PBA Galleries

4 pages, written in ink on the backs of four postcards, signed "W.R." 53/4x41/4.

Extraordinary letter in which Hearst details his impressions on meeting Adolph Hitler, to his close friend and long-time secretary, Joseph Willicombe, here addressed as "Josephus". In part: "I flew up to Berlin and had a long talk with Hitler yesterday. The flight was very interesting and so was the talk. Hitler certainly is an extraordinary man. We estimate him too lightly in America. He has enormous energy intense enthusiasm a marvelous faculty for dramatic oratory and great organizing ability. Of course all those qualities can be misdirected. Some think they are. The vast majority of Germans however are devoted to him and believe that he is leading them out of the pit into which they have been plunged by the war. / I only hope that he and they will have sense enough to keep out of another war. / I find most of the Jewish friends I have here pursuing their businesses in peace if not in content. / I gather that the hostility to them is abating but the condition of the country makes prosperous business difficult. So most of them are looking longingly in the direction of America. Goldschmidt is coming over definitely. Fascism seems to be spreading over here. I guess America is the promised land." Willicombe was one of Hearst's most intimate correspondents; it is unlikely that Hearst wrote to anyone more frankly about this historic meeting. The circumstances in which Hearst met Hitler are fairly well detailed in Hearst's biographies. Hearst's friend Louis Mayer was also in Europe in the summer of 1934; he urged Hearst to visit Hitler and intercede for the Jews. One of Hitler's advisors, Ernst Hanfstaengl, had heard of Hearst's willingness to meet Hitler and attached himself to Hearst's party to make propagandistic use of it. So, when four storm troopers arrived at Bad Nauheim, Hearst allowed himself to be conducted up to Berlin. Hearst did try to dissuade Hitler from his persecution of the Jews, but he apparently contented himself with Hitler's assurance that his measures were only temporary. Hearst's concern comes out in his address to Willicombe as "Josephus", perhaps a subconscious allusion to the famous Jewish historian and soldier. Hearst was photographed with Nazis when leaving this meeting and took much political heat for it, despite his largely good intentions. Quoted in Swanberg, Citizen Hearst, p.446 & Coblentz, Hearst, p.106. Full transcription available on request.