"Free Germany" station

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The transmitter "Free Germany" was a German-Soviet propaganda station of the National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD) consisting of the 1943-1945 Soviet radio programs for front-line soldiers of the Wehrmacht radiated and the civilian population in Germany.

Creation of the station "Free Germany"

The "Free Germany" station went into operation on July 20, 1943, a few days after the National Committee for Free Germany (NKFD) was founded. The addressees were both the German soldiers at the front and the German civilian population. It was broadcast on short wave , an evening program was also broadcast on medium wave . The transmitter answered with the identifier: "Attention, attention! This is the broadcaster of the National Committee Free Germany! We speak on behalf of the German people! We call to the rescue of the empire! "

Editor of the station

Editor-in-chief of the station “Free Germany” was the emigrated KPD politician Anton Ackermann . The editorial team also included Hans Mahle (functionary of the Communist Youth Association of Germany), the actor Gustav von Wangenheim and the Wehrmacht members Herbert Stößlein , Matthäus Klein and Leopold Achilles . From January 1944 Fritz Erpenbeck , Max Keilson , Luitpold Steidle and Ernst Hadermann also belonged to the extended editorial team.

Program of the station

Initially, three programs with a total duration of one hour were broadcast daily, four times a day from October 1943, six times a day from January 1944 and eight times a day from July 1944. Individual broadcast times were available from 15 to 80 minutes at the beginning. 20 to 50 percent of the broadcasts consisted of military situation reports, comments, sermons, cultural contributions and operational instructions as well as the "home service". Most of the station's contributions came from the military members of the National Committee Free Germany. The station stopped working in September 1945.

"Home Service" section

Under the heading “Heimatdienst”, greetings from German soldiers from Soviet captivity were regularly sent to their families and friends, but also reports on everyday life, accommodation and meals in the POW camps. Some of the greetings were read out by radio broadcasters and some were spoken on record by the prisoners of war themselves. The station's editors drove transportable recording equipment for records to prisoner-of-war camps in order to record personal greetings from prisoners-of-war soldiers for their relatives for the station's “home service”. The addresses of the relatives were also given. The listeners in Germany were always asked to pass on the soldiers' greetings to the families concerned. The greetings from the prisoners of war were loosened up by the broadcast of light music. The success of the "Heimatdienst" format within the German civilian population also resulted from the Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' decree considerably restricting contacts between soldiers prisoner of war in the Soviet Union and their relatives in Germany; The families' uncertainty about their fate was correspondingly high. In December 1942 Goebbels had declared the post of German prisoners of war from the Soviet Union to be a possible “gateway for Bolshevik propaganda in Germany” and ordered that the cards “will no longer be delivered to relatives”. As a result, eavesdropping on the "Heimatdienst" was often the only way to find out about the fate of a German soldier missing in the Soviet Union.

The “Heimatdienst” format obviously achieved its objective and the addressees in Germany. After the programs of the "Heimatdienst", numerous listeners in Germany wrote to the families named in the programs. For example, a letter from an unknown sender to the wife of a Wehrmacht soldier has come down to us, in which it says: “Your lb. Man has [!] Many greetings ordered through the broadcaster 'Free Germany'. He is safe and sound in Russian captivity. ”In a report from the Gestapo branch in Gera from September 15, 1943, it says on the type and extent of the reactions to the greetings from the prisoners of war by radio broadcast,“ that since the fighting for Stalingrad - January 1943 - the German population, namely those parts that have relatives in the Wehrmacht and who (namely the soldiers) have been reported missing, are inundated by anonymous letters in which the anonymous writers say that they learned about the broadcast of a radio station from abroad that the German soldiers are in Soviet captivity and are being treated well there ”.

Christian broadcasts section

Christian devotions and morning celebrations carried out by Catholic and Protestant Wehrmacht chaplains who were prisoners of war were regularly broadcast on the “Free Germany” station. There are e.g. B. the morning services of Pastor Mathias Klein from Göttingen, the Protestant Wehrmacht Pastor Schröder from Neumünster (also a member of the National Committee), the Franciscan Father Wothkow from Breslau, the Catholic Wehrmacht Pastor Josef Kaiser (also a member of the National Committee), war pastor Dr. Alois Ludwig from Wuss / Saar (chaplain of the parish of St. Marien in Neunkirch / Saar), the Catholic Wehrmacht priest Peter Mohr from Boppard. The programs argued against the Hitler dictatorship based on Christian ethics and called for an end to the war and Nazi rule .

Classification as "enemy transmitter"

The station "Free Germany" was considered a so-called enemy station. Listening to and disseminating the messages heard has been punishable in Germany since the “ Ordinance on Extraordinary Broadcasting Measures ” of September 1, 1939, and could also result in the death penalty. Violations were prosecuted by the Gestapo and the special courts . The so-called “broadcast crimes” were usually judged in unity with “ high treason ” or “preparation for high treason”, “ decomposition of military strength ” and “ favoring the enemy ”. The People's Court also sentenced the family of German prisoners of war to death sentences against those who brought the overheard signs of life of the prisoners of war for eavesdropping on and disseminating messages from the “Heimatdienst” of the broadcaster “Free Germany”. The reception of the broadcasts was actively disrupted by German authorities and listened to and recorded in writing by the “ Special Seehaus Service ” of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Berlin-Wannsee .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerald Diesener: The propaganda work of the movement "Free Germany" in the Soviet Union 1943-1945. Leipzig 1988, p. 14.
  2. ↑ Special Service Seehaus. Vol. 8, Various radio stations 1943–1945, Federal Archives archive signature R 55/24842.
  3. ↑ Dominik Clemens: 'Germany must live, therefore Hitler must fall' - The radio station of the National Committee 'Free Germany' - an overview. P. 5.
  4. ↑ Broadcasting and History - Communications from the Study Group Broadcasting and History Information from the German Broadcasting Archive. Vol. 23, No. 2, I 3 - April, I July 1997, p. 128.
  5. ↑ Ralf Georg Reuth (Ed.): Joseph Goebbels Diaries 1924–1945. Vol. 4: 1940-1942, Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-492-04115-7 , p. 1849.
  6. ↑ Correspondence to German family members about sons and spouses in Soviet captivity, 1943, Federal Archives Archive number R 58/4185.
  7. ^ Ministry for National Defense (ed.): They fought for Germany. On the history of the struggle of the "Free Germany" movement on the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Soviet Army. Berlin 1959, p. 645.
  8. ↑ Bundesarchiv archive signature R 3018/1066, Vol. 2, Bl. 15.
  9. ^ Evidence in the Federal Archives, radio tapping reports from hostile transmitters 1943–1945, archive signature R 55/24842.
  10. ^ Judgment of the People's Court of June 2, 1944, Az .: 11 J 17/44, Federal Archives archive signature R 3018/1066.