World War II: How did Britain fight Hitler with thieves?

It was late in London on a 1940 evening, and Austrian exile Robert Lucas is writing on his desk. Bombs fall into the city every night, Hitler's army is winning all over Europe, and the invasion of England appears on the horizon. Lucas says “is fighting for German souls”. He was fixing a radio program for the citizens of the Third Reich. This, however, is not a passionate prayer for awareness. This is an attempt to make them laugh.

Lucas had worked for the BBC German service. The purpose of the German radio service from the start was to break up the Nazi news monopoly within the Third Reich.

Nazis could not stop radio waves from foreign countries from entering Germany, but they could make the hearings of hostile crime stations. They did so as soon as war broke out. Those caught in prison immediately; the penalty for distributing news from radio stations from hostile countries was death. Brave Germans who ignored the law had to avoid listening to listeners and bad neighbors, and they heard as if they were treating themselves out of a cold.

But why did you have to let go of satire under those terrible circumstances? Making money to maintain British morality can be a successful strategy especially well implemented by the BBC on the <x0 TV show. It's That Man Again” [He's still the man]. But what about propaganda against the enemy? And who would risk his life listening to a joke on the radio?

When Lucas started writing about his show “he had no idea if there would be at least 50 people in Germany listening to”. That his program, along with two other satirical series called Frau Wernicke and Kurt un Willi, was commissioned in 1940, tells of the ambitious and experimental effort of the German Services in the beginning.

They didn't have enough staff, they had equipment and organization to fulfill their daily anti-propagand tasks. Moreover, the radio was still new, at its beginnings, and broadcasting into an enemy country was a whole new experience. This brought with it the spirit of creativity and adventure. It was also true that in 1940, there was a measure of despair. Okay, we can at least try,” told the BBC, Lucas.

satirical programmes were based on an unusual coalition between the BBC, British propaganda officials and Hitler's opposing German. On one hand, British officials insisted that the German Service message should sound “as English as a pudding from Yorkshire”. But they also wanted to demonstrate a good knowledge of the German soul, and the contribution of German exiles was needed. But the relationship was never easy; Lucas and his friends were often viewed with suspicion.

Lost in Translation

Emission Adolf Hirnschal is a series of fictional letters that a German theatre on the line of front wrote to his wife. The protagonist reads the letters to his fellow soldiers before sending them. On the outside, Adolf Hirnschali is dedicated to his beloved “Fyhrer”. Yet, as energized are his declarations of loyalty as clear as the goal is: to expose cremity and lies in Nazi advertising. In his first letter after the war was declared to Russia in 1941, he tells his wife how he had welcomed the news from his lieutenant who would be transferred to the Russian border:

I jumped out of joy and said: Mr. Lieutenant, I'm asking your permission to say that I'm so glad we're going to be in love with the Russians. Didn't our dear Fuhrer say two years ago that our friendship with the Russians was irreversible and irrevocable? ”

So Hirnschal exposes Hitler's policy hypocrisy toward Russia, all wrapped up in absolute loyalty. This is the method that Bruno Adler, an art historian from Germany who had fled to England in 1936, used for the show Frau Wernicke. The protagonist here is a well - hearted, strong, and talkative woman who, through greedy monologues, complains of injustice, rationing and contradictions of daily life during the war, even though she expresses powerful loyalty at all times.

Facing the Persian-Nai support for Nazim and the dark reality of the life of the war it describes, Adler's intentions are clear. On one occasion, Frau Wenicke asks her friend why she's so upset, and then she immediately answers:

Unless your husband had to close up his business and just because your son is now with Wehmacht and his cup is full, and just because your chica, Elsbeth, had to do a second temporary year working for the state, and why, as you say, you have no family anymore and you're not happy?

Note the highly ironic tone used in this case in “c”.

Kurt und Willi was also written by Bruno Adler. It is a series of dialogue between two friends: a former teacher and an official of the German Ministry of Propagand. As they discuss war events at a Berlin café, Kurt assumes the role of a naive German citizen. Willi is already cynical, immoral opportunist, who uses those tricks and tricks invented by the Ministry in which he works.

These programs have a sense of humor that is not well translated from German into English but also from radio to press. And of course, they belong to another meal. But they raise questions that were simply subject to heated debates.

Could these programs have had any effect? Could satira be used as weapons that could make the Germans see things in English perspective and make them sick for an end to war? Was it okay? BBC Director Noel Newsome had his doubts

The satirical programs had also been copied by Russians through Radio Moscow.

But he heard who? According to Robert Lucas, a great stream of thank - you letters had come from German listeners just as soon as the war had been fought.

London's <x0... German programming saved me from suicide during Hitler's black days of war,” said in one that was stored in the BBC archive. Another said: “is due to BBC and Alone The BBC that I had the moral power not to become an accomplice to the Nazis.” And many more.

Perhaps these letters justify as Charlie Chaplin does with Nazi atrocities the morality of satire. Theodor Adorno insisted that anti-fascist satira failed to capture or describe reality and, to the worse, ignored or trivialized the gravity of national-Socialism. But does sʹna remember the laugh of at least what it means to be human? Was it not the existence of these satirical programmes to believe in intelligence, and above all, to the humanity of its audience?

“As in any other tyranny, the national-socialism was completely without humor,” writes Robert Lucas. /BBC, translated and adapted by Periscope