War of Propaganda

The first spring thundercrack of war in Europe--for which the world last week still waited--has been preceded this year as for two years past by bombardments of propaganda. As in other springtimes, the operatives of Dr. Goebbels last week wheedled and hinted into Axis microphones; the hired, the gullible and the loquacious in various countries passed the rumors around. But this spring Japan also entered the preliminaries. This spring, too, 13 strong U.S. transmitters joined Radio Moscow and BBC in the shadowy fight of minds. Some of the high spots of this radio battle:

> The enemy has aimed chiefly at the U.S., more than at Russia, where there are no radios to speak of, or Britain, where Haw-Haw is a joke.

> Radio Tokyo, while informing Japanese at home that America, Australia, Europe and Africa were all originally "parts of Asia," has taken to flirting on short wave to the U.S.: "Japan . . . will be a charming partner to any nation, white or colored, so long as its cause is just. . . ."

> Ever scientific, the German radio has made use of the well-known skip in short waves (they travel in a series of bounces, hundreds of miles long, between the earth and an ionized upper stratum of atmosphere) to make Midwesterners wonder whether they harbored a disloyal station. "Station D-E-B-U-N-K," when picked up around Chicago on the earthward bounce, was heard referring to European stations as "over there" and urging folks to "fight the dictatorship . . . in Washington." FCC triangulations located it in western Europe.

> The Nazis' Iowa-born Fred Kaltenbach, a Berlin standby, referred thrice last week to "The Axis powers or Japan"--a designing slip, part of the elaborately subtle campaign of insinuation that a worried Hitler is open to a deal against his Far Eastern partner.

> The war of nerves took effect on Germany. Hammering away on the Second Front threat implied in the Hopkins-Marshall visit to London (TIME, April 20), U.S. broadcasts were rewarded by what some old hands considered the first case of defensive jitters on the German radio: a great number of uncomfortably defiant replies.

> Against Germany, U.S. broadcasters have begun to take studious aim. CBS, for example, which now beams seven 15-minute periods seven days a week to Germany, has a special staff of European and German experts assembled by Dorothy Thompson--a military analyst, a Protestant thinker, an authority on German-Far Eastern Affairs, a Catholic theologian-- address themselves to definite groups with in the Reich. Miss Thompson gives a weekly talk for her old anti-Nazi friends in Germany. The effectiveness of this work is attested by the fact that at least two broadcasts by Miss Thompson got a rise; out of Goebbels himself.

> U.S. broadcasting strategy (still carried out by private broadcasters cooperating with the Donovan Committee) has thus developed beyond undiscriminating broad sides of news. General policy is still to use "incontrovertible facts plus appeals to the decent instincts of . . . audiences within the Nazi regions."

> Upon "appeals to the decentinstincts" of Germans some critics disagree. Modern Germans in the mass, they say, are only too well aware of the humanitarianism of the Democracies, actually see red when reminded of it. The U.S., these critics think, could afford to give Germans an occasional dose of total silence. Objection to this idea is that listeners in Occupied Europe must get regular news and comfort from U.S. voices. (President Roosevelt's fireside chat last week was perfectly designed to speak in part to these listeners, and it did, over all U.S. beams to Europe.)

> Transmission of U.S. broadcasts to Asia, limited since the Pacific War began, because San Francisco's 50-kw. KGEI was the only station available, this week improves with the opening of KWID, a powerful new 100-kw. station (13th U.S. short-wave transmitter).

> What KWID may be expected to do can be judged by the job that has been done by KGEI (started amid the demonstrations of Pacific peace and brotherhood at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition). With a direct wire to the Donovan Committee on his desk and a censor reading all news tickers in an outer office, KGEI's tireless manager, ex-News man "Buck" Harris, manages twelve hours of broadcasts daily to Asia--in Chinese dialects, Japanese, and seven Filipino dialects besides Tagalog.

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