The Sunday Express claimed yesterday that Adolf Hitler had written a letter to the late Daily Mail boss Lord Rothermere, owner of Associated Newspapers, calling him his "sincerest friend".
The paper claimed that further proof existed of backing given to the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosely, who led the British Union of Fascists and whose blackshirt thugs modelled themselves on the Nazis.
In 1934, the Daily Mail ran a front page story declaring "Hurrah for the Blackshirts".
The latest allegations follow an attack on Friday by the Daily Mail on Express Newspapers' boss Desmond. The Mail claimed that Desmond had been snubbed by the Labour Party when it refused a £100,000 donation. Desmond has denied there is any truth to the story.
The Sunday Express claimed that much of the correspondence between Lord Rothermere and the Nazi dictator has not survived, having been destroyed as a precaution.
However, it claims that historian Francis Becket has discovered how Lord Rothermere was open about his support for the Nazis and the way they ran Germany.
In the past, the Rothermere family has claimed its flirtation with supporting the fascist was short-lived, but the Express says that support for Mosley went on almost until the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.
The wartime Lord Rothermere left Britain in 1940 for what he said was a mission for the government, but it has since been speculated that he feared arrest, along with the likes of Mosley, for his fascist views.
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