NAZI RADIO OFFENSIVE

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 3, 4 January 1940, Page 9

NAZI RADIO OFFENSIVE

Enormous Power of Station: Harsh Action to Withhold Truth

OINCE the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, the Germans have been conducting a relentless radio offensive. The barrage of distorted news and propaganda Is conducted from an enormously powerful short-wave station. The world was divided into six zones, each being in charge of an important member of the party. South and Central America are one zone on which the Nazis concentrate with particular thoroughness. Every clay before the war programmes were broadcast to all parts of South America, partly in German, partly in Spanish or Portuguese. Now that the nations are at war these programmes have been replaced by the same spate of Nazi claims, boasts and accusations against France, Britain and the British Navy, that are poured through the air in English toward Australia and New Zealand. In view of the developments of radio and leaflet propaganda since the start

of hostliities, and the harsh action taken by the Nazis to hold the German people in a thraldom of ignorance, an article appearing in the August issue of Current History is lent a special interest:— “The Nazis,” said the writer of the article, “try to quarantine their country against ideas from outside. Their own propaganda machine pumps an unending flood of words, printed and spoken, into every corner of the land, yet they strive to shut out every piece of news or opinion from elsewhere, or to select and edit it to fit their own purposes. “Of course, there is determined and persistent effort, from within and without the frontier, to break down th?t barrier. An underground Communist organisation distributes leaflets all over Germany—leaving them in letter boxes or on beer-hall tables, handing them to people whom the agents think they can trust.

“There have been several fugitive stations inside Germany, moving from place to place in trucks, broadcasting short, violent anti-Nazi programmes, then hurrying away. “Straight news programmes are sent into Germany from England and from Strasbourg, across the Rhine in France, and there have been other propaganda efforts along the western front. A privately-financed group in England has leaflets printed which state the case for democracies—the sort of thing whose circulation would be permitted in a free country. These are dropped over Germany by planes flying at night from Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland. “If in the future Hitler finds himj self involved in a war of blood and i iron, as well as words, his plans are well laid to defend himself from propaganda such as that which broke the German will in the last war. Experts predict that one of the first decrees will be the confiscation of all private receiving sets in the Reich. The people will be commanded to gather at stated times around public loudspeakers to hear official propaganda/’ As everyone now knows, the prediction in this last paragraph has been fulfilled. The German people have been forbidden the right of listening and threatened with death if they should pass on what they hear.