It is inevitable that the propaganda machine engineered by the indefatigable Dr. Goebbels should at times overreach itself, but mails recently to hand tell the story of how the Deutsche Nachrichten Bureau was forced by "the ridicule of South American newspapers to "kill" one of its better and brighter stories. This.news agency, with a lily-white reputation for truth, put out a story, alleged to have been received from its correspondent at Montevideo, that at the burial of the Admiral Graf Spee dead, British sailors attending the ceremony spat on the coffins and threw a dead cat into one of the graves. The story obviously the invention of a foul, de-proved mind was laughed to scorn in South America, and the Deutsche Nachrichten Bureau was obliged to send out a second message "killing" the story. The German propaganda machine had invited ridicule, and, having got it, sought shamefacedly to cover up its slimy traces. It has often been said that the German broadcast propaganda has provided the British with more than a little entertainment, and the point has been made quite clear in an issue of the "News Review" for January 11, which has just come to hand. The magazine devotes a couple of pages to typical untruths which "Lord Haw-Haw" of Zeesen and his fellows launch daily on the air, and the various German newspaper agencies flood the newspaper offices of the neutral world. They swung into action quite early. On September 15, barely a fortnight after the outbreak of war the following was put on the air London is already practically starving on the tenth day of the war. Rich women who are still able to purchase what food there is at the expensive shops are robbed of their parcels by the poor. There has not been a drop of milk in the capital for the last three days. Women are standing in queues to obtain their household supplies which are getting scantiep daily. There have been so many robberies during the black-out that all the big banks have had to remove their safes with money and valuables into the country.
It is interesting to note that this was broadcast in Polish and Lithuanian, and that the broadcasting authorities had just sufficient wits about them not to perpetrate the gaffe of publishing this in English. Readers will remember the German claim to have sunk HMS. Kestrel. That was exposed in this column at the time. H.M.S. Kestrel is the official name for the Fleet Air Arm training establishment at Worthy Down, Hampshire.
An even more amusing example of the stupidity of such methods is to be found in the German broadcast, in French, of December.2 in which an alleged broadcast by a French soldier said to have been taken prisoner was presented.
"Last night a French lieutenant, Robert Meliande, of Mont-de-Marsan, was taken prisoner Here he is to say a few words on how well he has been treated.
The very next day speaking over the French radio Robert Meliande reported "I am still happily in France." Again it will be remembered that during October the theme song of the German broadcasters was that H.M.Ss. Renown, Hood and Repulse had been sunk by German submarines or bombers. On November 17 another story was put on the air to the effect that the Renown, Repulse and the Hood had been repaired and sent to Canada for safety. The case of the Montevideo story is not the only one in which the German Propaganda machine has had to go into reverse, for on September 25 it claimed that eight French planes were brought down in a raid on Friederichshaven, and the next day admitted that no such raid had occurred. This might be'a poor attempt to pretend to offer lip-service to the cause of accuracy, but the question will naturally be asked as to how the original story ever came about, unless it was an example of wishful thinking, on the part of the less fully instructed in the art of propaganda. Then it will be remembered that another fairy tale industriously spread by the Nazis was to the effect that the unscrupulous British Secret Service was responsible for practically every political assassination since the beginning of the century winding up with the broadcast that "Immediately after the murder of Calinescu, the whole population of Rumania felt convinced that it was an act of British villainy." The fact is, and it is one with which the Rumanians are perfectly well acquainted, that nine members of the illegal Nazi Iron Guard were shot on the spot for the murder. On November 27 Berlin broadcast that the previous week London had been raided, by German planes which flew a few yards above the roof-tops, while anti-aircraft shells missing the raiders fell into a school where the children were sitting at their lessons. That broadcast was the first time Londoners ever heard of the affair, and it can readily be understood that it created not a little amusement.
"Where is the Ark Royal?" was the question repeatedly asked over the air during September, October and November. The answer was the publication of a picture of that vessel taken while she was in Cape Town harbour in December. It would be possible to fill many columns of similar instances of the inability of the German radio commentators to adhere to the truth, and their habit of exercising their unclean minds in the propagation of lies such as that which the Deutsche Nachrichten Bureau was shamed into "killing." But one more instance may be cited, again from a couple of German broadcasts. In one it was claimed that what Germany was doing in Poland had nothing to do with war. The next day a German air pilot was on the air with The whole town of Lwow was enveloped in fire and smoke. This indeed was a picture more beautiful than I was ever capable of imagining. I had the good luck to see the railway station and the numerous trains there blown up and scattered in all directions.
It had nothing to do with war, of course, but was an indulgence in a little gentle sadism. While fortunately the Allied press have up to the present refrained from applying to the Germans and their methods some of the rare brutal epithets which were used in the last war, there cannot be the slightest doubt that they were justified then, and are being equally justified now. The past six months have shown that the Reich is just as guilty of brutality and mendacity as it was to be expected it would be. If such a broadcast campaign were likely to do much damage to the Allied cause it would be easy enough to combat it, but the fact is that it is destroying its own efficacy because of the methods employed, and does not at present call for corrective efforts. For the moment, however, it serves to bring a small ray of joy into the long hours of Britain's winter black-outs.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.