Nazi ‘black’ Propaganda to Britain: Secret Radio Stations and British Renegades

Abstract

While many will be familiar with the British traitor William Joyce who, as Lord Haw-Haw, became infamous for his radio broadcasts to Britain on behalf of Nazi Germany during the Second World War, much less widely known and studied is the work of Büro Concordia, an organisation created by Joseph Goebbels to broadcast ‘black’ propaganda from Berlin to Britain. Between 1940 and 1945 five secret radio stations posed as the voice of British dissident, anti-war organisations operating within the United Kingdom, broadcasting a stream of propaganda which aimed to demoralise the British people and undermine its support for the war. While they can be credited with some limited success, they fell far short of what Goebbels had hoped and expected from them. These stations were launched by the Reich Propaganda Ministry, but the two dozen writers and speakers who produced these broadcasts from studios in Berlin were British citizens. This study evaluates these ‘British renegades’ and the system that identified, recruited and trained them, and concludes that whatever potential there might have been to influence the course of the war, the employment of people so wholly unsuited to the work ensured that Concordia was bound to fail from its inception.

Acknowledgements

Thanks for access to archive material are due to Els Boonen of the BBC Written Archive Centre, Caversham, and to Katharina Schwella of the Bundesarchiv, Berlin. Professor David Welch of the University of Kent was kind enough to read and comment upon a first draft of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Useful biographies of Joyce are: John Cole, Lord Haw-Haw. The Full Story of William Joyce (London: Faber and Faber, 1964); Peter Martland, Lord Haw Haw. The English Voice of Nazi Germany (Kew: The National Archives, 2009); Colin Holmes, Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).

2 Joseph Goebbels, Joseph Goebbels Tagebücher 1924-1945, 5 volumes, edited by Ralf Georg Reuth (Munich: Piper, 1999), entry for 28 March 1940, 1545.

3 For the development and effectiveness of German radio propaganda, and in particular the work of William Joyce, see: Horst Bergmeier and Rainer Lotz, Hitler’s Airwaves. The Inside story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing (New Haven: Yale, 1997); Martin Doherty, Nazi Wireless Propaganda. Lord Haw-Haw and British Public Opinion in the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000); Holmes, Searching for Lord Haw-Haw, 277–90; Jo Fox, ‘Confronting Lord Haw-Haw: Rumor and Britain’s Wartime Anti-Lies Bureau’, The Journal of Modern History, 91, no. 1 (2019): 74–108; Nathan Morley, Radio Hitler. Nazi Airwaves in the Second World War (Stroud: Amberley, 2021).

4 Willi Boelcke, The Secret Conferences of Dr Goebbels, October 1939-March 1943 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967), vii-xviii.

5 Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BA-BL): R55 20827, Grundplanung “Concordia”, January 1940.

6 The National Archives (TNA): KV 2/2861, MI5 personal file on Erich Hetzler.

7 Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale. Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979), 136.

8 For Büro Concordia see: Bergmeier and Lotz, Hitler’s Airwaves, 195-223; Roger Tidy, Hitler’s Radio War (London: Roger Hale, 2011); Holmes, Searching for Lord Haw-Haw, 186–8; Morley, Radio Hitler, 115–24.

9 Martin Doherty, ‘Black Propaganda by Radio: the German Concordia Broadcasts to Britain 1940–1941’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 14, no. 2 (1994): 167–97; Doherty, Nazi Wireless Propaganda, 18–27.

10 TNA: CRIM 1/1347, Trial of Wilfred Snape and others, 14 October 1941; Tidy, Hitler’s Radio War, 77–83.

11 Doherty, Nazi Wireless Propaganda, 108–110.

12 For the work of the BBC Monitoring Service, see: Laura Johnson, Establishing Broadcast Monitoring as Open Source Intelligence: The BBC Monitoring Service during the Second World War, unpublished PhD thesis, Kings College London, 2013.

13 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 19 May to 14 June 1940, 42–53.

14 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 7 January 1941, 116. German diplomats confirmed of the broadcasts that ‘… the collapse in the enemy countries can overwhelmingly be attributed to their effectiveness.’: ibid., 28 June 1940, 62.

15 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 22 June 1940, 58; 24 July 1940, 70.

16 Goebbels, Tagebücher, 11 September 1940, 1471.

17 TNA: HO 45/25827, MI5 Report re Kenneth Vincent Lander, 15 January 1946.

18 TNA: CRIM 1/1735, Letter from Banning to head of Düsseldorf Gestapo, 9 September 1939.

19 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 21 May 1940, 44.

20 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, xvii.

21 BBC Written Archives Centre (BBC WAC): Summaries of World Broadcasts (SWB) Report 394, Part I, 13 August 1940, New British Broadcasting Station.

22 Goebbels, Tagebücher, 11 September 1940, 1471.

23 BBC WAC: SWB Report 405, Part I, 27 August 1940, New British Broadcasting Station.

24 McLaine, Ministry of Morale, 81.

25 BBC WAC: SWB Report 355, Part I, 8 July 1940, Workers’ Challenge.

26 BBC WAC: SWB Report 369, Part I, 21 July 1940, Radio Caledonia.

27 TNA: KV 2/424, Deposition of Donald Grant, 31 October 1946.

28 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 6 July 1942, 252.

29 BA-BL: RW 55/20852, Letter from the office of Joseph Goebbels to the head of Foreign Broadcasting, 14 July 1942.

30 BBC WAC: SWB Report 396, Part I, 17 August 1940, Christian Peace Movement.

31 BA-BL: RW 55/20827, Letter from RRG Head of Intelligence Rudolf Stache to Joseph Goebbels, 5 July 1940.

32 TNA: KV 2/443, ‘Talk by an Anarchist, Mr Freeman. English Fascism Preferable to Jewish’, Radio National, 29 September 1943.

33 Raskin died in November 1940, and was replaced until the end of the war by Anton Winkelnkemper.

34 TNA: KV 2/431, MI5 Liaison Section Report on Concordia, 5 November 1945.

35 TNA: KV 2/437, Statement of Ronald Spillman, 17–8 May 1945.

36 BA-BL: R55 24024, Letter from Erich Hetzler to Dr. Weyermann, 20 November 1941.

37 BA-BL: R55 20827, Letter from Alfred Berndt to Joseph Goebbels, 16 January 1941.

38 Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography (London: Random House, 2015), 494–5.

39 TNA: KV 2/826, Statement of Reinhard Herman Haferkorn, 13 July 1945.

40 TNA: KV 2/2861, Statement of Ronald Spillman to Military Police Special Investigation Branch, 19–21 July 1945.

41 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 24 August 1940, 81.

42 TNA: KV 2/259, Statement of Herbert Krumbiegel, 25 September 1945.

43 TNA: KV 2/3581, Information about UK Renegades from the continent of Europe.

44 TNA: WO 416/24/18, Stalag XXA Prisoner of War card for Sergeant Joseph Beasley, Queens Royal Regiment (West Surrey).

45 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 22 June 1940, 58.

46 TNA: KV 2/2861, Statement of William Griffiths, 8 June 1945.

47 TNA: KV 2/826, Statement of Reinhard Herman Haferkorn, 13 July 1945.

48 TNA: WO 71/1112, Evidence given by Ronald Spillman, 2 November 1945.

49 TNA: KV 2/433, Statement of Heinz Thorlichen, 5 December 1945.

50 William Gardner, The Peace Pledge Union: the story of a group of British war-resisters who fell into enemy hands in the German Occupied Channel Islands in World War 2 (Lord Coutanche Library: Société Jersiaise, 1991), unpaginated typescript.

51 TNA: KV 2/260, Statement of Irene Fritzsching, 21 November 1945.

52 TNA: WO 71/1117, Statement of Francis Paul Maton, 8–9 December 1944.

53 TNA: AIR 40/2311, Statement of William Arthur Colledge, 19–21 July 1945.

54 TNA: AIR 40/2311, Statement of William Arthur Colledge, 19–21 July 1945.

55 TNA: KV 2/631, Statement of Benson Freeman, 17 May 1945; KV 2/437, Statement of Ronald Spillman, 17–18 May 1945.

56 TNA: HO 45/25839, Statement of William Murphy, 6 February 1945.

57 TNA: KV 2/423, Statement of Susan Hilton, 30 June 1945.

58 TNA: KV 2/259, Statement of Roy Purdy, 29 May 1945.

59 TNA: KV 2/259, Extract of letter of Margaret Joyce to William Joyce, 20 October 1945.

60 TNA: KV 2/432, Statement of Margarete Eberhard, 17 May 1945.

61 TNA: HO 45/25792, Statement of Herbert Krumbiegel, 26 September 1945; KV 2/437, Statement of Ronald Spillman, 17-18 May 1945.

62 TNA: KV 2/433, Statement of Heinz Thorlichen, 5 December 1945; KV 2/2861, Statement of William Colledge to Military Police, Special Investigation Branch, 19–21 July 1945; KV 2/437, Statement of Ronald Spillman, 17–18 May 1945; KV 2/433, Notes made by Fräulein Liselotte Thiem, 3 December 1945.

63 Cole, Lord Haw-Haw, 160.

64 TNA: AIR 18/28, Evidence given by Benson Freeman, 9 September 1945.

65 Unpublished interview between Godfrey Le Cappelain and Gilly Carr, Jersey, 31 August 2009, courtesy of Gilly Carr, St Catherine’s College, Cambridge.

66 TNA: KV 2/443, MI9 Report to MI5, 25 April 1945. An Abwehr officer recruiting in Munich for the Foreign Ministry made a similar offer of freedom, pay, and the opportunity to meet German girls: WO 71/1145, Evidence given by Kenneth Smith, 22 August 1946.

67 Gerhard Bry, Wages in Germany 1871-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 250–1.

68 Cole, Lord Haw-Haw, 226.

69 TNA: FO 950/1938, Letter of Llewellyn Thomas to Foreign Office, British Victims of Nazi Persecution Claims Department, 5 October 1964; Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz: 662007/84/91904, Gestapo Card for Llewellyn Thomas, September 1943.

70 TNA: CRIM 1/1759, Statement of John George Lingshaw, 16 June 1945.

71 Llewellyn Thomas was sentenced to a year in Wuhlheide work education camp: Arolsen Archive: 6.3.3.2/87338557, Card for Llewellyn Thomas. Douglas Johnston served his time in Sonnenburg and Brandenburg-Görden prisons: Arolsen Archive: 1.2.2.1/12116176, Lists of admittance and release, Brandenburg-Görden.

72 TNA: KV 2/437, Ronald Spillman: Statement to US Army Counter Intelligence Corps, 10 May 1945.

73 TNA: KV 2/631, Statement of Benson Freeman, 17 May 1945.

74 TNA: HO 45/24475, Evidence given by Leonard Banning, 21 January 1946.

75 The Times, 21 September 1946, ‘Aiding the Enemy: Nine Months’ Sentence on Broadcasting Charge’.

76 TNA: WO 71/1112, Evidence given by Ronald Spillman, 2 November 1945; KV 2/424, Deposition of Donald Grant, 31 October 1946.

77 All of Concordia’s files were deliberately destroyed by Hetzler in April 1945, but some documents were retained in the files of the Reich Propaganda Ministry and can be found in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin-Lichterfelde: R55 20827, 20851, 20852, 20855, 24024 and 23802.

78 Cole, Lord Haw-Haw, 234.

79 TNA: HO 45/24475, Leonard Banning: Appeal against conviction, 28 January 1946.

80 BA-BL: R55 24024, Letter from Dr. Schneider to Propaganda Ministry, 4 February 1944.

81 TNA: KV 2/437, Statement of Ronald Spillman, 17–18 May 1945.

82 TNA: KV 2/437, Ronald Spillman: Statement to US Army Counter Intelligence Corps, 10 May 1945.

83 TNA: WO 71/1112, Evidence given by Ronald Spillman, 2 November 1945.

84 TNA: HO 45/25833, Statement of Charles Gilbert, 22 May 1946.

85 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 29 April 1941, 148.

86 BA-BL: R55 20827, Letter from Alfred Berndt to Joseph Goebbels, 16 January 1941.

87 Boelcke, Secret Conferences, 6 July 1942, 252.

88 TNA: KV 2/631, Statement of Benson Freeman, 17 May 1945.

89 TNA: KV 2/442, Letter from Margaret Joyce to Intelligence Bureau, B.A.O.R., 27 February 1946.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Graham Smyth

Graham Smyth holds a PhD in Medieval history from the University of Birmingham, and was at one time an archaeologist. He is now an independent scholar, and has published papers on the German occupation of the Channel Islands, 1940–1945. This article is part of a larger research project on Nazi radio propaganda to Britain, and the involvement of British fascists in its production.