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Show German Radio Takes f' New Tone Under U. S. L j News, Education and Swing Replace Old L,, I I Nazi Line; English Grammar Lessons f kj Prove Popular Among Listeners. T By BAUKIIAGE News Analyst and Commentator, VVNU Service, lGlf! Eye Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. Gradually the net is closing In about the "ether traitors," American citizens who broadcast In English from Berlin and elsewhere for the Nazis before and during the war. Recently the (In)famous "Axis Sally" was taken Into custody. She devoted her air time to making G.I.s feel homesick overseas by dwelling on the joys and comforts back In the good old U. S. A. Another traitor is "Kal-tenbach," "Kal-tenbach," an ex-Iowa boy who tried to awake nostalgia with corny realism real-ism about life down on the farm. Then there is Constance Drexel, who pretended to be a cultured member of the old Philadelphia family whose name she used as a pseudonym when she worked on American newspapers. She was really born In Germany and brought here by her father who became naturalized. nat-uralized. She was known here as pro-Hitler before the war. She made one broadcast for an American network net-work when I was in Berlin but I helped to make it her last. It is hard to prove treason. You have to have witnesses who actually saw the person In the act of broadcasting. broad-casting. When the Americans took over German radio our methods were far different. We used a proved weapon the truth. U. S. Controls Air Facilities When active military operations changed over to occupation, the Information In-formation Control division laid down a three-point program. The plan was negative at first the wiping wip-ing out of all Nazi media, Including radio, to make way for American media. Next came actual broadcasting. broadcast-ing. The early broadcasts were very stark and stern. Decrees, regulations, warnings to the people. No concerts, no plays, no music. Now we are in phase two and the Germans are rinding rind-ing more variety along the radio dial. Entertainment, as well as news and education, is being provided by the ICD. The third phase will begin when German radio stations are turned over to the Germans themselves, much as the newspapers have been allowed to operate under German direction under license. A military government official examines and criticizes the newspaper after it appears. ap-pears. Presumably, radio programs will be supervised in roughly the same manner. The first station to be taken over by the Americans was Radio Luxembourg. Lux-embourg. It was in pretty good shape, for the Germans had left in too much of a hurry to do any big-scale big-scale demolition. Next station to go to work for the army was Frankfurt; then Stuttgart; Stutt-gart; then Munich. When I was in Germany, because of trouble with land lines, the Munich-Stuttgart- Frankfurt network was not running regularly. Perhaps it is now. Radio is supported in Germany Ger-many as it was before the war, by a tax on each set. Why, I asked, couldn't a radio owner conceal his set and thus get out of paying the tax? I was told there was no danger of that. If anyone concealed the fact he had a radio, his jealous neighbors neigh-bors would tell oh him. The Nazi squealing habit Is still strong in Germany. All programs at present are in the German language, except for a few in Polish for displaced persons In camps. There is a large proportion propor-tion of factual world news broadcast broad-cast and an increasing number of German musical programs. On the educational side, there are talks by German officials, and American military government men. Some jazz and swing, and lately, plays. The program periods have been running as long as 45 minutes min-utes which seems a long time for American radio fans and now they are being extended to one hour. Poll Reaction Of Audience At first it wasn't easy to find out whether Germans liked what they were getting on the ICD schedule of broadcasts. Fan letters, the barometers barom-eters of approval and disapproval in America, were banned up until December of last year. However, reactions are coming in now, as the ICD conducts many secret radio polls employing the methods of polltakers in this country. The surveys sur-veys which I saw indicated that, on the whole, the programs are popular pop-ular with the Germans with certain cer-tain reservations. Take factual world news, for example. Germans are anxious to hear this, but they don't always al-ways understand it. For 12 years they have been taught to be suspicious of all news. And yet, In spite of this skepticism, they are so saturated with the propaganda idea that in some cases they don't like facts. This came out in a conference with teenagers who said they preferred pre-ferred the Russian broadcasts to ours. Asked why, they said there was too much propaganda in ours. I went over this answer with one of the psychological experts. He explained it this way: straight news without comment forces the listener listen-er to think for himself. This disturbs dis-turbs the German teenager, and he blames the program, calling it "propaganda." English grammar lessons far outrun out-run American music as radio favorites favor-ites in Germany. All Germans want to learn English. This desire seems to stem from the long-range hope that some day America's gates will be open, and from the opportunistic feeling that the conquered can get along better with the conqueror if they're both talking the same language. lan-guage. Zionists Wary Of Russians For years, contending European nations have battled for the friendship friend-ship and support of the Arabs. This struggle was intensified when, long before World War I, the Germans started their "drang nach Osten" and the British heightened their efforts ef-forts to placate the Arabs in order to protect their empire's life-lines and to prevent a spread of a disaffection dis-affection to the Moslems of India. Now Russia steps Into the picture. pic-ture. Reports from Baghdad tell us of the spread of communistic commu-nistic sympathies throughout the Middle East. And the Jews of Palestine find their troubles increasing. The announcement of Britain's granting of independence to Trans-Jordania Trans-Jordania heightened Zionist resentment, resent-ment, for Trans-Jordania is a part of Greater Palestine and was supposed sup-posed to be included in the territory allotted to the National Jewish home. The Zionists claim the British action ac-tion is part of a scheme to prevent the United Nations from creating . a trusteeship of Greater Palestine which would include Trans-Jordania, as the old League of Nations mandate man-date did. They also make the charge, that the purpose is "to thwart Jewish rights by bolstering pro-Axis forces." The Zionists feel too that Russia is playing a similar game. They point out the inconsistency of making mak-ing friends with the Arabs, whose party leader in Palestine, Jamal Husseini, is calling for the reinstatement reinstate-ment of the Grand Mufti, a Hitler collaborator. In his testimony before the British-American inquiry committee Husseini said: "Germany was not our enemy and therefore we had no interest in the war," adding: "I've read somewhere that it was a Jewish war." The Zionists believe they have discovered dis-covered an additional reason for Russian animosity toward their efforts in Palestine. Like most of the causes of racial and other ructions, ruc-tions, it is fear. They say that the Soviets are afraid that if the Palestine Pales-tine colony becomes a success it will prove an entering wedge for western capitalism in the Near East. There is really nothing in common between the feudalist, un-progressive un-progressive Arab world and the economic eco-nomic and social principles represented repre-sented by the Soviet system. The Arabs can't do the Soviets any harm but they could be used, the Zionists say, to hamstring what might become be-come a live and up-and-coming Jewish nation imbued with capitalistic capital-istic ideas, operating too close for communistic comfort. |