THE RADIO THAT HITLER FEARS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 23, 1 December 1939, Page 9

THE RADIO THAT HITLER FEARS

A Voice That Will Not Be Silenced

NTO the German air every night for the past nineteen months has come a clear voice; the voice of defiance; the voice of the German Liberty Station. The story is told in "The Radio That Hitler Fears," now being broadcast from 2YA at 9.20 p.m. on Wednesdays, and from 1YA at 8.30 pm, on Mondays, beginning on sredsa=er * . No writer of fiction could have conceived such an extraordinary station, operating as it does in a country picketed by Gestapo and S.S. men, with spies on every street corner of the towns, in every village in the countryside. Just how the operators of the station have carried on during these past months is, as yet, a mystery. Perhaps it will remain a mystery for years, to be finally told when the whole system of fear and hatred upon which Nazism is built, and the whole structure of Nazism itself, has been destroyed. In a Suitcase A 100-watt transmitter of the type that is probably used, would be small enough to go into a suitcase. It would need only about 16 feet of wire for an aerial, and the theory is that it is a mobile unit operating from a truck or car. The secret radio is run by the Beosié’s Freedom Front. This organisation began with the rise to power of Hitler in 1933. At first it was composed largely of Communists, and the Fuehrer’s agents soon broke up the organisation. But the few students, artists and writers who were left after the purge, retained their burning desire to destroy Hitlerism. Printing presses throughout Germany worked by night in disused cellars, old factory buildings, any shelter at all that could be found, printing the truth about Germany and the Nazi system. Messages to the German people were printed on food wrappers, on cigarette containers, even in official guide books, and, in pamphlet form, between the pages of official Nazi newspapers. But one by one the printing presses were discovered, and their operators executed. Then came the idea of a secret radio. "Men Against Hitler" The men behind the station and its work, must, of course, remain unknown. Little by little, however, information has _ slipped through which shows, to some extent, the way in which the broadcasts are carried out.

Recently published is a book by Fritz Max Cahen, which gives a clear picture of the antiNazi activity, with which the author claims to have been connected since 1932. In "Men Against Hitler," Cahen, after giving an account of the rise of Hitler to power, tells how in 1932 he resolved to begin a countermovement to Nazi domination, and called together two dozen prominent men, who solemnly agreed to combat the regime. They called themselves the "German Vanguard," and divided Germany into fifteen regional districts, each with a leader who was to establish chains of informants and propagandists. The movement, expanding into thousands, had many members in the Nazi movement itself. The reason why the organisation has survived, is that no member knows his comrades in other parts of the country. Thus, if caught, no man can give away anything really important. Travelling Radio In 1933, Cahen, his wife and son, slipped across the border to Prague in Czechoslovakia, which became headquarters until the autumn of 1937. Anti-Nazi agents were constantly flitting over the border by means of forest paths in Sudetenland. These men called at human letter-boxes, who acted as clearing houses for the verbal messages which were sent continually between the external organisers and the internal workers. It was when newspapers and other printed messages were intercepted and stopped that the antiNazi organisers built their radio. They imported American radio parts into Hamburg under the pretext that they were for a new electro-surgical apparatus, assembled a shortwave transmitter, and operated it from a powerful touring car that sped through Germany to the Czech frontier. Cahen writes: "To-day it is no exaggeration to say that inside Germany at least 50 per cent of the population is in complete disaccord with everything Hitler stands for. At least another 20 per cent is against Hitler’s methods without being completely opposed to certain results achieved by his policy. The remaining 30 per cent is Nazi, but even these do not form a complete unit. Among them are many who reproach Hitler for breaking his promises. " Girls’ Adventure Opposition to Nazism has not come from one source only. For example, just before war broke out, several girls smuggled a portable transmitter disguised as an ordinary car radio into Germany. In their pirate-radio tour, they would stop in large towns, and

when the local station went off the air, would broadcast from their car in a quiet side-street. The Gestapo were soon on their trail, but failed to discover them, although they had several lucky escapes. One of the party thus describes the perils they encountered: " Our narrowest brush with danger was one evening at Frankfurt, when we decided to have the transmitter brought into the hotel so that we could do a bit of high frequency transmitting on telephone lines. The door of our room was locked. The set was plugged . . . into the electric light mains, and the feeder. side of the transmitter was connected to the telephone lines in our bedroom ... During a longish interval in the main Frankfurt radio programme one of our party, who speaks perfect German, was taking advantage of the programme interval to give a long anti-Nazi, unbiased news bulletin for the benefit of Frankfurters. Over the ’phone lines, speaking close to the miniature carbon-mike, our expert ‘debunked’ the Encirclement threat, gave the truth about British air-strength and a whole heap of vital facts. Suddenly we heard the click of a door. The chambermaid, unheard, had come in from the bathroom-the one door we'd forgotten to lock. She must have heard every word. She stared in amazement at our ‘broadcaster,’ and seeing the microphone must just have thought we were telephoning. ‘With eyes almost popping out of her head she whispered: ‘I know every word you've said is true. But you oughtn’t to talk like that over the telephone. Somebody might be listening, and it’s high treason . . .’ Could she be trusted? We didn’t take the risk. We got out of that hotel in less than ten minutes, and were in the car heading for the North." The Work Goes On Now that there is war, and every frontier is closed like’ a hermetically-sealed door, the Liberty station continues with its work behind the scenes, "in spite of the Gestapo," bringing truth to people fed with lies, reason to people living in an insane world of cruelty and_ suffering. "The Radio That Hitler Fears" is ‘a dramatic conception of the underground radio opposition to the Nazi regime. It was written in Australia, by Lynn Foster. Listeners to 2YA Wellington have already heard two episodes of this story. Another episode will be broadcast at 9.20 p.m. on Wednesday, December 6, from that station, and the serial will be presented from 1YA on Mondays at 8.30 p.m.,