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Toepser-Ziegert 1984–2001). In Italy the number of ‘disposizioni’ reached its
apex at around four thousand in 1938/39 (Galassi 2008: 433f.). These direc-
tives instructed journalists about contents, the positioning of articles and even
prohibitions (Wilke 2007). For instance, according to notes made secretly, the
press directive for the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass, 10 October 1938)
demanded: ‘Reports should not be given much prominence; no headlines on
the front page. No pictures to be published as yet. Collected reports from
the Reich are not to be compiled, but it may be reported that similar actions
have been carried out in the Reich. Reports on individuals are to be avoided.
More detailed reports on local events are permitted ...’ (Bohrmann and Toeps-
er-Ziegert 1999, Vol. 6.3: 1060f.). In so doing the regime largely focused on
how Germany would appear to other countries (Pöttker 2006: 171). Very little
research has been done on the extent to which such communications were
actually implemented. A case study of two Mannheim newspapers has discov-
ered discrepancies in only 5 per cent of cases, and these were not greater in
the bourgeois newspaper than in the local NSDAP organ (Dussel 2010: 558).
The press directives simultaneously presented a dilemma that even Goeb-
bels often deplored: on the one hand he wished for an interesting and com-
pelling press; on the other hand the controls guaranteed unimaginative
uniformity. For this reason Goebbels founded the weekly Das Reich in 1940,
a journal meant to be an intellectual figurehead for both inside and outside
Germany to give the best writers more freedom. Conversely, both Italy and
Germany failed in their attempts at creating a new type of professional jour-
nalist faithful to the system by building schools of journalism. The Italians had
already closed theirs in 1933; the German ‘Reichspresseschule’ was shut down
in 1939, albeit after 750 trainees had absolved it and left with good job oppor-
tunities. In both dictatorships, factors that contributed to the closings were
controversial financing, chaotic administration structures and the perception
that these schools did not produce good journalists (Müsse 1995; Galassi
2008: 384–89). Only in the Spanish dictatorship did journalistic training by
the state become permanently established after the Press Law of 1938 made it
compulsory (Lorenzen 1978: 200f.).
Political radicalisation stemmed not only from the authorities, even in
the case of media policy. Occasionally Goebbels and Mussolini’s ‘Ministrero
della Cultura Popolare’ curbed journalistic utterances that were too extreme
in order to safeguard the media’s credibility and appeal (Zimmermann 2007:
107). Both regimes banked on politics of the apolitical, which was probably
particularly effective in sustaining these dictatorships. Especially high-circula-
tion papers like the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung regularly printed entertaining
pictorial articles about the political elites, the spirit of optimism and the osten-
sibly modern achievements of the dictatorships. For this reason the photo
historian Rolf Sachsse viewed state-directed propaganda photography as a