Modernity, World Wars and Dictatorships | 131Yet as a rule, German emigrants did not have leading functions in these sta-
tions, as there was considerable mistrust. Next to this ‘white propaganda’, that
came recognisably from foreign sources, a ‘black propaganda’ made the rounds.
The latter left its origins unclear and intimated that resistance groups were
broadcasting within the country. The intention was to undermine the security
of those in power, although the tone was sharper and contents less trustworthy.
How much the regime feared these ‘enemy broadcasters’ was demonstrated
by a plethora of reactions. At the beginning of the war the ‘Verordnung über
außerordentliche Rundfunkmaßnahmen’ (ruling on extraordinary broadcast
measures) had already prohibited listening to foreign channels. The Nazi
regime tried out jammers, albeit with little success, and intentionally broad-
cast Western types of music to retain its own listeners. In occupied territories
like the Netherlands, the Germans even deliberately confiscated radios. After
the war, many Germans boasted that they had secretly listened to foreign pro-
grammes at peril of their lives, which was often stylised as resistance. Contrary
to a widely believed myth, however, listening to foreign channels was not pun-
ishable by death but merely imprisonment. Of course, if this was connected
to other accusations, it might indeed have ended in a sentence of execution
(Hensle 2003: 139).
‘Hostile propaganda’ also caused a change in the media policies of Western
democracies. State influence increased dramatically. At war’s end, the British
‘Ministry of Information’ was an administration with 3,000 employees, and
the American ‘United States Office of War Information’ (OWI) even had
14,400 employees. In Great Britain, censorship was only permitted in case of
articles endangering Britain’s war interests, but the Churchill government put
pressure especially on leftist-liberal newspapers, and supervised BBC and wire
service reports in order to strengthen endurance and staying power (Williams
2010: 134, 140). By means of popular media appeals, the home country also
became part of the front in Great Britain.
The effect of Allied radio propaganda on the Germans is difficult to assess.
On the whole, one can say that it was considerable, although it did not trigger
widespread resistance. Reports gave information about the Allied advance and
thus, in contrast to the First World War, reduced the belief in victory at an
early stage, which in turn fostered rejection of the regime. In Germany the
frequently satirical reports about Nazi elites probably increased scorn for the
regime. The fact that numerous German cities surrendered without a fight
was also due to the precise information the Germans had about the enemy’s
advances. In occupied areas like France and the Netherlands these programmes
were often an important bridge to exiled organisations that formed the resis-
tance. In this way Charles de Gaulle was regularly able to mobilise the resis-
tance against the German occupiers in the programme ‘Ici Londres’, after his
famous radio speech of 18 June 1940. German-language stations from abroad