Nazi Radio in the 1930s

Nazi Radio in the 1930s

A German prayer from the 1930s
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Dear God Make me mute and dumb,
that to Dachau, I don't come.
Dear God stuff up both my ears,
So neither one a clear word hears.
Dear God Make me deaf and blind
stop up my nose, befog my mind
In every way just let me show
Our world is wonderful, I know
Unseeing, deaf and mute and mild,
I am my Adolf’s dearest child.

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Radio is a powerful tool.

All radio in the hands of a dictator is a necessary tool.

Everyone knows that Goebbels was able to ban listening to foreign broadcasts and to make turning in your regular radio set for a radio with limited receiving power an act of patriotism.
You can probably tell me if anything like it has happened since --- outside of President Reagan's legislation that wiped out balanced broadcasting on AM radio. You will recall that Reagan pushed through legislation enabling anyone with money to hire political commentators to present their cause 24-7 without binding the station by the old law that required an equal amount of time for rebuttal.

Yup, the wily Hitler knew about the danger of truth and reason, and Goebbels made sure that Germans would hear the Nazi voice and not others. A radio receiver for the people, Volksempfanger VE 301 — whose model number represents the day on which the Nazis seized power on January 30 --- was introduced in 1933.

All German manufacturers were then required to produce models of the People's Radio set. This so-called People’s Radio had a simple dial, no shortwave and was only marked for German frequencies.

At first, in a Nazi campaign meant to define if you were or were not a good German , people turned in their regular receivers with which they could receive broadcasts from all over the world and replaced them with the People’s radio with limited reception. Germans would hear the Nazi voice and not others.

In case there was any doubt, a bright orange tag was hooked to the tuning knob. On this web page you can see fascinating pictures of this orange tag and the stacks of radios people turned in:
The People's Radio

It read: “Think about this: Listening to foreign broadcasts is a crime against the national security of our people. It is a Fuehrer Order punishable by prison at hard labor." Later in the war, listening to foreign radio was punishable by death.

Hitler eased Germans into his programming by giving them only one voice and ended up by putting them to death for listening to anything else.

I was in Germany just a few weeks ago and stayed with German friends. I've been to Germany dozens of times, and if you have, too, you probably can't, for the life of you, figure out how an intelligent group of hard-working honest people could have sat back and let a wild eyed nut tell them what they could and couldn't listen to on the radio.

Robert Karl Skoglund, The humble Farmer

Katherine in Norridgewock answers humble's question

Many people answered my question, but here is one from Katherine in Norridgewock I thought you might enjoy reading.

Dear Humble,

That's a very perplexing and disturbing situation that you just described. Are you aware of what happened to the mega star country group, The Dixie Chicks, when they publicly slandered President Bush? I'm sure you are, but seeing as how you didn't know who Jimmy Buffet was I better fill you in. The night before the war broke out The Dixie Chicks were performing in London I believe it was. And the lead singer, whose name escapes me, said in an off the cuff manor to the audience something to the effect of "we just want y'all to know that we're ashamed that President Bush is from Texas." So everyone in America became very upset with the darlings of country music and radio stations, from sea to shining sea, stopped playing their hit songs. And some stations even went so far as to throw parties where the main attraction was to destroy Dixie Chick CD's. Listeners could come and stomp on them in big pits and farmers would drive their tractors over the CD's, crushing them into tiny pieces so no one could ever play that CD again. But, before they could throw these giant CD destruction parties they had to go out to the store and buy all they could find. So, My advice to you, if instead of implying something about President Bush, maybe if you came right out and slandered him severely, like the Dixie Chicks did, or say something even worse than they did, you would be banned from MPBN radio and people would throw big parties to destroy your CD's. And in order to do that they would have to go out and buy all that they could find, and you would make more money from the CD sales then from the $30 per week. And then you could go on satellite radio and like Howard Stern does and broadcast to the whole planet. And I'm not very high tech or very clever so I don't know how one goes about making money from satellite radio, but Howard Stern is rich and if he can do it, so can you Humble. And then you wouldn't have to worry about health insurance or mortgage payments and you could buy Marsha one of those escalating chairs to go up and down the stairs on. Best of luck, I'll be listening tonight with my fingers crossed,

Your friend, Katherine

Norridgewock, Maine

National Speakers Association

Here's a question for professional speakers.

This tip appeared in a popular newsletter that many professional speakers read every week.

It had to do with "fixing" live presentation recordings.

From time to time we record a brilliant talk, except for a couple of goofs that can't be erased or edited out. The tip encourages us to record it again in a studio and have a technician add room noises and laughter. This is called "fixing" it.

This tip is the reason I laugh when meeting planners ask me for a video or audio of one of my presentations. I've had a show on Public Radio for 28 years and was on TV for 8 years. The first TV commercial I produced-wrote-directed-and voiced beat 650 entries in 42 categories of advertising to take Best of Show.

So I know how to cut and paste and add extra laughter.

Studio recording a brilliant presentation and adding background noise and audience laughter is "fixing" it?

Is it honest to send meeting planners a sample of our cut and paste ability, even though everyone else is doing it?

I'm humble@humblefarmer.com and I'd like to hear from you.

The New York Times November 2, 2006

The Great Divider The New York Times Editorial

Thursday 02 November 2006

As President Bush throws himself into the final days of a particularly nasty campaign season, he's settled into a familiar pattern of ugly behavior. Since he can't defend the real world created by his policies and his decisions, Mr. Bush is inventing a fantasy world in which to campaign on phony issues against fake enemies.

In Mr. Bush's world, America is making real progress in Iraq. In the real world, as Michael Gordon reported in yesterday's Times, the index that generals use to track developments shows an inexorable slide toward chaos. In Mr. Bush's world, his administration is marching arm in arm with Iraqi officials committed to democracy and to staving off civil war. In the real world, the prime minister of Iraq orders the removal of American checkpoints in Baghdad and abets the sectarian militias that are slicing and dicing their country.

In Mr. Bush's world, there are only two kinds of Americans: those who are against terrorism, and those who somehow are all right with it. Some Americans want to win in Iraq and some don't. There are Americans who support the troops and Americans who don't support the troops. And at the root of it all is the hideously damaging fantasy that there is a gulf between Americans who love their country and those who question his leadership.

Mr. Bush has been pushing these divisive themes all over the nation, offering up the ludicrous notion the other day that if Democrats manage to control even one house of Congress, America will lose and the terrorists will win. But he hit a particularly creepy low when he decided to distort a lame joke lamely delivered by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry warned college students that the punishment for not learning your lessons was to "get stuck in Iraq." In context, it was obviously an attempt to disparage Mr. Bush's intelligence. That's impolitic and impolite, but it's not as bad as Mr. Bush's response. Knowing full well what Mr. Kerry meant, the president and his team cried out that the senator was disparaging the troops. It was a depressing replay of the way the Bush campaign Swift-boated Americans in 2004 into believing that Mr. Kerry, who went to war, was a coward and Mr. Bush, who stayed home, was a hero.

It's not the least bit surprising or objectionable that Mr. Bush would hit the trail hard at this point, trying to salvage his party's control of Congress and, by extension, his last two years in office. And we're not naïve enough to believe that either party has been running a positive campaign that focuses on the issues.

But when candidates for lower office make their opponents out to be friends of Osama bin Laden, or try to turn a minor gaffe into a near felony, that's just depressing. When the president of the United States gleefully bathes in the muck to divide Americans into those who love their country and those who don't, it is destructive to the fabric of the nation he is supposed to be leading.

This is hardly the first time that Mr. Bush has played the politics of fear, anger and division; if he's ever missed a chance to wave the bloody flag of 9/11, we can't think of when. But Mr. Bush's latest outbursts go way beyond that. They leave us wondering whether this president will ever be willing or able to make room for bipartisanship, compromise and statesmanship in the two years he has left in office.

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I'm not wondering nor am I holding my breath.