Nazis Tighten Censorship

Switzerland's Neue Zuercher Zeitung is one of the lonely islands of press freedom in a sea of European press restrictions. A smug, conservative old newspaper NZZ is to the Swiss what the London Times is to Britons. Unfrightened by the fact that Germany is less than 20 miles from Zurich, NZZ dares to tell the truth when it gets mad enough. Mad enough last week, NZZ said:

"On Sept. 15th of this year foreign correspondents in Berlin were subjected by the Propaganda Ministry to new 'directives' which constitute radical limitations on their reporting. . . . These drastic regulations have not been announced [to the world] by the Germans, but they can no longer be left unknown."

The new Nazi directives:

1) All press dispatches now have to be presented to Propaganda Ministry censors an hour before being telephoned (all foreign correspondents in Berlin use the phone exclusively for sending dispatches);

2) Absolutely no information can be sent out of Germany regarding air raids on German towns, except the Ministry's brief, undetailed communiques;

3) Banned completely are news dispatches containing quotations from the press of occupied countries, information from unofficial sources or even from officials when they are off duty, and all information of a "critical nature" (such as reports on the food situation or morale in Germany) and information touching on Germany's relations to her Allies.

When this report appeared in NZZ the Nazis forbade NZZ's Berlin correspondent, Edward Geilinger, to send any more news out of Germany.

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