We’ve all known the contribution Nazi propaganda made to the success of the Third Reich. None was more important that exploiting the new technology of wireless. In his brilliant critique of Goebbels’ web of lies and deceit, Nathan Morley gives us the details of how, where and when in Radio Hitler.
“Beside the pistol and the hand grenade”, wrote Goebbels of his 5,000 personnel in 23 Luftwaffe, Navy and Army Propaganda Companies, “they carry other weapons: the film camera, the pencil and the notepad”.
Morley’s eye for detail is rewarding. We have the report of Luftwaffe damage in south-west London, “particularly in the suburb of Random”, which the RAF observed, “This obviously implies that the Germans have been dropping their bombs at random”. In Paris, the Nazis considered dismantling the Eiffel Tower for its 7,000 tons of scrap iron, but it was saved by its utility as a radio transmitter.
The sheer effort put into broadcasting (and Nazi television – a first for me) was stupendous. Morley writes of a Hitler speech relayed through 667 transmitters in Europe, America and Japan, and translated into 26 languages. But also notes, “The amount of time, money and effort producing shows for a virtually non-existent audience was staggering”.
Morley gives us a great cast of villains. Besides the usual Nazi chiefs, generals and SS, there’s the infamous Lord Haw-Haw, with his drawling ‘Jairmany Calling’ broadcasts. Mary of Arnhem, who“tried very hard indeed to pass herself off as a BBC announcer”, and ‘Moaning Max’ a Dutch Nazi voice. We are given the gallows humour of wartime rumours and an April 1945 ‘joke du jour’ that it “would soon be possible to travel from the eastern to the western frontby Berlin’s local tram”.
Radio Hitler is well and entertainingly written, clips along at a fair pace through the whole 1933-45story, and is full of the soundbites and propaganda messages of the era “To Roosevelt’s war cry of Unconditional Surrender Germany’s answer is Total War”. I learned much from it. You will too.