(JTA) — The Associated Press formally cooperated with the Hitler regime, including providing material produced by the Nazis’ propaganda ministry, a German historian reports in a new study.

Historian Harriet Scharnberg, in an article published in German in the academic journal Studies in Contemporary History, shows that AP was able to remain in Germany because of its cooperation with the Nazi regime. AP was the only international news agency allowed to continue to operate in Germany until the United States entered World War II in 1941.

The article was first reported in The Guardian.

AP agreed to abide by the Schriftleitergesetz, or Editor’s Law, under which it would not publish any material “calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home,” Scharnberg wrote. The news agency also hired reporters and photographers who worked for the propaganda ministry, and allowed the Nazis to use its photo archives to create anti-Semitic propaganda.

Scharnberg, a historian at Halle’s Martin Luther University, argued that AP’s cooperation with the Hitler regime allowed the Nazis to “portray a war of extermination as a conventional war,” according to The Guardian.

The study calls into question the AP’s current relationship with totalitarian regimes, according to the Guardian, which said questions have been raised repeatedly about the neutrality of its bureau in North Korea.

“As we continue to research this matter, AP rejects any notion that it deliberately ‘collaborated’ with the Nazi regime,” an AP spokesman told The Guardian.

“An accurate characterization is that the AP and other foreign news organizations were subjected to intense pressure from the Nazi regime from the year of Hitler’s coming to power in 1932 until the AP’s expulsion from Germany in 1941. AP management resisted the pressure while working to gather accurate, vital and objective news in a dark and dangerous time.”