Report: Associated Press cooperated with the Nazis

The Associated Press news agency formally cooperated with Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in the 1930s, the British Guardian newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing archive material found by a German historian.

According to the Guardian report, AP supplied American newspapers with material directly produced and selected by the Nazi propaganda ministry.

In the years following the rise of the Nazis to power in the early 1930s, AP was the only Western news agency that was able to stay open in Germany. It continued to operate in Germany until the United States entered World War II in December 1941.

According to an article published by historian Harriet Scharnberg in the Studies in Contemporary History academic journal, the reason AP was able to stay in Germany for so long was by entering into a mutually beneficial two-way cooperation with the Nazis. AP signed on to the Nazi "Editor's Law," pledging not to publish any material "calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home." AP was required by this law to hire reporters who also worked for the Nazi party's propaganda division. AP also allowed the Nazis to use its photo archives for anti-Semitic propaganda.

In response to the Guardian report, an AP spokesperson said: "As we continue to research this matter, AP rejects any notion that it deliberately 'collaborated' with the Nazi regime. An accurate characterization is that the AP and other foreign news organizations were subjected to intense pressure from the Nazi regime from the year of Hitler's coming to power in 1932 until the AP's expulsion from Germany in 1941. AP management resisted the pressure while working to gather accurate, vital and objective news in a dark and dangerous time."