George Ward Price Born in 1886, Price was the son of a clergyman. In short order, he became one of the most iconic and controversial figures in journalism history. Ward Price would go on to win the title “the Monocled Prince of the Press” from American literary giant Ernest Hemingway. It was his Fuehrership exclusive access to Adolf Hitler and his aggressive courtship of the Nazi regime. Together, those 75 years of his life tell the story of a career defined by great artistic achievement while generating tremendous controversy.
Ward Price was a powerhouse of a reporter, and his influence continues to feel powerful today. Retirees during his tenure For drivers, he became a ubiquitous figure in the industry. Yet he held such a singular role that it actually allowed him to penetrate Adolf Hitler’s mind. Over the course of several visits, including a long stay at Hitler’s vacation home deep in the Bavarian Alps, he felt the full fury of Hitler’s temper.
At this critical juncture in history, Ward Price took his opportunity to interview Hitler. This extraordinary experience had an outsized impact on how the public in Britain understood their new wartime conditions. His good news was so incredibly good that he called it “the biggest story in the world.” This tale enchanted viewers and ignited a firestorm of protest.
This titillating investigative style soon gained him enemies outeverywhere, including from central quarters such as attacked by the great politico… Winston Churchill. Upon meeting Ward Price, Churchill remarked, “I see that you’ve been over in Germany again, shaking the bloodstained hands of your Nazi friends.” This sentiment was emblematic of the rising anxiety spreading throughout Britain about the Nazi regime’s expansionary impulse all over Europe.
Despite this backlash, Ward Price maintained that he “reported [Hitler’s] statements accurately, leaving British newspaper readers to form their own opinion of their worth.” He once said that he felt as a journalist that his job was to just lay out the facts and not put his opinions or views on top.
Ward Price’s relationship with the Nazi regime was a little more complicated, but only a little. Joseph Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda, called Ward Price’s interview with Hitler in his diary. He noted that it “has turned out very well,” and went on to underscore just how important this media engagement was in galvanizing world support for Nazi ideology. An unnamed commentator described him as “the international mouthpiece for the Duce and for the Führer,” encapsulating how his work was perceived beyond Britain’s borders.
With his career on the rise, Ward Price accumulated great wealth. When he died, he left more than £125,000 in his will. That was a big sum of cash. For context, the average annual salary in the UK at that time was about £1,000. His enormous financial success was a measure of his professional pre-eminence. It also ignited a much-needed conversation about the ethics of profiting from morally bankrupt political regimes.
Critics have always zeroed in on Ward Price’s zealous courting of Nazi officials as the most egregious. His friend once quipped that he might have made a better “bishop or on the staff of the Daily Mail,” suggesting that his journalistic pursuits sometimes veered into moral ambiguity.