Vike Martina Plock

Foreign-language broadcasting projects in the United Kingdom and the United States faced momentous challenges during World War II, a time when totalitarian regimes had successfully appropriated wireless technology for propaganda purposes. As Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer would argue, countries such as Nazi Germany had turned radio into an agent of political repression by creating passively receptive audiences who uncritically absorbed fascist doctrines. When war broke out in Europe, Hitler’s party had already colonized the airwaves at home to leave dissenters no opportunities to make their voices heard on the radio. But as the case of “Lord Haw-Haw’s” “Germany Calling” program demonstrates, the Nazis had also set up a range of foreign-language services, hoping to conquer the European continent (and the rest of the globe) through the calculated use of sound. Technological progress had not improved international relations. On the contrary, such transnational broadcasting initiatives as the ones pursued by the Nazis evidenced how easily new communication systems could be exploited to support expansionist claims made by political aggressors. How, then, could the Allies develop their own foreign-language programs if transnational broadcasting had become stigmatized as Nazi Germany’s propaganda tool? Few doubted that the dissemination of counterpropaganda over the wireless was an essential aspect of Allied warfare because these transnational broadcasts would allow communication with listeners in Germany who could be encouraged to overthrow their totalitarian leaders. But what kind of programs would be most effective in converting listeners—who had been living, willingly or unwillingly, with Nazi propaganda for almost a decade—into allies? And who were the individuals best suited to gain influence with these listeners?