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Book Review: Hitler's Airwaves: The Inside Story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing

In a 1936 memorandum to his ministry staff, Dr Joseph Goebbels claimed, 'We National Socialist propagandists have transformed the radio into the sharpest of propaganda weapons. Before we took power, the German radio was run by amateurs. What we have now made of it is a tool for ideological education and a top-class political force'. Such a self-congratulatory missive was, however, not entirely undeserved. Goebbels believed that radio was the primary channel through which the German people could be sold the Nazi concept of the Volksgemeinschaft and through which the rest of the world would be cowed by National Socialist achievement. To ensure that all Germans would be exposed to this indoctrination, the regime provided subsidized radio receivers (the Volksempfanger or 'people's receiver'), available for as little as RM 35. By the beginning of the war, over 70 per cent of all households had their own set. For those citizens who could not or would not buy their own receiver, 'radio-wardens' ensured that a network of loudspeakers relayed important broadcasts to public places restaurants, factories, offices, schools and even street corners. And from 1938, mediumand short-wave transmitters began to systematically target foreign audiences in Europe, the Middle East and North and South America in an attempt to create pro-Nazi opinion. Thus while the effectiveness of such political broadcasting remained to be seen, there was no doubt that Goebbels and his henchmen had at least ensured that their broadcasts could reach a vast audience. Yet despite the Reich minister's faith in the power of broadcasting and its central importance in the National Socialist propaganda war, historians have been comparatively neglectful of the medium, subjecting radio to only a fraction of the attention they have lavished on film. Radio, I suppose, lacks the appeal, the impact, of visual mediums but, more relevantly, few radio broadcasts have survived: rarely were they considered important enough to record on disc, for example. Thus there is significantly less raw material for the historian to work with here than for other propaganda forms. Hitler's Azrwaves, then, is a useful addition to a relatively under-researched topic. Yet the book is not quite what it seems: it is not, as the subtitle suggests, 'the inside story of Nazi radio broadcasting', for it deals only with foreign-language broadcasting. The authors are not professional historians butjazz enthusiasts, who came to the study of Nazi radio propaganda through their interest in 'Charlie and His Orchestra' one of the few bands permitted to play 'swing' and other degenerate 'Negro' music in the Third Reich. Charlie was granted such a dispensation because his music was considered to be an important element in the propaganda beamed at the Allies.