Police Gazette sometimes faced a need for Adolf Hitler to star on their covers that surpassed available supplies of art. The February 1956 cover you see above was the first time that particular image was used, but they dug it out again for their January 1977 issue, which you see at right, and which we showed you in larger size here.
By now you know the Gazette’s mission post-World War II was to prove Hitler didn’t die in Berlin. In this issue George McGrath—the same writer who usually penned these stories—offers a list of reasons why Hitler was still alive as of 1956. Among them:
• The only eyewitness to Hitler’s suicide—his valet Heinz Linge—later recanted his testimony and admitted he never saw the Führer shoot himself.
• Hitler’s body was burned to unrecognizable ashes, but there’s no possibility that setting fire to human biomass with petrol could burn it to ashes. Most of it would remain.
• Despite the fact that every inch of the Reich Chancellery was searched and sifted, not a single trace of Hitler’s blood was ever found.
And so forth. For a thorough debunking of McGrath’s theories, you can go just about anywhere on the internet. We’ll just point out again that those who believe Americans’ receptivity to alternate theories of historical or current events is a new phenomenon haven’t read enough old tabloids. The Gazette enjoyed a quite decent readership, and during the 1950s it and other tabloids like Confidential—also a haven for occasional crackpot speculations—were among the most circulated magazines in the country.
In short—and this seems especially appropriate to point out with American news anchor Brian Williams in hot water for alleged on-air lies, and Fox News being laughed at for echoing an obviously fake story about the King of Jordan flying combat missions against ISIS—sloppy or false reporting in America’s most popular media outlets has always been a problem. The old tabloids fashioned themselves as maverick truthtellers, and that label, along with some flashy visuals, was enough to attract eyeballs. For today’s cable news, the same self-labeling and eye candy visuals work the same way. We will have plenty more from the Police Gazette later.
