In the pages of their newspapers, they downplayed Hitler’s threat

In most accounts of the fight against Nazi Germany, the Americans and the British get to be the good guys. But in “The Newspaper Axis,” Kathryn S. Olmsted levels a damning indictment against six of the most powerful English-language publishers of the World War II era. Although they claimed to be patriots, they used their influence to downplay, condone and sometimes even promote Adolf Hitler’s rise.