International broadcasting, in a limited extent, began during World War I, when German and British stations broadcast press communiqués using Morse code. With the severing of Germany's undersea cables, the wireless telegraph station in Nauen was the country's sole means of long-distance communication.
Shortwave listening, or SWLing, is the hobby of listening to shortwave radio broadcasts located on frequencies between 1700 kHz and 30 MHz. Listeners range from casual users seeking international news and entertainment programming, to hobbyists immersed in the technical aspects of radio reception and collecting official confirmations that document their reception of distant broadcasts (DXing). In some developing countries, shortwave listening enables remote communities to obtain regional programming traditionally provided by local medium wave AM broadcasters. In 2002, the number of households that were capable of shortwave listening was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.
Axis Sally was the generic nickname given to women radio personalities who broadcast English-language propaganda on behalf of the European Axis Powers during World War II. These included:
The Volksempfänger was a range of German radio receivers developed by engineer Otto Griessing at the request of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda of the Nazi regime.
World War II was the first conflict to take place in the age of electronically mass distributed music.
Germany Calling was an English language propaganda radio programme, broadcast by Nazi German radio to audiences in the British Isles and North America during the Second World War. Every broadcast began with the station announcement: "Germany calling! Here are the Reichssender Hamburg, station Bremen". Today, it is best known for its employment of several radio presenters jointly known as Lord Haw-Haw — most notably, William Joyce, who was German radio's most prominent English language speaker and to whom the name gradually came to be exclusively applied.
An overview of the evolution of Jazz music in Germany reveals that the development of jazz in Germany and its public notice differ from the "motherland" of jazz, the US, in several respects.
Karl Emil Heinrich Schwedler, also known as Charlie Schwedler was a singer and leader of the Nazi propaganda jazz band Charlie and His Orchestra during World War II. He was born in Duisburg, Germany.
The German Dance and Entertainment Orchestra was a musical ensemble formed in 1942 by musicians Franz Grothe and Georg Haentzschel on the initiative of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. It was an attempt to create an acceptable alternative to jazz, which was a popular genre among Germans but was considered a form of degenerate music by the Nazis due to its racial associations. The self-styled "rhythmic dance music" produced by the German Dance and Entertainment Orchestra was intended especially to satisfy the musical desires of military personnel, thus preventing them from listening to British radio broadcasts which also contained anti-Nazi propaganda material. Walter Dobschinski worked with the ensemble.
Willy Berking was a German orchestra conductor, trombonist and composer.
Negermusik was a derogatory term used by the Nazi Party during the Third Reich to demonize musical styles that had been invented by black people such as swing and jazz. The Nazi Party viewed these musical styles as degenerate works created by an "inferior" race and were therefore prohibited. The term, at that same time, was also applied to indigenous music styles of black Africans.
Helene Sensburg (born 1914, by Canadian and other Allied troops nicknamed Mary of Arnhem was a radio propagandist in the German-occupied Netherlands noteworthy for making Nazi broadcasts primarily aimed at Canadian and American soldiers stalled south of the Rhine in the final year of World War II. Born in Germany, she worked for an oil company in England for ten years and returned when WWII broke out in 1939. Speaking excellent English, she found a job with the Deutscher Rundfunk. In October 1944 she was transferred to the German military propaganda section, which operated a propaganda program identified as "Radio Arnhem," but in fact broadcast from Hilversum, The Netherlands. Sensburg's husband was a German war captain who was captured by Russian troops. Created a radio star by Nazi-German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, as a successor to Lilli Marlene, and endowed with a "silvery voice," she provided disinformation and tried to lure soldiers away from the fights. As noted in a British newspaper in late 1944: "When the BBC broadcasts its news bulletin the Arnhem station swings into its news in English without advising its listeners that they were getting the Nazi product." Her radio propaganda stand-in was Gerda Markov, who had lived in the United States.
Music in Nazi Germany, like all cultural activities in the regime, was controlled and "co-ordinated" (Gleichschaltung) by various entities of the state and the Nazi Party, with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and the prominent Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg playing leading – and competing – roles. The primary concerns of these organizations was to exclude Jewish composers and musicians from publishing and performing music, and to prevent the public exhibition of music considered to be "Jewish", "anti-German", or otherwise "degenerate", while at the same time promoting the work of favored "Germanic" composers, such as Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner. These works were believed to be positive contributions to the Volksgemeinschaft, or German folk community.
Fritz "Freddie" Brocksieper was a German jazz-musician, drummer, and bandleader.
Ludwig "Lutz" Templin was a German jazz bandleader.
Radio propaganda is propaganda aimed at influencing attitudes towards a certain cause or position, delivered through radio broadcast. The power of radio propaganda came from its revolutionary nature. The radio, like later technological advances in the media, allowed information to be transmitted quickly and uniformly to vast populations. Internationally, the radio was an early and powerful recruiting tool for propaganda campaigns.
Lord Haw-Haw was a nickname applied to William Joyce, who broadcast Nazi propaganda to the UK from Germany during the Second World War. The broadcasts opened with "Germany calling, Germany calling", spoken in an affected upper-class English accent.
Kamil Běhounek was a Bohemian accordionist who played jazz and popular music. He also worked as a bandleader, arranger, composer, and film scorer. He also occasionally played tenor saxophone.
Schwedler is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Dick Abraham Willebrandts was a Dutch pianist, composer and bandleader in the swing era.
