Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere

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Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere bigraphy, stories - British newspaper publisher and Viscount

Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere : biography

26 April 1868 – 26 November 1940

Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, Bt. (26 April 1868 – 26 November 1940) was a highly successful British newspaper proprietor, owner of Associated Newspapers Ltd. He is known in particular, with his brother Alfred Harmsworth, the later Viscount Northcliffe, for the development of the London Daily Mail and Daily Mirror. He was a pioneer of popular journalism.

During the 1930s, he was known to be a supporter of Germany, purportedly having become convinced that the Nazi Party would help restore the German monarchy. He cultivated contacts to promote British support for Germany.

Grand Falls, Newfoundland

In 1904, on behalf of his elder brother Alfred, Harmsworth and Mayson Beeton, son of Isabella Beeton, the famed author of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, travelled to Newfoundland to search for a supply of lumber and to look for a site to build and operate a pulp and paper mill. While searching along the Exploits River they came across Grand Falls, named by John Cartwright in 1768. After the two British men purchased the land, they had a company town built to support the lumber workers. It developed as Grand Falls-Windsor.

Background

Harmsworth was the son of Alfred Harmsworth, a barrister, and the brother of Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, Cecil Harmsworth, 1st Baron Harmsworth, Sir Leicester Harmsworth, 1st Baronet, and Sir Hildebrand Harmsworth, 1st Baronet.

Newspaper proprietor

Harmsworth founded the Glasgow Daily Record, and the Sunday Pictorial. His greatest success came with the Daily Mirror of London, which had a circulation of three million by 1922.

After his elder brother died without an heir in that year, Harmsworth inherited his estate and acquired control of the Daily Mail, also of London. Rothermere’s descendants continue to control the Daily Mail and General Trust. Harmsworth was created a baronet, of Horsey in the County of Norfolk, in 1910. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Rothermere, of Hampstead in the County of Kent, in 1914.

Family

Lord Rothermere married Lilian Share, daughter of George Wade Share, on 4 July 1893. They had three sons, the two elder of whom were killed in the First World War:

  • Captain Hon. Harold Alfred Vyvyan St. George Harmsworth (born 2 August 1894, died 12 February 1918)
  • Lt. Hon. Vere Sidney Tudor Harmsworth (born 25 September 1895, died 13 November 1916)
  • Esmond Harmsworth, 2nd Viscount Rothermere (29 May 1898–1978)

Lady Harmsworth died on 16 March 1937.http://thepeerage.com/p7350.htm#i73500

Appeasement

In the 1930s Rothermere used his newspapers to try to influence British politics, notably being a strong supporter of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. Some historians believe this position was related to World War I, when all three of his sons were reported killed or missing in the same week. In the 1930s, he urged increased defence spending by Britain; his were the only major newspapers to advocate an alliance with Germany. For a time in 1934, the Rothermere papers championed the British Union of Fascists (BUF), and were again the only major papers that did so. Rothermere famously wrote a Daily Mail editorial entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January 1934, praising Oswald Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine".

Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler. On 1 October 1938, Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany’s invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that ‘Adolf the Great’ would become a popular figure in Britain. He was also aware of the military threat from the resurgent Germany, of which he warned J. C. C. Davidson, then Chairman of the Conservative Party.

Numerous secret British MI5 papers related to the war years, were declassified and released in 2005. They show that Rothermere wrote to Adolf Hitler in 1938 congratulating him for the annexation of Czechoslovakia, and encouraging him to invade Romania. He described Hitler’s work as "great and superhuman".