Transcript

4.2.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian magazine dated March twenty
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twenty six. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading
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service intended for people who are blind or have other
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disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
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join me now for part one of One of the
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ally's secret weapons against the Nazis was a twenty one
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year old woman armed with a microphone and a script
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of flies as Vicki with three Kisses. She strategically sweet
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talked and sang to German troops over the airwaves of Europe.
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But Agnes Bernauer didn't mean anything. She was saying, bye
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April White. Her voice was low, sultry, Hallo Yung's hiberichvida
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oi riviki mitrykusen. Hello boys, Here I am again your
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Viki with three kisses. Even on nights when the radio
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was filled with noise as Allied and Access forces attempted
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to jam their enemy's broadcasts, the woman's meaning was unmistakable.
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She pursed her lips and sent a trio of smooches
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across the airwaves. A German sailor listening to Vicki might
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imagine This was his girlfriend or wife, waiting at home,
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as she had been for years while the war stretched
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through the summer of nineteen forty four. For those with
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no one to return to, The voice belonged to a
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blond haired and blue eyed dream. Wouldn't it be nice
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if we could sit together now in a cozy little
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cafe with a nice glass of rye wine, and we
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gaze into each other's eyes so deep, so warm, she
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cooed in an upper crust Berliner accent. She imagined a
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dance as a big band launched into I Love You Truly,
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the popular American song's lyrics song in German. Vicki was
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creating a fantasy world with her kisses while reminding the
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men of the possibilities their real lives had held before
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they'd been ordered into cramped eue boats. Silently patrolling just
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off the British coast line. Was the Nazi cause they
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were fighting for Worth the sacrifices they had made? Was
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it worth the sacrifice they might still be asked to make?
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When the music faded, Vicki returned. Her words were sad,
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Now we don't have much time left, and who knows
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when and where we will see each other again. In
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a radio studio forty miles north of London, the dark haired,
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dark eyed, half Jewish actress playing the role of VICKI
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stepped away from the microphone. Although she had playfully asked
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the question, Agnes Bernauer twenty one certainly hoped she would
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never meet the likes of her listeners again. She had
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fled from the Nazis once before. Now she was fighting
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back with the war's newest weapon. Radio was still a
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novel medium in the nineteen forties. Propagandists had plied their
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trade during World War I through print. Now radio allowed
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them to reach deep into enemied territory, and since its start,
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this new war had been a battle of the air waves.
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The world was already familiar with what had become known
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as white propaganda. Government information campaigns waged openly to energize
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the home front and vilify the enemy. But World War
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II saw the advent of the more insidious gray propaganda,
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efforts that disguised the source of the message but did
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not hide its insurgent intentions. It also birthed something darker still,
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black propaganda, which deceived its audiences about its origins and
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confused them. So thoroughly that they could not tell fact
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from fiction. The Allies had not started this psychological warfare.
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Propaganda of any color was an uncomfortable tool for a
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democratic country, and for years Germany's Ministry of Public Enlightenment
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and Propaganda, the mouthpiece of the Nazis chief propagandist Joseph Gibbles,
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controlled the information battlefield. As early as nineteen thirty three,
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the Nazis had ordered the production of the Folksimfanga, the
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People's Receiver, a low cost radio set that was key
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to the nazis domestic propaganda plans. The British government, meanwhile,
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publicly dedicated itself to truth, depending on the BBC's European
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service to spread news to information deprived listeners in Germany
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and its occupied territories. In a world of poison, said
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one French politician, who spent much of the war imprisoned
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by Nazis, the b b C became the great antiseptic.
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He would not have been aware of the b b
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c's shadowy counterpart, the collection of radio stations m from
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an old English estate in the village of Milton Bryan.
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German Grand Admiral Karl Dunitz referred to this rural site
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of Britain's clandestine Political Warfare Executive p w E as
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gift Kuke a poison kitchen. Through the early nineteen forties,
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the p w E had quietly launched dozens of gray
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and black radio stations in an effort to influence listeners
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behind enemy lines. The best remembered of these was a
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nightly broadcast seemingly helmed by Derschef, a fictional foulmouthed disgruntled
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Nazi officer who spread fabricated pornographic rumors about German officials.
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But in nineteen forty three der Chef was quote murdered
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end quote on the air. To free up resources for
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a more ambitious undertaking, Deutscher Kurtzvealensandr Atlantique a short wave
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station known to listeners as Atlantic Sender Radio Atlantic and
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Sola Dottensender khalis Soldier's Radio Khali, which purported to be
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broadcast from the occupied French city but was really sent
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out from southern England on the world's most powerful medium
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wave transmitter. The stations, which often shared content, were designed
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to be indistinguishable from official Nazi radio and to subtly
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demoralize German troops and civilians with strategic fictions buried beneath
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truth and entertainment. This was the war as seen through
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a fun house mirror. Allied troops moved a little faster,
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German casualty estimates were a little higher, food shortages on
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the home front were suddenly a little more severe, and
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the big band music was much better. Cover dirt, cover,
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cover dirt, cover dirt. Britain's top propagandist, Selton Delmer directed
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his staff Atlantic Sender and Soldotnzender. Calis would become in
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limited and sometimes contentious partnership with United States Young Intelligence branch,
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the Office of Strategic Services o S S the culmination
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of years of experimentation in radio propaganda on both sides
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of the war. At the station's peak, the falsified narratives
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they broadcast reached listeners from the American Midwest to Southeast Asia.
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But much of what we now know about the Allies
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Black propaganda efforts to day comes from the pulpy stories
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Delmer later told of his wartime exploits, perhaps fittingly, a
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confusing mix of fact and fiction, full of aegliases and allegians,
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self serving misdirection and personal propaganda. The real story beneath
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those lies can be pieced together from first person accounts
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of those who worked at Milton Bryan to day, spread
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across archive in Europe and North America, and in scores
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of contemporary diaries and decades old memoirs penned by soldiers
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and civilians who listened to the stations. It could be
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reconstructed from thousands of previously unexamined pages of transcriptions of
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the broadcasts collected by various governments and media listening stations,
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and in daily logs from the radio studios themselves. The
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truth is startling. In the final years of World War II,
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as the scientists of the Manhattan Project raced to weaponize
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the atom, the broadcasters in Milton Bryan were doing the
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same with the lie. Today the world knows this as disinformation.
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Agnes Bernauer knew nothing of these secret radio stations when
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she arrived at the Savoy Hotel on the Thames on
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the afternoon of Monday, June twelfth, nineteen forty four, a
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week after the Allies landed in Normandy. She was a
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little known singer and actress on the verge of a
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big break an audition with Carol Gibbons, leader of one
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of wartime London's hottest dance pans, the Savoy Hotel Orpheans,
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The young German refugee, known as Aggie to her family
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and as Agnes Burnell to her few fans, had been
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planning for a career on the stage since the age
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of five. Her father, Rudolph, had been a theater in
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Presario and playwright in Berlin until he became a target
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of the insurgent National Socialists. In December nineteen thirty, when
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Bernauer was seven, Gebbels and his fellow brown Shirts, emboldened
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by their electoral victories in the Reichstag that fall, launched
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an attack on her father's theater Empire in Berlin for
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the offense of screening All Quiet on the Western Front,
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a film the Nazis loathed for its supposedly anti German
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critique of nationalist militarism out Jews. Gebels had yelled from
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the theater balcony, queuing a mob to release mice into
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the audience, set off stink bombs, and beat patrons. For
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days they marched with torches. The theater was forced to close.
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As a child, Bernauer was unable to fight back. She
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hadn't even dared join her classmates in throwing snowballs at
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a billboard of Adolf Hitler. Her father's side of the
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family was Jewish, and schoolyard taunts warned her that she
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should not draw attention. Her mother's side of the family
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served in Nazi uniforms. In November nineteen thirty three, after
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Hitler rose to power, Bernauer's father tried to flee Germany,
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but he was arrested at the border. He eventually secured
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Hungarian passports for the family and left the country for
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England in late nineteen thirty five. Burnhou Or followed a
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year later. Her mother, Emma, whose Protestant upbringing offered a
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measure of protection, stayed in Berlin for another three years
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to manage what was left of the family business, collecting
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royalties on the popular operettas Rudolph had written earlier in
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his career. She almost waited too long. Just before the
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United Kingdom declared war on Germany in nineteen thirty nine,
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the Gestapo attempted to coerce Emma into informing on London's
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Jewish refugee community. She fled Berlin hours later escaping the
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horrors that Rudolph's sister Gizella and her daughter Ilma would
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face in German concentration camps as refugees in London, the
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Bernours were considered enemy aliens, forbidden by the British from
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aiding the Allied cause in the army or in the
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Saint John Ambulance Service. Teenage Bernauer had to settle for
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contributing to the war effort as a civil defense air
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raid warden. In her nineteen ninety six autobiography The Fun Palace,
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Bernauer wrote about patrolling the North London neighborhood where she
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lived with her parents, through the Blitz with a water
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pump in hand, feeling slightly foolish at the inadequacy of
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the gesture. She felt a little foolish almost everywhere. She
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had dedicated herself to learning English at her British boarding
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school and had practiced hiding her accent and her continental ways,
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a conversational frankness and body sense of humor that would
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have been right at home in the artistic cavins of Berlin,
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but she struggled to find her place in London, with
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most of the West End theaters shuddered as the war
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dragged on. Bernauer's biggest opportunity as a performer had been
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at Klina Buna the Little Theater, a Hampstead venue run
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by the Jewish refugee community, but rush off her first
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leading role at a theater in Birmingham, where she garnered
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goodenough reviews and with an appointment to sing for Gibbons,
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her luck finally seemed to be changing. In a private
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suite outfitted with the piano, Gibbons played as Bernour cruded
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a selection of English hits. But it was not the
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band leader who was looking for a new star. The
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role would be at the direction of the slight, anxious
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man who picked up the dinner check at the Savoy
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Grill that evening. Ira Ashley, an American radio producer turned
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O S S agent the U S Intelligence Agency, had
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first contacted Bernauer's father about script writing and translation work.
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Rudolph suggested there might be a place for his daughter
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on their mysterious government project. After auditioning her, Ashley concurred
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her blonde voice, as Bernauer recalled Ashleigh describing it was
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just what he needed. Soon dispatched to m b as
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the compound in Milton Bryan was known, Bernauer found a
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recording studio unlike any she had ever seen. There was
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a guard house, tall fences topped with barbed wire, and
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German shepherds on patrol. The order to report to Milton
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Bryan was not widely considered a plumb assignment. Black procpaganda
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was an untested strategy, and those who found their way
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to the estate were misfits whose particular talents, biographies and
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peculiarities had no other place in the war effort. A
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collection of cranks and characters, in the words of one
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dismissive British Foreign Office official, Delmer, a former journalist and
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his wife isabel A Painter, had attracted a motley crew
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of reporters, artists and academics to the effort. They were
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teamed up with the staff of political refugees, monarch kist
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communists and social democrats, as well as prisoners of war
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who now pledged allegiance to the Allied cause, and unexpected defectors,
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including a former German diplomat, a turncoat s S officer,
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and three Lufwaffe pilots who landed in the UK in
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their night Fighter. Most of these emigres from the Third
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Reich were added to the ranks only by reluctant necessity.
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Their loyalty was considered suspect, but their deep knowledge of
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German culture and pitch perfect accents were essential to disguising
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Atlantic sender and Zoldatan sender Calais. As one PWE official
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put it, effective propaganda cannot be undertaken except by people
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who are half in love with the enemy. To produce
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believable fake broadcasts, the PWE had built a journalistic organization
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to rival the BBC. The propagandists held the truth in
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unexpectedly high esteem, guided by an unofficial motto never lie
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by accident or through slovenliness, only deliberately. They made good
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use of an abandoned Hellschreiber, a still working German printing
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telegraph that related news directly from the Nazis, and aerial
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photographs taken from Allied bombers. But the station's most valued
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information was not the stuff of international headlines. We are
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not interested at this stage in the war in German
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atrocities or the shootings of Jews in Poland and Hungary,
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advised the intelligence officers who helped Graft the strategy of
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how and when to lie. Rather, they were interested in
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stories of everyday hardship in Germany, small breakdowns of authority
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in the occupied countries, and petty infighting within Hitler's top ranks,
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anything that would dishearten listeners. The belief was that downtrodden
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workers slowed the production of war or necessities, and discouraged
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troops did not fight as well, and both were a
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distraction to the enemy. The officers also coveted small details
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like the latest Blotilla soccer matches, which solidified the station's
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cover story as a German broadcast. These seemingly inconsequential tidbits
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arrived daily from PWE and OSS agents behind enemy lines,
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through POW interrogations and in smuggled newspapers. By mid nineteen
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forty four, there was just one thing missing from this
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elaborate ruse. The greatest, single thing that may be said
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against the present Zodatan Zender program is that its entertainment
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is of very dubious quality. Ashley's boss, David Wenten wrote
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in an OSS memo stamped secret. With any program of
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this nature, its entertainment side is by far its most important,
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For it is the entertainment side of the show which
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builds and holds the audience of German troops and not
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only secures their attention but places them in the proper
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frame of mind for the subversive material that follows. To
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when the Radio War, the Allies needed to win the
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ratings war, drawing in listeners with the hottest music, Bernouer
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would strike back against the Nazis with her voice. Bernauer
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stood in front of the microphone, scripped in hand, ready
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for the star turn for which she could never take credit.
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At one elbow, in a dark suit with the fashionable
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pocket square was producer Charles Kebba, looking the part of
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the Madison Avenue commercial maker he had been before enlisting
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in the U. S. Army. He glanced at his watch,
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seemingly impatient to move the rehearsal along. At her other side,
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offering notes on her performance, was her balding and bespectacled father.
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He and Bernauer's mother had joined their daughter in the
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countryside in the summer of nineteen forty four. Rudolph was
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employed as an actor, a scriptwriter, and a director. Emma,
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who had once been a nanny, was something of a
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den mother for the cast and crew members of the
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O S S operation, who were mostly young and mostly single,
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and billeted together in Newton, Longville, about ten miles from
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the m B studios. Among Emma's charges were Czechoslovakian singer
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and beauty queen Trudy Binar, Elizabeth Karako, a willowy Austrian performer,
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and Hilda Palmer, a German actress who had just finished
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a run in coal porters. Something for the Boys through
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July Boogie Woogie pianist Pat O'Neill hunched over the studio's
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grand piano with a cigarette between his teeth as the
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four singers recorded some of the biggest English language hits
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of the era in German. Access to popular big band
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tunes was rare in Germany, giving the propaganda stations in
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edge over their German counterparts and the competition for listeners.
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Some were faithful covers, but others preyed on the war
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weary listener's feelings of loneliness, despair, and longing. Many were
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translated in London by Egan Larson, who had one of
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the strangest and I admit cushiest war jobs. He would
20:20
write in nineteen eighty five when he felt safe telling
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the story. Larson, who was Jewish, had been a journalist
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in Berlin before the Nazis assent, and he had taken
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a job with the BBC's German service when he made
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his way to England, but he had quickly grown disillusioned
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with the stated station. He believed, as the OS S did,
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that the Allies could not convince German servicemen and civilians
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with facts, but they could influence them with emotion. His
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rewritten lyrics manipulated listeners through music, sentimentality, sex, dramatic episodes,
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and Maudlin verse, as OSS officials later wrote, between air
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raid warnings and damage reports, purported news from the German
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home front and the front lines, and speeches from Nazi
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officials rebroadcast from other radio stations. The first time Bernauer's
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voice was heard on Atlantic sender or Zoldatan Center Gallie
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just after nine pm local time on July third, nineteen
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forty four. She was singing Larsen's words. The cheerful tune
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was that of the wartime hit paper Doll, but the
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translated lyrics gave the song about loyalty and jealousy a
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much darker tone. In the original Mills Brothers version, the
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singer was gonna buy a paper doll that I can
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call my own, a doll that other fellows cannot steal.
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But in Larsen's version, Bernauer wanted to be a faithful
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doll while her man was off to war. But as
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she sang in German, unfortunately, I'm not a porcelain figurine,
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a reference to Meissen Porcelain, the Pride of Saxony and
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need a real man. In spring and now, Bernauer was
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preparing for a bigger role. Three times a week she
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would transform into Vicky with three Kisses, a temptress dreamed
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up by Kebby as a pure sex act. This is
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Vicky speaking saying hello to all her friends in the Wehrmacht.
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Bernauer purred in German on radio sets across Europe on
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the evening of August thirteenth, nineteen forty four, as Benny
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Goodman's Gentle Smooth One faded. It was her third appearance
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on the stations they say the first hundred times of
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the hardest Still, it shouldn't take us long to get acquainted, ay,
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not if we take it easy. As Vicky Bernauer promised
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her listeners a seductive slow dance and a night of romance,
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even as she segued into a rendition of where or when,
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the original lyrics of which subtly winked at her deception
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thought as wings and lots of things are seldom what
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they see. It's been fun, right, she asked her listeners.
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It's been fun for me dreaming here by the microphone.
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Finally a part of the war, Bernauer relished her position
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in what she would call the Dirty Tricks Department, which
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offered endless possibilities to bamboozle and confuse the Nazis. Are
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you as sweet as your voice? A German Man wrote
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to the woman he knew only as Vicki, in a
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letter that found its way to Milton Bryan in February
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nineteen forty five. The fan, who had by then deserted
23:33
the German war effort, expressed some doubts about the authenticity
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of the station broadcasting the Youngest Star, but that did
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not seem to concern him. The chief thing is that
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you are there and that you don't forget your good
23:47
night kisses. The letter and other such comebacks mentions of
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the stations from p o W interviews and intelligence intercepts
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reassured the propagandists that people were tuning in the Germans
24:01
knew it too. According to a memo Allied forces discovered
24:05
as they advanced through Europe dangerous enemy propaganda warning against
24:10
the so called Zodotenzender Calais it began. The memo showed
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that the Germans had little idea how to combat the disinformation,
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even mentioning the stations seemed perilous. In discussing the radio,
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care must be taken not to popularize the name Sodotenzender Calais.
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The Nazis, having promoted the widespread use of radio for
24:33
their own domestic propaganda purposes, had unwittingly set the German
24:38
people up for attack. By nineteen forty one, sixty five
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percent of German homes had a bosomfanger capable of receiving
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the powerful broadcasts of Sodotenzender Calais as readily as the
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official Nazi news outlet Deutsche Lanzender. Some who tuned into
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Atlantic Sender and Soodotenzender Calais later renamed soldotan Zender West
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after the Allies recaptured Calais in October nineteen forty four,
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making it an implausible headquarters for a purported German military
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radio station believed the stations to be authentic. Others saw
25:15
through the ruse and, disgusted by the propaganda of the enemy,
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or fearful of Nazi reprisals for illegally listening to the broadcasts,
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changed the channel. But there was a third group, those
25:28
who had suspicions about the station's origins and intentions, but
25:32
tuned in any way. If listeners had convinced themselves there
25:35
was no harm in hearing the enemy's news tidbits and
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enjoying lively music, they were making a dangerous gamble. Psychologists
25:44
today know that many people struggle to determine truth from lies,
25:49
especially when repeatedly exposed to disinformation. The PWE, recognizing the
25:55
power of the weapon it was building, and fearful it
25:58
would poison the British media environment, issued a defense notice
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advising Fleet Street journalists not to report news broadcast on
26:07
the station, an unenforceable request that was widely honored. Nowhere else, however,
26:13
seemed beyond the reach of the programs. In Paris, an
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exiled writer tuned his radio to the stations as German
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troops patrolled the streets in the months before the city's liberation.
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In still occupied Austria, a girl and her brother huddled
26:30
around a battery powered radio each evening, the volume turned
26:34
low and their windows shuttered. In Hamburg, a young German
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manning and achdact the feared anti aircraft gun, heard American
26:43
style dance music for the first time. And in Berlin,
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Ingeborg von Cuso, an actress about Bernauer's age who had
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become a favorite of Nazi's propaganda filmmakers, listened for the
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gossip necessary to navigate Hitler's inner circle. It was invariably right,
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she would write, using the surname Wells in her nineteen
27:05
forty nine memoir. At least one teacher at Germany's National
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Political Institutes of Education, boarding schools established to groom the
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next generation of Nazi leaders, was known to play the
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stations for his students, and their big band music was
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popular in the officer's mess at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's
27:26
military headquarters on the Eastern Front. The Furor himself was
27:30
briefed on the broadcasts. For Hitler, the real threat was
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not the station's lies, but their truths. The Allied broadcasters
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had such accurate information that Nazi leaders feared there was
27:42
a mole among his closest advisers. Dispatches from the stations
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quoted as reliable news sources were also a regular fixture
27:54
on the front pages of American newspapers. This concludes readings
28:02
from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has been
28:06
Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a great day.