Underwater Underground: The Way It Was, 5 February

1943--- A key entry in the Allied propaganda campaign against the Nazis, Deutsche Kurzwellensender Atlantik (German Short-Wave Radio Atlantic), organised by Sefton Delmer and shortening its name in due course to Atlantiksender, makes its first broadcast. Regular broadcasts will begin a month later, with its targets the infamous German U-boats---where commanders and radio operators seem to have had greater latitude in choosing what allow piped in than did regular German radio people on land under Hitler and Goebbels, according to military historian Robert Rowen.

Winston Churchill was very keen that the U-boats (German submarines) should receive a radio service like this. He felt that because the submarines were cut off from Germany the men on board were more likely to believe what was broadcast, if it sounded genuine. To help the show sound really German the band of the British Royal Marines recorded real German military music. They even invented a sailor's sweetheart called Vicky. The show spread rumours that German prisoners of war were earning large wages working in America . This was to make the Germans feel that there might be advantages to being captured or surrendering. The German Authorities soon realised this station was British propaganda but could do nothing to stop it or to stop their sailors from listening to it.

. . . The star announcer of Atlantiksender was Vicky, the 'sailor's sweetheart' who sent birthday greetings to her 'dear boys in blue', congratulated them on the birth of a son or daughter, and discussed the problems of their
wives and families. From the sweetness of her voice, nobody could suspect that Vicky had in fact lost half of her family in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

---Sefton Delmer, as acknowledged by Robert Rowen.

According to Rowen, Atlantikseder's advantages are a one-time U-boat radio operator on staff "who wrote many of his own scripts and gave his former comrades at sea inside dope including tips on how to delay sailings or operations"; music uninhibited by Nazi ideological demands, including jazz and banned musical stage and film star Marlene Dietrich; "[a] working German News Service teletype, left behind in London in 1939, so that tuning into this not-hard-to-find station got you the most up-to-date news & information right from Berlin---so no one could object; and, "multiple short-wave transmitters, including a mobile one so that the Germans would continually get different fixes on the source.

Atlantiksender also had one intractable advantage: its mastermind himself, the German-born son of an Australian professor of English who taught at Berlin University. Delmer himself had begun his education in German schools before World War I, and his family relocated to England in 1917.

Later after a degree at Oxford he retuned to Berlin to become Berlin correspondent for the Daily Express. It was in this capacity as a newsman, he first met Ernst Roehm, head of the Nazi storm troopers. Through his connection with Roehm he became personally acquainted with Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Göering, and the other members of the Nazi elite.

In 1940, at the outset of the war, Sefton Delmer decided the time had come for him no longer report the war but to take an active part. At seventeen stone he realised he would be of no use to the fighting forces so, he approached the two friends he knew to have something to do with the secret intelligence world, Ian Fleming and Leonard Ingrams. The British security services were very wary of him; indeed they considered him a possible Nazi Agent. His acquaintance with the Nazis was held not to be a qualification but was held against him.

During the time he was awaiting security clearance and at the request of Duff Cooper, he gave a number of talks over the BBC to Germany. One notable broadcast in which he replied to Hitlers final peace offer telling Hitler that we here in Britain hurl it his back at him into his evil smelling teeth, caused eruptions in both Germany, and the House of Commons.

---From SeftonDelmer.co.uk.

The man who first approached Delmer with the idea of creating what became Atlantiksender was the personal assistant to British Navy intelligence official Admiral John Henry Godfrey: future James Bond creator/author Ian Fleming.

AIRWAVES

1916: MULTIPLE TUNES---Ernst Alexanderson conducts a successful test of a multiple-tuned antenna. In due course (1924, to be precise) he transmits the first known successful facsimile message (that's fax to you and I, folks) across the Atlantic.

1940: THE HONEYMOON BEGINS---Amanda of Honeymoon Hill, a Hummert-created soap opera starring Joy Hathaway as Charity Amanda Dyke Leighton---premieres on NBC's Blue Network.

The story of love and marriage in America's romantic South. The story of Amanda and Edward Leighton. Amanda of Honeymoon Hill . . . laid in a world few Americans know.

---From the show's introduction.

The cast includes John Brown (as Mr. Lenord), who will become far more familiar as the friendly undertaker, Digger O'Dell (as in, "Well, I guess I'll be shoveling off now") on NBC's The Life of Riley, before appearing regularly as the shifty boyfriend of airheaded Irma Peterson in CBS's My Friend Irma beginning in 1947.

1977: ONE MORE TIME?---The General Mills Adventure Theater, one of several attempts to resurrect the feeling, if not the original repertoire, of classic radio, premieres on CBS Radio. CBS has tried other such attempts, the best-known and perhaps best-executed of which was CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

1945: LOVE IN DEATH---A police detective (Dana Andrews) falls in love on the job . . . with the murdered advertising mover (Gene Tierney) whose killing he's trying to solve, through probing her diaries and letters, in the radio adaptation of film hit (and Oscar winner, for cinematography) Laura, tonight's installment of Lux Radio Theater. (CBS.) Guest host: Lionel Barrymore. Co-star: Vincent Price.

1948: A NEW MINK COAT---Guess who wants one, at the February clearance sale, and guess the havoc potential, with tonight's edition of Maxwell House Coffee Time with George Burns and Gracie Allen. (NBC.) Co-stars: Hans Conreid, Gale Gordon, Elliott Lewis, Verna Felton. Music: Meredith Willson. Announcer: Bill Goodwin.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1898---Sidney Fields (writer/comedian, The Abbott & Costello Show), unknown.
1906---John Carradine (actor: Lux Radio Theater), New York City.
1911---Bert Wilson (play-by-play announcer, Chicago Cubs), unknown.
1918---Tim Holt (actor: Lux Radio Theater), Beverly Hills.
1919---Red Buttons (as Aaron Chwatt; comedian/actor: Guest Star), New York City.