Nazi Radio in the 1930s
Nazi Radio in the 1930s
A German prayer from the 1930s
+++
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.
+++
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
A German prayer from the 1930s
+++
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.
+++
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
posted by The humble Farmer at 1:23 PM
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