Page 45 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

18 THE MAKING OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

the American zone, were served by specially set up news agencies: in the
American occupation zone, this was the Deutsche Allgemeine
Nachrichtenagentur (DANA), in the British zone the Deutscher Pressedienst
(dpd), and the French military authorities established the Rheinische
Nachrichtenagentur (RHEINA, later renamed Süddeutsche Nachrichtenagentur;
SÜDENA). In August 1949, these news services formed the Deutsche
Presse-Agentur (dpa). Subsequently, ‘acceptable Germans’, i.e. skilled and
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politically untarnished publishers and journalists, would receive a licence
to publish, albeit one subject to censorship commonly and effectively
carried out via the rationing of paper. Finally, the press and other media
equally affected by the Allied licensing would be transferred back to
German information services by Germans under Allied supervision.
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Thus in regard to the reconstruction of a democratic and non-party press,
the Allies initially did not revert to the tradition of a free press in Germany
but introduced a system of licensing instead. Although the occupying
powers were aware of the fact that a democratic Germany, in which the
formation of opinion leads to decision-making, required mediation
between politics and the public and thus freedom of speech and its
consequent means of publication, the German media had to follow
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detailed instructions for a transition period, which gave them little scope
for the transmission of political content. In contrast to the licensing of
political parties, and notwithstanding the declarations in the Potsdam
Agreement to foster German political life, newspapers, in particular those
attached to political parties, were approved reluctantly. Although the Allies
agreed upon German reeducation with ‘austerity’, there was no
coordinated media policy. Directive 1067 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
issued inter alia for this purpose and revised by the Informal Policy
Committee on Germany (IPCOG) in April 1945, was adopted and put
into practice by the American authorities alone. However, even among the
Americans, the issues of collective guilt and how to reconstruct the
German media were controversial. This, for instance, was expressed, in
the contradictory interpretations of the directive, namely the versions
1067/1 and 1067/2 issued by the PWD on 22 May 1945 and 28 May 1945
respectively. Initially, however, all Allied regulations concerning the media
were based on the law No. 191 issued by the PWD/SHAEF on 24
November 1944. According to this directive, the printing, production,
publishing, marketing, sales and commercial distribution of newspapers,
magazines, periodicals, books, brochures, placards, music supplies and
other printed or mechanically duplicated publications, and the activity or
operation of any news service or agencies were prohibited. Only a few
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months later, however, an executive order, i.e. the Information Control
Instruction No. 1, granted authorised German political parties the use of