Radio: Nazi Enemies

Last week for the first time in six months CBS’s short-wave listening post picked up a newscast aired by the celebrated German Freiheitsender—the secret “Freedom Station” the Nazis have repeatedly tried to suppress. Giving no location, announcing simply that his program was “Germany Speaking,” the Freiheitsender commentator, who may have been speaking from Switzerland, mocked Göring on the failure of his second four-year plan, which ended last week, contended Hitler had overrun Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France because ersatz food and gasoline had failed him, declared the only people not weeping in Germany “are the rascals who are now in power.” Winding up its program, the Freiheitsender remarked: “Sometimes we think the Nazis are overdoing it. Even the most peaceful and most calm of us might not stand it much longer.”

A short while before the Freiheitsender cut loose, Radio Paris, which the Nazis permitted the French to operate, was suddenly suppressed. Reason: the broadcast of a comic opera by Reynaldo Hahn which had as its finale the lines: “After the day of storm comes the summer sun. It is love that will give us back our liberty.” Fairly screamed into the mikes of Radio Paris by an enthusiastic chorus, the lines gave the Nazis a nasty turn.