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World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF EUROPE: Goebbels’ Luftwaffe

1 minute read
TIME

Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda Luftwaffe (not to be confused with fat Hermann Göring’s bleached-out command) was doing radio and paper prodigies. On Jan. 22, the German propaganda machine hollowly assured Germans, the Luftwaffe attacked London in waves; on Jan. 30 it caused “great fires and explosions”; on Feb. 2 no less than 900 planes dropped 1,000 tons of bombs on Britain’s capital.

Londoners, who have seen a few “scalded cat”* raids on their city recently, heard all this with gratification. If Germany felt it necessary to fool its people so outrageously, things beyond the Rhine must be in a bad way indeed.

* “Scalded cats”: Air Secretary Sir Archibald Sinclair’s name for Nazi hit-&-run nuisance raiders over London.

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