German Radio

2,799 words

Analyzing the role of radio in the Third Reich—the news and entertainment equivalent of television today—helps conceptualize what it might be like to wield the kind of power we possessed in the 19th century and before, but transposed to a contemporary, Judenfrei, consciously white setting.

The way things now stand, no media content anywhere is pro-white or culturally conservative.The overwhelming majority is extremely insidious, even vicious, in nature. White people can’t wake up, or accomplish anything significant, until this grotesquely one-sided state of affairs is somehow addressed. The daily perpetuation of injustice, hatred, racism, violence, and evil forces social and political affairs in a single direction.

Envision the current situation: suppression of pro-white speech in the mass media (there is not a single big pro-white media company anywhere) and on the Internet worldwide, coupled with the existence of a tiny handful of socially and economically marginal individual websites, many of which are blocked by commercial software and content filters developed by organizations such as the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center and slyly concealed on thousands, perhaps millions, of home, work, and government computers and other web-connected devices in places where governments have not yet outlawed white speech at Jewish behest.

Against this crippled handful of ineffectual websites just one product (On Demand) of Jewish media giant Comcast-NBCUniversal, a company that annually rakes in billions of dollars in revenue, according to CEO Brian Roberts during the past 10 years “had 30 billion views of On Demand content. We have 400 million a month, it’s an all-time high, with 100,000 TV and movie choices on all platforms.” Keep in mind, this is just one product of one company.

What must somehow be meaningfully countered by whites and cultural conservatives are racist and ideological messages—anti-white, anti-family, anti-Christian, globalist, illiberal—pouring forth constantly, 24 hours a day, to billions of viewers from literally every mass media outlet worldwide, government or “private.”

Aryans have been beaten up, insulted, shoved down, and contemptuously treated for so long that no one even thinks seriously about obtaining actual power anymore. Of course, this is a natural consequence of the systemic oppression, dispossession, violence, physical and cultural destruction, and wholesale deprivation of legal rights to which we have been subjected for so long. Nevertheless, it is seizure of power that must be visualized.

The German Experience

Pre-war German photo showing the People’s radio and the People’s car

The beginning of the 1930s was a time of rapid expansion of radio in Germany and around the world. Radio in Weimar (and later, Nazi) Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, was government-owned and financed by a monthly license fee on radio receivers roughly equivalent to the cost of a newspaper subscription. Nevertheless, Europe’s information situation was not markedly superior to that of the United States, where the new medium was privately owned by Jewish businessmen, because Jews and the Left dominated European culture, business, and government as overwhelmingly as they did America.

German radio was initially biased against the NSDAP. The party had virtually no influence on the content of radio broadcasts prior to Hitler’s appointment as chancellor on January 30, 1933. However, the party was prepared for the takeover and implemented a detailed plan of radio restructuring immediately after Hitler’s appointment. The process “was naturally not random,” Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda responsible for overseeing the mass media, said. “It was systematically prepared and organized.”

As an aside, naming Goebbels’ department the Ministry of Propaganda is typical Aryan naïveté wholly uncharacteristic of Jews and Leftists, the world’s consummate practitioners of Newspeak. (Franco’s Spanish National Radio was likewise run by an “Office for Press and Propaganda.”) When the United States had an actual defense department, Americans called it the War Department. Then, when it became a war department regularly waging aggressive, globalist, offensive war, it was renamed, Nineteen Eighty-Four-style, the Defense Department. Although I dislike propaganda and war, I appreciate honest nomenclature. Along the same lines, I remember a National Socialist bookseller that used what it called “Aryan pricing”—$5, $10, $15, rather than $4.99, $9.99, or $14.99.

In the space of one month, July–August 1933, on Goebbels’ orders, Eugen Hadamovsky, head of the Radio division, purged German broadcasting of all Jewish and Left-wing elements opposed to the Nazi cause.

Also swept away were unnecessary bureaucracy, boards, committees, and unjustified salaries and benefits. The NSDAP, Goebbels declared, would “eliminate excessive organization as quickly as possible, replacing it with Spartan simplicity and economy,” while simultaneously increasing productivity.

Radio quickly became, and remained, a primary pillar of Nazi power, as it had been for Jews and Leftists before them, and became again immediately after WWII.

Though radio content was biased against the NSDAP in the parliamentary elections of May 1928 (when the party received 2.6% of the vote), September 1930 (18.3%), July 1932 (37.3%), and November 1932 (33.1%—a drop of 2 million votes in 4 months), under party influence radio helped boost electoral strength in March 1933 to 43.9%. Goebbels wrote in his diary prior to the latter election, “Now it will be easy to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal.”

It must be recalled that Hitler’s nationalism was “big” nationalism—not infra-national[1] like so many current secessionist movements, which Hitler strongly opposed (regional breakaway movements existed in Germany prior to 1933). It sought power over all Germany and, ultimately, over Germans outside the country in places such as Austria and Czechoslovakia as well.

Particularly interesting is the fact that German nationalism contained within it even more encompassing currents of Aryan pan-Europeanism, as in the later thought of SS chief Heinrich Himmler. These ambitious strains were never fully actualized, and indeed were severely hampered by Hitler’s obstinate Pan-Germanism.

As a quintet of anti-white academics noted in 2012, “The case of Germany in the 1930s is especially important for the study of media influence.” They added the, uh, enlightening statement that contemporary academic “media studies and communication literature were to a large extent motivated by the experience of Nazi Germany that suggests that propaganda might affect political preferences of people and their behavior.”

In truth, Jewish, Leftist, and Communist media bosses perfectly understood this unsubtle point long before a segment of whites attempted to take control of their own nation and destiny. The last thing media studies seeks to provide is clear understanding of the power of mass media in contemporary society. Simply analyzing or explaining too clearly Nazi or Communist media influence would shed unwelcome light on existing arrangements. So the function of media studies is to obfuscate and push everything in an ever more anti-white, anti-heterosexual, anti-family, anti-Christian, and anti-Western direction.

The authors of the paper determined also that radio increased anti-Jewish sentiment in the German population—just as, we must add, television, movies, music, and the rest of the electronic media foster pervasive anti-white racism and anti-Christian bigotry.

Goebbels’ Analysis of Radio 

At the very outset of the regime, in a speech opening the 10th German Radio Exhibition, Goebbels set forth his thoughts about the new medium and its relationship to the revolution.[2]

Together with Hitler and SS head Heinrich Himmler, Goebbels was one of the most committed anti-Jewish members in the top leadership, a product of the Left-wing of the NSDAP, which he joined in 1922. While associated with Gregor and Otto Strasser in 1926 he made the famous demand that “the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler shall be expelled from the National Socialist Party.”

In Goebbels’ view, the power of the printing press dominated Western culture from the time of Gutenberg until the rise of mass print media (newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, popular books), which became socially influential at the time of the French Revolution and “largely determined” the politics of the 19th century. He thought radio (today we would say TV) would play the same role in the 20th century.

Radio influenced the will of the broad masses, the entire nation, “regardless of class, standing, or religion.”

“It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio and the airplane. It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio.” (Hitler’s electoral campaigns involved hectic, grueling personal appearances, speeches, and rallies across the country, to which he had to fly.)

The Nazi revolution was “a modern revolution, and it has used the most modern methods to win and use power.” “Modern and intent on action,” the revolutionaries intended “a principled transformation in the worldview of our entire society, a revolution of the greatest possible extent that will leave nothing out, changing the life of our nation in every regard.” Here we see how a “big” modern revolution would more or less have to work, and the key role of the mass media in it. The specific German way is not the only way, or the necessary way, and personally I would prefer a much more liberal approach, but it suggests the contours of Aryan mass media in a large-scale society.

At points in his speech Goebbels expressed a Rousseauian totalitarian view of “democracy,” in which the party elite mystically embodies the will of the people:

We live in the age of the masses; the masses rightly demand that they participate in the great events of the day. The radio is the most influential and important intermediary between a spiritual movement and the nation, between the idea and the people.

And:

We call our revolution a popular one for good reason. It came from the depths of the people. It was carried out by the people, and done for them. It dethroned absolute individualism and put the people once again at the center.

Of course, he did not actually use the word “democracy,” which was furiously denounced by Hitler. But that was clearly his view of the situation.

Goebbels contended that radio was markedly different from theater or film. And yet, a great deal of the writing, production, and acting were similar. In America a handful of entertainers maintained long, successful careers across vaudeville, motion pictures, old time radio, and television. Among these were whites such as Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Red Skelton, and Jews such as Jack Benny and Milton Berle.

But radio was unique as an aural medium. It mentally stimulated visual images in a mass audience of isolated individuals not collectively present (as in a theater) entirely through speech, music, and sound effects. Indeed, the advent of radio as a widespread home entertainment alternative in the mid-1920s drained audiences from theaters, forcing moviemakers to quickly create “talkies” to remain competitive.

Another way in which radio differed from movies and theater, but resembled popular recorded music (which was also aural), was that it came directly into the home. Although listeners needed to purchase a receiver, almost everyone did; it thus had more of an “opt-out” rather than “opt-in” quality to it. Opt-out mechanisms are generally more successful than opt-in ones.

Goebbels’ goal in 1933 was to double radio listenership. The number of big transmitters (≥ 10kW) in Germany increased from one in September 1930 to three in April 1932 and six in March 1933. In 1927 radio transmissions blanketed a potential 31% of the population, by 1934 70%. The number of radio receivers in use in Germany climbed from 4.2 million in 1932 to 11.5 million in 1939 and 16 million in 1942.

Radio, like television afterward, had a psychologically and emotionally addictive effect. As historian Erik Barnouw wrote of American radio during the same period of exponential growth, “The stale formulas of every field of entertainment were winning for radio a loyalty that seemed almost irrational. According to social workers, destitute families that had to give up an icebox or furniture or bedding still clung to the radio as to a last link with humanity” (The Golden Web, 1968, p. 6).

Initially uncertain whether the new medium would harm theater, film, music, and publishing, Goebbels was determined to support the entire spectrum of arts and entertainment:

If the stage and publishing suffer from the rapid growth of radio, we will use the revenues not necessary for the radio to maintain and strengthen our intellectual and artistic life. The purpose of radio is to teach, entertain, and support people, not to gradually harm the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. One of my main tasks in the near and more distant future will be to keep a reasonable balance in this regard.

The People’s Receiver 

Volksempfänger VE 301, the People’s receiver.

At the same 1933 Berlin Radio Show where Goebbels delivered his speech, the “People’s receiver” (Volksempfänger), a low-cost radio set developed at Goebbels’ request, was introduced to the market. The distinctive bakelite cabinet for the Volksempfänger model VE 301 was the work of architect and industrial designer Walter Maria Kersting. Today the radios are collectors’ items. Because of its striking design and the enormous number of units sold, it became an icon of the Nazi period. In 1975, the influential pioneer German electronic music band Kraftwerk featured a Volksempfänger on the cover of its album Radio-Activity.

“VE 301” is an abbreviation where “VE” stands for “Volksempfänger” and “301” for 30 January 1933, the date Hitler became chancellor of Germany. The Nazis called this event the Machtergreifung, or “seziure [sic] of power.”

Interestingly, Britain later introduced a wartime equivalent of the Volksempfänger, the Utility Radio, produced to government specifications by a consortium of manufacturers utilizing standard components to enable easy repair. Unlike its German counterpart, it lacked longwave reception capability because authorities did not want Britons listening to foreign broadcasts.

International Broadcasting

In addition to “a radio that reaches the people, a radio that works for the people, a radio that is an intermediary between the government and the nation,” Goebbels said they wanted “a radio that also reaches across our borders to give the world a picture of our character, our life, and our work.”

When the Nazis assumed power in 1933, shortwave radio under the Foreign Radio Section (Auslandsrundfunk) was given high priority. A 100,000 kW transmitter and antenna complex and huge broadcast studio were built at Zeesen, near Berlin. Specialty programming targeting the United States began in 1933, South Africa, South America, and East Asia in 1934, and South Asia and Central America in 1938. Ultimately, international programming in twelve languages was broadcast 24 hours a day.

The objective was clear: to reach transnational audiences with Germany’s message. But despite the notoriety of broadcasters such as Irishman William Joyce (Joyce and his father were Roman Catholic Unionists opposed to the IRA; Joyce’s mother was Anglican), radio receivers owned by most people could not pick up shortwave signals, so it is unlikely that these broadcasts had much of an impact on the general public. Presumably more significant were transmissions by the democratic and Communist Allies to organized anti-German underground forces, and the monitoring of shortwave broadcasts by intelligence agencies, spies, bureaucrats, and elite politicians.

An online source claims, without citing any authority, that some German international broadcasts, particularly musical ones, reached an audience of millions. But, again, this would have required large numbers of receivers capable of tuning in to them, and listeners willing to listen.

The regime recognized its propaganda value in reaching foreign audiences, and the broadcasts contained large doses of musical sizzle and hipster allure. Featuring many of Germany’s finest jazz players, combining hit parade savvy with modified pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic lyrics, the Nazis served up cover versions of the latest American and British swing sensations, creating a body of work that (in spite of its lyrical content) attracted a huge global radio audience, well into the millions.

I have heard brief snatches of such original WWII recordings of German numbers with altered lyrics and they are quite interesting. White rocker Ian Stuart of Skrewdriver later altered many popular song lyrics to achieve similar effects. 

Probably more important than shortwave broadcasts were mediumwave transmissions from the periphery of the Reich providing specialty programs to listeners in neighboring countries.

In addition, during the Spanish Civil War Franco’s Nationalist forces received a powerful Telefunken transmitter as a gift from Germany, and until 1943 Spanish National Radio (Radio Nacional de España) collaborated with the Axis powers to retransmit in Spanish news from the official radio stations of Germany and Italy.

Lastly, it should be noted that broadcasters in 2013 tend to reach wider international audiences through the Internet and satellite television than via shortwave radio, and are therefore cutting back on or eliminating such broadcasts entirely as a result.