In Europe

front!’; and finally,‘
Münchener Post
to the front!’ A small, crippled man steps forward from the latter group. He is the perfect target.
    Why the
Münchener Post
? Because the journalists of this social-democrat daily had, more than anyone else, kept an eye on the Nazis from the very start, had published all their findings and had treated the National Socialists for what they were: a gang of thugs.
    Hitler called the paper ‘the vipers’ nest’. If the Führer had allowed himself a little splurge at a luxurious hotel in Berlin, the bill was printed the next day in the
Post
under the headline ‘How Hitler Lives’. When Hitler's niece and lover, the young Geli Raubal, committed suicide in September 1931, the
Münchener Post
immediately provided all the background information. The editors kept careful score on all political murders. Like some morbid syndicated column, they were published on the front page every day:‘New Victims of the Brownshirts’ Bloodlust’, ‘Firebomb for Social-Democratic Journalist’, ‘Nazi Terror Against Farmhands: Six Boys Killed’, ‘Because Christmas is a Time of Peace: Nazis Kill Communist’. On 14 December, 1931 the paper printed a full-page list of ‘Two Years of Nazi Killings’. Beneath the headline was a quote from Adolf Hitler: ‘Nothing takes place within the movement that I do not know about, and of which I do not approve. Even more: nothing happens without my desiring it!’ Then followed the names of sixty victims, most of them workers, who had been murdered or had died of grievous bodily harm.
    A monument should be built to the
Münchener Post
, the American historian Ron Rosenbaum wrote in a commemorative piece, and I can only concur. The Nazis hated the
Post
with everything they had in them, and as soon as they were in power they tore it to the ground. On the evening of 9 March, 1933, an SA gang wrecked the editorial offices, threw thetypewriters out onto the street and destroyed the printing presses. That was the end of the paper. The editors ended up in Dachau, disappeared into exile or succeeded, with a great deal of luck, in making it through the Third Reich in one piece.
    I make a little pilgrimage to Altheimer Eck, a winding little street behind the big department stores in the heart of Munich. At number 13 (formerly number 19) I recognise the gateway. This was the courtyard where the
Post
was made. The printing office in the basement moved away only a year ago, but a newspaper is still being made here: the
Abendzeitung
, an airy daily featuring the occasional glimpse of a female breast. The people who work there tell me that the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
had its offices here after the war, but these days no one knows anything about the
Post
. The paper's name has been obliterated by a thick layer of plaster above the gate. There is no trace of all that heroic spirit, no plaque, not even a dot on Simon Wiesenthal's map of heroes.
    The only trace that does remain of the
Münchener Post
is the Bavarian State Library. I spend an entire day there, amid conscientious and flirtatious students, rolls of microfilm and badly printed pages of the
Post
. In the 1920s the paper's tone is simply soporific, with headlines like ‘The Future of Public Housing’, ‘Agreement on Funding Programme’ and ‘Employment Perspective under the Social Democrats’. The Nazis’ activities are usually dealt with briefly under miscellaneous regional news.
    But, from 1929, the editors awaken. The headlines are accompanied more frequently by exclamation marks: ‘Voters, Think Twice!’, ‘Civil Servants, Wake Up!’ On 20 December, 1929 the paper recommends, ‘if necessitated by polling-place terror’, to render one's ballot void by crossing off both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. The Nazi murders receive full attention, and the
Post
rapidly transforms itself from a staid party organ to a hard-hitting newspaper, with revelations on an almost weekly basis. On 5 July, 1932, for example, the front page contains a careful overview of the sums paid by the Nazis to a number of soldiers for their part in the November 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. A certain Oberleutnant Kriegel received 200 Swiss francs for his participation, a common soldier received about 15 francs. A total of 1,173 francs was paid out, a capital sum in those days. The money came largely from Helene Bechstein and her husband, the famous piano manufacturer.
    In its forecasts, too, the
Münchener Post
is highly revealing. As