Reptile Journalism: The Official Polish-Language Press under the Nazis, 1939-1945

During the occupation of Poland by Germany, the Nazis seized all publishing houses owned by Poles and Jews and began to publish newspapers and journals for the conquered population. While there have been several studies of the clandestine press in Poland, until now there have been no studies of the Nazi-run Polish press during this period. This book, based on primary sources and over 100 newspapers and journals, fills the gap by analyzing the organizational framework of the Nazi propaganda apparatus and thereby illuminating an important aspect of totalitarian control.

Lucjan Dobroszycki, editor of the highly acclaimed Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, describes the historical term "reptile press" and its meaning and examines the activity of the Polish-language press in three periods: the military occupation, from September to November 1939; the heyday of the Nazi civilian occupation in the Generalgouvernement, from December 1939 to spring 1943; and mid-1943 to 1945, when the Nazi war effort began to falter. Analyzing the press and comparing it with both underground Polish publications and the press in other occupied countries, Dobroszycki reaches some interesting conclusions. One can find, for example, that no matter how unreliable the Nazi press was, it contained more factual information than either Izvestia or Pravda during the Stalinist period. In addition, he presents convincing arguments to contradict many historians who have maintained that no one actually read or was influenced by the Nazi-controlled press, showing that in fact it was an effective medium for propaganda.