RADIO PROPAGANDA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4186, 15 September 1939, Page 7

RADIO PROPAGANDA

BATTLING WITH WORDS. A BACKGROUND TO THE WAR. This is a war on, as well as in, the air. Every day and night since the opening of hostilities in Europe, the broadcast and short-wave radio stations of Europe have been conducting the propaganda fight—battling with words. Those of us in New Zealand who have efficient short-wave receivingsets are able to make contact with the fringe of this battle; and even the fringe is impressive and confusing enough. What it must be in those' parts of the Northern Hemisphere where broadcast as well as shortwave from Britain, France, Germany, Poland—not to mention the United States and the dozen and one smaller countries which are endeavouring to offer the world of listeners their version of events—challenges imagination.

'Fewer people are listening to the German sessions in English for th© clearest of these are heard late at night. Those who do listen to them have been struck, first, by the extravagance of the (German claims and at - cusations against the Allies, and, secondly, by the avoidance of all •reference to the Western Front and to Allied air force activities.

The German radio offensive is conducted from Zeesan where, in 1936, the Nazis built an enormously powerful short-wave station. The world was divided into six zones, each being in charge of an important member of the party.

IN MANY LANGUAGES. South and Central America are one zone on which the Nazis concentrate with particular thoroughness. Every day before the war programmes were broadcast to all parts of South America, partly in German, partly in Spanish or Portuguese. Now that the nations are at war /these programmes have been replaced by the same spate of Nazi claims, boasts and accusations against France, Britain and the British Navy, that are poured through the air in English toward Australia and New Zealand.

Britain’s Daventry is no less active, a,nd though it would be idle to suggest that the 8.8. C. is not using every art of propaganda, the corporation’s transmissions have already won widespread confidence by reason of their coverage of events in fields of operations and the degree of impartiality with which the news, good or bad, is given. In view of the developments of radio and leaflet propaganda in the past ten days, and the harsh action taken by the Nazis to hold the German people in a thraldom of ignorance, an article appearing in the August Current History, is lent a special interest:—

NAZI HARSHNESS PREDICTED.

“The Nazis,” said the writer of the article, “try to quarantine their country against ideas from outside. Their own propaganda machine pumps an unending flood of words, printed and spoken, into every corner of the land, yet they strive to shut out every piece of news or opinion from elsewhere, or to select and edit to fit their own purposes. “Of course there is determined and persistent effort, from within and without the frontier, to break down that barrier. An underground Communist organisation distributes leaflets all over them in letter-boxes or on beer-hall tables, handing them to people whom the agents think they can trust. “There have been several fugitive stations inside Germany, moving from place to place in trucks, broadcasting short, violently anti-Nazi programmes, then hurrying away.

PROTECTIVE PLAN PREPARED.

“Straight news programmes are sent into Germany from England and from Strasbourg, across the Rhine in France, and there have been other propaganda efforts along the western front. A privately financed group m England has leaflets printed which state the case for democracies —th© sort of thing whose circulation would be permitted in a free country. These are dropped over Germany by planes flying at night from Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. “If in the future Hitler finds himself involved in a war of blood and iron as well as words, his plans are well laid to> defend himself from propaganda such as that which broke the German will in the last war. Experts predict that one of the first decrees will be the confiscation of all private receiving sets in the Reich. The people will be commanded to gather at stated times around public loud-speakers to hear official propaganda.” As everyone now knows, the prediction in this last paragraph has been fulfilled. The German people have been forbidden the right of listening and threatened with death if they should pass on what they hear.