| Nazi propaganda sheet
By Will Koroluk It was called Deutsche Zeitung für Canada, and it was a German-language Nazi propaganda sheet published for a while before the Second World War. It may have done more harm than good for the Nazi cause. It was one of seven German papers in the Prairie West, but it was a newcomer, founded in 1935 with the financial backing of the Nazi party through the German consulate in Winnipeg. Of the other papers, four were basically religious in their content, with just two, the Nordwesten in Winnipeg and the Courier in Regina, publishing articles of more general interest. Both papers were, of course, interested in the development of what was often referred to as the “New Germany” under Adolf Hitler, and both occasionally carried articles that were generally friendly toward him. But Bernhard Bott, the editor of the Courier, was undergoing something of a conversion, becoming ever more friendly toward the Nazis. Finally, those sympathies cost him his job. He was fired in 1934. That made him a natural choice as editor of the Deutsche Zeitung, the brain-child of Heinrich Seelheim, the German consul for western Canada, with whom Bott had formed a close friendship. The paper began publication in Winnipeg on June 12, 1935, and contained a mix of national and international news, editorial comment, women’s features, sports—pretty well what one would expect in a paper aiming for a general audience. There was even a two-page supplement at the back of the paper, containing English translations of some of the articles. And in those translations many readers spotted a subtle slant that always cast the “New Germany” in a favourable light. The paper only had a circulation of about 6,000, mostly on the Prairies. And with virtually no advertising revenue, it couldn’t have survived without infusions of cash from Germany. It may actually have hurt the Nazi cause, as Bott’s editorials gradually became more rabid in their support of the Nazis, and more and more anti-Semitic. This, historians have argued, contributed to a growing awareness that Nazis were at work in Canada, a realization that led not to sympathy for the Nazis, but to outright hostility. The RCMP watched all this with interest, of course, and on Sept. 4, 1939, Bott was arrested and sent to an internment camp. That was the end of Deutsche Zeitung für Canada, whose last issue had been dated Aug. 30, 1939 |