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