In Addlestone, the first book in the trilogy, The Addlestone Chronicles, James Harcourt-Heath, an undergraduate at King’s College, Cambridge, is being interviewed as a potential candidate for a position in the British Secret Services, Department MI5. He is asked by his maths tutor about his views on Hitler’s position regarding the free press.
James replied, “I’ve read that last month Hitler banned all opposition parties in order to consolidate his power base following Von Hindenburg’s death in 1934. He declared himself President and Chancellor, and his first executive order was to appoint Paul Joseph Göbbels as head of the newly created Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda.
Apparently, its primary purpose is to disseminate a consistent message through a government-controlled press. Indeed, in 1925, Hitler described his proposal to promote what he called the Big Lie (grosse Lüge). Mein Kampf (My Struggle) was his two-volume autobiographical manifesto, which he wrote in prison while serving a five-year sentence for treason. There he wrote, ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’”
Dr. Chillingworth replied, “The Nazis’ word for this is Gleichschaltung. This is the principle of turning Germany into a single-party state by coordinating the process of Nazification across Germany. Last year, newspapers that disagreed with the party line were attacked, boycotted, and summarily closed. Hitler even went so far as to describe contrary press coverage as emanating from the Lügenpresse, which translates as ‘the lying press.’”
History never repeats itself precisely, but we are now aware that Trump and his advisors are following a preordained script (Project 2025), which was set out some 90 years ago in Nazi Germany. Indeed, the AfD (Alternative for Germany), the neo-Nazi far-right German political party, has reinstated the word Lügenpresse to refer to any press coverage that disagrees with their position.
Like many Nazi policies, the term has now crossed the Atlantic and is being shouted at Trump rallies. Instead of “Fake News,” we now hear shouts of Lügenpresse. After the neo-Nazi Charlottesville rally in August 2017, Trump’s followers even used the Nazi phrase Blut und Boden, which translates to “Blood and Soil.” This was used by the pre-WWII German National Socialists (Nazis) to justify entering and annexing Poland and other countries with sectors of German-speaking people.