicted of Nazi Germany. After he died, a group of colleagues wrote that ‘Hundreds of victims of Nazi persecution and terror received from him material and moral support in an uneven fight with an evil system’.
“I admire Rothay’s courage. He was a greatly patriotic figure and served the national cause as best he could in both world wars, which I hugely respect.”