VICHY RADIO
CONTROLLED BV GERMAN AGENT and slavishly subservient TO AXIS. KNOWN AS DISSEMINATOR OF LIES. Writing recently in the “Christian Science Monitor,” Egon Kaskeline observed that in commenting on an untrue broadcast by Radio Vichy regarding the Philippines, the Associated Press said that "Vichy and othei French stations frequently broadcast reports of Japanese successes far in excess of any Tokio claims, apparently playing the’Axis propaganda game aimed at creating confusion and doubt among' the United Nations.” “Radio Vichy, controlled by the Petain Government, has long been more pro-Axis than the Axis itself in its broadcasts concerning Fascist successes and Allied reverses,” Mr Kaskeline adds. “While it is understandable that Vichy cannot broadcast in a pro-Allied sense, it seems hard to reconcile the policy of misinforming public opinion in France and abroad with Vichy’s frequent assurances of complete neutrality. “One reason is that while most other services are decentralised, the radio services are concentrated at Vichy which renders Nazi control much easier. The second, and more important reason is that the Vichy propaganda and information services arc controlled by a man who is one of the most fanatic fascists in France.
PAUL MARION’S RECORD. Vichy’s propaganda director, Paul Marion, like Laval, Doriot, Deal and many others among the more ardent collaborationists, is a former left-wing politician. After the last war he was a member of the Communist Party and belonged to its most extreme wing. Some years later he went to Moscow as an official of the Third International. On his return to France, however, he broke with the Communists and joined the Socialist Party. Here his career was short-lived: he was soon expelled from the party. For some time in close contact with Marcel Deal’s neo-socialists. he finally joined Jacques Doriot’s Parti Populaire Francais. He was one of the men who gave this anti-communist party its decided fascist turn. When he returned from Germany where he had been cordially received by the Nazis, men who knew him well were convinced that he was a German agent. Today, Paul Marion, as the representative of Doriot’s party, has a seat in the Vichy Cabinet. He represents the most violently anti-democratic. anti-British, and anti-semitic trend in France today. Many of Petain’s close associates strongly resisted Marion's appointment. But backed by Darlan, Marion received the appointment he was clamouring for. As CommissarGeneral of Information, Marion not only controls the radio but the Press as well.
Marion has succeeded in breaking most of the resistance against FrancoGerman collaboration as expressed in the French Press. Many publications which, though pro-Petain, were opposed to collaboration, have been suppressed, as for instance the Roman Catholic reviews Esprit and Temps Nouveaux. The Vichy Press has now been “co-ordinated” and only a few journalists, strongly backed by influential Vichy circles, are still in a position to publish articles that do not entirely fall in with Marion’s propaganda line.
FRENCH LISTENERS BORED. Vichy propaganda as it manifests itself through the radio and the Press remains crude and shows little variation. Marion lacks the genius that was the key to Goebbels's success. He has memorised Hitler’s propaganda lessons well enough and remembers that a lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth in the minds of the people. But Marion has merely succeeded in boring the French listeners who have become tired of hearing, three times a day, that it was the “Jews, Communists, and Freemasons who were responsible for France's defeat as well as for the present sufferings of the French people.” The French listener knows better, he turns the switch to hear the Free French broadcasts emanating from London. Vichy’s untrustworthy news service has discredited all Vichy broadcasts not only in the eyes of foreign listeners but in the eyes of the French themselves. More recently the Vichy government prohibited all listening to British and Free French broadcasts. Yet, listening continues, for the majority of Frenchmen, be they pro-Brit-ish or not, prefer to get their news from the 8.8. C. Marion’s broadcasts have not made converts; they have not convinced the people that collaboration with Germany is either necessary or desirable. The French realise only too well that collaboration means virtual slavery. The ruthlessness of Vichy’s propaganda is the very quality which renders it impotent in France.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1942, Page 4
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708VICHY RADIO Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1942, Page 4
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