George Ward Price, the Daily Mail's star reporter in the 1930s, secured a series of scoops by cultivating close ties with Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler. However, a new book by Richard Evans raises serious questions about his journalistic ethics, suggesting he may have allowed Hitler to censor his own reporting.
Ward Price, dubbed by Ernest Hemingway 'the Monocled Prince of the Press', was one of the most successful journalists of his era. Born in 1886, he left a fortune of over £125,000 at a time when the average UK salary was around £1,000. His greatest triumphs came in the 1930s, when he gained exclusive access to Hitler, who once greeted him with a smile, saying, 'Well, Ward Price. Always there!'
His reporting drew sharp criticism, including from Winston Churchill, who accused him of 'shaking the bloodstained hands of your Nazi friends'. In his 1957 autobiography, Ward Price defended himself, claiming he merely reported Hitler's statements accurately, leaving readers to form their own opinions. Others, however, saw him as an 'international mouthpiece' for Hitler and Mussolini.
Evans presents a damning piece of evidence: after the Anschluss, Ward Price spent days at Hitler's retreat in Berchtesgaden, securing the 'biggest story in the world' about Hitler's plans for the Sudetenland. Yet the version published in the Mail had been toned down—by Joseph Goebbels, who noted in his diary that Hitler was 'still revising the interview by Ward Price, which has turned out very well. It was somewhat too effusive.'
Evans makes surprisingly little of this revelation, but it is the smoking gun at the heart of his book. If Ward Price allowed Hitler to censor his report, it represents a total betrayal of journalistic integrity. To permit a subject to burnish his own image is one thing; when that subject is Hitler, it is wickedness itself.
