Fabio Ruini’s blog

The flame is being carried over several countries and even across Everest to reach Beijing in time for next year’s Games there. Amid the imagery of global sporting unity, few may care to recall that this Olympic tradition is in fact a Nazi invention, one of Adolf Hitler’s most grotesque propaganda triumphs in the light of what followed the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

The organiser of those Games, Carl Diem, wanted an event linking the modern Olympics to the ancient, so devised a torch relay from the original Olympic site in Greece to Berlin. The idea was adopted with enthusiasm by the Nazi leadership, which portrayed classical Greece as an Aryan forerunner of its modern German Reich. And the event blended perfectly Nazi perversion of history with publicity for contemporary German skills. The first torch was lit by the sun in the Temple of Zeus in Greece with the help of mirrors made by the German company Zeiss. Steel-clad magnesium torches to carry the flame were produced by the Ruhr-based industrial giant Krupp. The relay was filmed and given international radio coverage.

When the flame arrived in Berlin, Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels staged a ceremony in the city before the Games began. The blue-eyed Siegfried Eifrig ran with the torch through thousands of Hitler Youth members flanked by huge swastika flags. He then lit a fire on an altar – typical of the pseudo-religious symbolism that Nazism relished.

I visited Eifrig, now in his late nineties, in the Berlin flat where he still proudly display his torch. He described how nationalist feeling in Germany was especially strong during the Olympics, reinforcing a sense of renewal after the early 1930s Slump. Life for him later was very different: in his photo album pictures of his starring role in 1936 are followed by images of his time as a soldier during the invasion of France in 1940. Eventually he became a british POW. It is knowledge of what followed that makes the 1936 relay so poignant now.

“Sporting chivalrous contest”, Hitler declared just before the torch was lit, “helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire”. Yet the flame’s arrival in Vienna prompted major pro-Nazi demonstrations, helping pave the way for the Anschluss in 1938. In Hungary gipsy musicians who serenaded the flame were later deported to Nazi death camps. Other countries on the relay route like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia would soon be invaded by Germans equipped not with Krupp torches but with Krupp munitions.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I’m writing this letter because I would like to apply for the PhD Studentship in Multi-Agent Modelling of Search and Rescue Behaviour, offered by the Centre for Interactive Intelligent Systems of the University of Plymouth.

I always been interested in all the issues related to computing and new technologies. And, like many other people, I’ve always been fascinated by the artificial intelligence field. Particularly because I can see the actual limitations of the technologies we currently use. Technologies capable to performs an incredible number of tasks, but frequently too much difficult to understand (and then to use) for non-expert people. In my opinion, a machine capable to perform in an “intelligent” way would be a machine easier to use, if we think in terms of human-machine interaction, with respect to the artifacts we’re used to interact with during our daily life, and also more efficient, due to the different philosophy on which it is based. This is why I believe we need to build “intelligent” machines: in order to achieve more from the technology we currently use, i.e. to extend the applicability’s range of the technologies surrounding us. And, important as well, I also believe that to realize a better understanding of the human intelligence become possible when we are able to recreate it inside a human-made (both physical or just virtual) artifact.

Apart from my general passion for the artificial intelligence field, my interest in Artificial Life and social modelling, more specifically, has born few years ago. Since its experimental character, the degree course I had in Italy – even though belonging to the economics field – has given me a strong background in the sciences of complexity, as well as it has really enforced my skills in computer sciences. The complexity-related topics studied made me discover the agent-based simulation’s world, which immediately captured my attention. Then, mixing the required classes with a lot of independently found readings, I started my journey into the neural networks and evolutionary computation’s world.

I absolutely agree with the point of view that an intelligent machine can only be built “starting from the bottom”. In fact, given its intrinsically difficult, I believe that the problem of building truly intelligent machines cannot be successfully tackled through the more widespread top-down approach. Every time we try to recreate a typical human behavior into an artificial artifact, we immediately notice the incredible complexity related to this task. The typical top-down approach requires, for some extents, a “superior knowledge” to be successfully carried on. But this superior knowledge, for matters related to “intelligence”, isn’t still available today. The “strong AI”’s supporters try to compensate for this problem, mainly using methodologies typical of the engineering science. What appears obvious, to me at least, is that an animal brain doesn’t works solving complicated systems of differential equations. When an animal makes a movement, surely it isn’t thinking to some strange geometrical configuration of its legs. The brain, simply, works in a very different way. So, the top-down approach can surely produce some interesting results, particularly from a “practical” point of view, but its potential is strictly limited.

A different kind of approach in building intelligent machines is needed. And the right approach, in my opinion, is the one typical of Artificial Life, which exploits the biological plausibility of neural networks, mixing it with the Darwinian metaphor of evolution. In fact, we don’t need to create something absolutely “new”. The nature already provides us with all the necessary insights. Our task, as scientists, is simply to carefully observe the nature’s products in order to identify the basic components of their behavior. Then, recreating these basic conditions in a simulation, we can be able to make the “complicated and intelligent behavior” evolve.

I can offer a relevant experience in this research field – the same as the Bursary I’m applying for – as I’m currently involved in a similar project with Professor Angelo Cangelosi. The work we’re carrying on aims to develop a neural network-based controller system for swarms of Micro-UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), providing them with the ability of autonomously navigate through a typical urban environment.

More in details, I’m developing a computer simulation (using C++ language as “engine” and the Qt framework for the graphical interface) that takes place into a two-dimensional scenario. The image that follows is a screenshot taken from the simulation.

[Hello, I'm a the attached screenshot... trust me!]

Swarms formed by four MAVs, each one of them starting from a different position, first of all have to learn how to move along the environment, developing obstacle-avoiding capability (the obstacles are constituted by walls, buildings, etc.). Then, the MAVs have to learn how to coordinate their behavior in order to simultaneously hit a particular target, placed somewhere in the simulated scenario, eventually exploiting the capability to use a self-developed language.

Each MAV’s controller system is represented by a feed-forward neural networks, that perceive sensorial information from the environment and in turn produce, as output, a certain behavior. At any moment, each MAV is aware of its position into the environment (perceived as its geographical coordinates), as well as the position of its teammates and of the target. The drones are also equipped with an ultrasonic sensor, which inform they about the distance from the nearest obstacles they’re facing, and a heat sensor, which inform they when the target is in the nearness. Again, MAVs have a given flight autonomy and they’re always informed about that, in order to trigger their speed (i.e., the fuel consumption) in the most appropriate way. The learning process is implemented through a genetic algorithm.

At last, I’d like to spend few more words about another work I carried out before to come here in Plymouth. In October 2006, when I was starting my degree thesis, I joined the LARAL (Laboratory of Autonomous Robotics and Artificial Life), at the ISTC-CNR in Rome, working with Professor Domenico Parisi. The work we carried out is focused on the role of “motivation” in the context of Artificial Life’s simulation. Our preliminary consideration was that, until now, in most of the scientific papers published in this field, no much attention has been paid in the interactions between the two kinds of levels in which behavior takes place: the “strategic level” (i.e., what to do in a given moment) and the “tactical level” (i.e., how to physically implement the chosen behavior). In fact, the typical Artificial Life’s simulation focus exclusively on the tactical level of behavior, following a metaphor that we could resume as: “one robot – one goal”.

In the simulation’s scenario we created, an organism usually lives simply looking for food, since the chosen fitness formulae provides a reproductive advantage to the organisms that eat more. Sometimes in the environment appears a predator, for which the only goal is to reach the organism. A capture provoke a great “fitness damage” to the organism, so when the predator is present the organism needs to ignore the sensorial perception related to food and to concentrate all of its cognitive resources in the escaping task.

We have obtained many interest results from our work. For example, analyzing the activation patterns of the neural networks’ hidden layers, we have been able to define a quantitative measure of “attention”, noticing that, the more a predator is near to the organism, the less the organisms pays attention to the food. A result expected, of course, but never studied in details before.

At now, an abstract of our work, entitled “Living in an environment containing both food and predators”, has been recently submitted to the referrers of WIVACE (4° Italian Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation) and will be hopefully presented at that workshop, which will takes place during the month of August. We’re currently writing a full paper too, in order to submit it to an international journal soon.

I conclude this letter underlining that I believe that the interdisciplinary nature of my studies could be very usefully exploited to do research in this field, allowing me to be not a merely computer programmer, but also giving me the opportunity for providing a little, but hopefully significant, contribution to this research field. I’ll be gratefully if you will give me the chance to pursuing this goal here in Plymouth.

Yours faithfully,

During World War Two, Hitler’s Germany was the victim of what can only be described as a massive broadcasting confidence trick. Subtle anti-Nazi broadcasts were put on the air, conveying the impression that they originated from inside Germany or its occupied territory. These broadcasts were, in fact, made by secret radio stations in Great Britain run by a branch of the British intelligence services known as the Political Warfare Executive. Head of the operations was a Fleet Street journalist named Sefton Delmer, former Berlin correspondent for the “Daily Express” newspaper who had been born in Berlin where his father, an Australian, was a university professor of English. The transmitter that played a leading role in this warfare of the airwaves – “Aspidistra” – is the subject of this story.

In the spring of 1941, which is when our story begins, a British intelligence division known as Special Operations 1 (S01) worked out a scheme for broadcasting on enemy wavelengths with great power and diversity. This scheme was conceived as a more viable alternative to the direct jamming of enemy broadcasts, which was initially considered but eventually rejected as counter-productive, given that the enemy had more transmitters at -is disposal (for instance, in all his occupied territories) and would undoubtedly use these to win a ‘jamming war’. The alternative and more original S01 scheme looked like becoming a reality in ‘Say 1941 when the Political Warfare executive (the successor of SO1, formed by the merger of the latter with another intelligence branch) learned of the existence of a giant 500kW Medium Wave transmitter which had been constructed by the Radio Corporation of America (R.C.A.) for sale to the commercial station WJZ, Bound Brook, New Jersey, U.S.A. However, since the body in the U.S.A. responsible for the regulation and licensing of radio stations there, the Federal Communications Commission, had imposed a power limit of 50kW on all U.S. transmitters operating in the Medium Wave band, this transmitter remained ‘in mothballs’ at the R.C.A. factory in Camden, New Jersey. The Chinese Government had the first option to purchase the transmitter, but its interest appeared to be lapsing. The PWE therefore decided that this transmitter would be the ideal ‘big gun’ in a radio propaganda battle, and a scheme involving its purchase was put Before the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the Minister of Economic Warfare, Anthony Eden. The scheme received Churchill’s approval the day after it was submitted to him, and at the order of the Ministry of Economic Warfare the transmitter was purchased in May 1941 at a cost of £112,000. A budget of £165,000 was allocated for the whole scheme, including the provision and preparation of a site for the transmitter – which was given the code name “Aspidistra”, being named after the popular song by Gracie Fields “The Biggest Aspidistra In The World” because it was, at the time, the most powerful broadcast transmitter in the world.

A few weeks after the purchase, radio technician Harold Robin was sent to the R.C.A. factory in the U.S.A. to spend two months there, familiarizing himself with the technical specification of “Aspidistra” and arranging for its power to be increased from 500kW to 60OkW. In October 1941 the site where the transmitter would eventually be installed was chosen – it was a 7O acre site in Ashdown Forest, near Crowborough, Sussex. Another site – at Wavendon, near Woburn, Bedfordshire, had originally been chosen and indeed some work had already commenced there, but this site had to be abandoned following complaints by the Air Ministry who objected to tall masts being sited at such a location. At this stage the BBC, who hitherto had no knowledge of “Aspidistra” and were not consulted in any way about the project, got to hear of it and began raising objections. The BBC contended that the proposed use of “Aspidistra” would amount to jamming of enemy broadcasts and invite retaliatory enemy jamming of BBC broadcasts to Europe or even in the Home Services. However, after much discussion and debate, a compromise was reached in May 1942 whereby the BBC could use “aspidistra’ to reinforce its European Service coverage whenever the transmitter was not required for special operations.

Part 2

In the summer of 1942 work proceeded on the “Aspidistra” site at Crowborough, with excavations being carried out by a road-building unit of the Canadian Army who completed their work within six weeks (reputedly living on a diet of beer during that time!) The huge excavations were for the subterranean building to house the transmitter and power generator. The building contained two levels and its lower floor was 50 feet below ground. 600 men worked around the clock to complete this building and install its equipment. The site was then surfaced over and fast growing trees planted on top. The three masts, each 300 feet high, which supported the aerials were completed in October 1942. Land lines were laid from the transmitter to the BBC, the PWE and the Air Ministry in London, from where all control, including the necessary changes of frequency, could be carried out. Churchill had taken a keen interest in the installation work and sent regular memos asking for progress; a reply to his memo of 23rd September indicated that the transmitter would be fully operational on 13th October 1942.

“Aspidistra” was first used operationally on 8th November 1942, in conjunction with “Operation Torch” (the Anglo-American landings in the North African territories controlled by the Vichy French government). For most of the time it relayed the BBC French Service, which on that day and the following two days was on the air for a continuous 48-hour period. However, for two fifteen minute periods it did transmit counterfeit broadcasts on the frequency of Radio Rabat in Morocco, the official station of Vichy France in North Africa, containing pre-recorded speeches by President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower. Following this, Vichy Radio in France warned its listeners that the so-called official broadcasts from Rabat were from a counterfeit enemy station. But, more significantly, the British Admiralty – who were monitoring the broadcasts – believed immediately on hearing them that Rabat had already been captured by the Americans. Thus one of the dangers of covert operations of this type was already demonstrated – that of misleading one’s own side. However, no lasting repercussions arose from this, for within about 48 hours of the landings, all resistance ceased and Morocco and Algeria were in allied hands.

An important date on the radio propaganda battle was 30th January 1943, for it marked two important strikes for the Allied side. First “Aspidistra” entered regular service with the BBC, broadcasting one of their European Services (the Blue network, mainly in German and French) for 21 hours each day, on a frequency of 804 kHz. Second, it was also on that day that Hitler was due to make a speech commemorating the tenth anniversary of Nazi power in Germany. As a demonstration of Allied power, it had already been decided to bomb Berlin at the same time in the hope that the broadcast could be interrupted or curtailed. As it happened, Goebbels replaced Hitler as the main speaker at the anniversary event, but the R.A.F. carried out the raid as planned. The speech went off the air as the broadcast was completely disrupted by the muffled sounds of shouts and explosions in the background!

Throughout 1943, “Aspidistra” continued to relay the BBC European Service but early in that year it could no longer claim to be the ‘biggest Aspidistra in the world’. For, on 12th February 1943, the BBC brought into service a high-power Long Wave station on the east coast of England, situated at the village of Ottringham on the north bank of the Humber Estuary. The station consisted of 4 x 200kW transmitters which had the facility to he coupled to give a combined output of 800OkW. This made Ottringham the most powerful radio station in the world at that time, and ensured that the BBC was heard with good reception in Germany, even during daylight hours on a standard domestic receiver. It operated on a frequency close to the German national “Deutschlandsender” home service.

Part 3

Later in 1943, “Aspidistra” was once more used for the purpose for which it was primarily intended – ‘black’ or subversive operations. The first of these was carried out in September or October 1943 in conjunction with Allied operations in Sicily. By this time, the Allied invasion of Italy was well in progress, with Naples falling on 1st October. By order of King Victor Emmanuel, Mussolini had been arrested and the collaborator with the Allies, Badoglio, sworn in as Prime Minister heading the Italian Government in the areas of the country recaptured by the Allies. On 11th October 1943 this government declared war on the Axis powers, which included the Republican Fascist regime in the area of Italy not yet recaptured by the Allies. (Mussolini now heeded this regime, after having been held ‘incommunicado’ in Allied Italy but rescued in a daring German parachute raid). At this time, the official Italian Fascist Republican Radio had its main station at Munich in Germany. “Aspidistra’s” contribution to Allied operations in Italy was to relay the Italian Fascist programme each evening, as received direct from Munich, but with a few bogus insertions made by British intelligence and usually recorded in advance. These bogus items included an attack on the Vatican in the name of Fascism, news that a news that a new Italian lire currency would be issued under German auspices, and false items about distributions of food and relief supplies at various local headquarters of the Fascist party. One operation continued as a nightly 3.5-hour long transmission from 18th September to 27th October 1943. There were many reports of trained monitors listening to these broadcasts (e.g. in Sweden and Switzerland) having been duped by them.

From the end of 1943, “Aspidistra” was also used by the Royal Air Force for its ‘Operation Dartboard’, a scheme for interfering with the German ground control’s instructions to Luftwaffe fighters attempting to intercept R.A.F. bombers on their missions over Germany. It was known that the Germans were plotting the incoming tracks of the R.A.F. night bombers. Luftwaffe fighters would be scrambled and hold orbit on certain beacons, there to await instructions from the ground on the positions of enemy aircraft. Running commentaries were given on the German medium wave broadcast transmitters to assist the night fighters. It had been suspected for some time that coded instructions to these fighters were concealed in the musical broadcasts over various German medium wave transmitters: e.g. a waltz signified that the bombers were targeting Munich, Jazz meant Berlin, and the end of an attack was signaled by the march “Alte Kamaraden”. Since “Aspidistra” was much more powerful than any of these transmitters and could occupy any of their frequencies almost instantaneously owing to its remarkable ability to make lightning changes of frequency, the fighter crews were often unaware that they were in fact listening to output from “Aspidistra”. One popular trick of this clever counterfeit operation was to broadcast via “Aspidistra” a recording of the ground controller’s’ musical instructions given the previous day.

One of the best efforts in the countermeasures against the Luftwaffe night fighters was on 17th November 1943 when, during an R.A.F. attack on Ludwigshafen, the British succeeded in counterfeiting the ground controller’s voice over “Aspidistra”. The voice warned all German nightfighters to land because of the danger of fog. When the Germans realised that the British were counterfeiting their instructions, they substituted with women announcers, but the British responded with German-speaking W.A.A.F’s. The next move of the Germans was to have a man repeat any orders given by the W.A.F.F., so that the nightfighters knew they were spurious. But the British then had their man repeat any order the German gave! Any transmission in a female voice from Germany would be repeated by a German-speaking R.A.F. man over “Aspidistra”.

But, by now, at the end of 1943, it was time for “Aspidistra” to be used for British black radio’s major operation of World War Two – Soldatensender Calais.

Part 4

Soldatensender Calais, the leading British ‘black radio’ station of the war, did not commence broadcasting until November 1943. It’s roots and origins were, however, founded in the early months of the war when British intelligence hatched plans for a number of bogus broadcasting stations, which were to serve as an alternative form of propaganda and psychological warfare. Naturally the most obvious form of British propaganda would be straightforward denunciation of Hitler and Nazism, appeals for opposition to and if possible resistance against the Nazis, and vaunting of Allied military strength. But the man in charge of ‘black’ propaganda, Sefton Delmar, argued that the Germans would only respond to such a message when they realised that the war was lost. In the meantime, he maintained, radio propaganda could more effectively undermine Hitler not by directly opposing him but by pretending to be all for him. All kinds of rumour, subtle innuendo, and disquieting inside information could be included in supposedly patriotic talks and harangues in favour of the Fatherland.

This idea came to fruition on 23rd May 1941 when the first transmission of a mysterious new station with the callsign “Gustav Seigfried Eins” (GS1) was made. The transmissions of GS1 consisted of coded messages to a clandestine military organisation which were relatively unimportant and whose ciphers were easily broken. These served only as an appetiser to the main content – talks and diatribes by a character known only as “Der Chef”. He appeared to be a typical diehard loyal old Prussian Army Officer whose colourful and outspoken views showed him as deeply loyal to the Fatherland, and indeed the Fuehrer, but severely critical of many of the Nazi policies and conduct of the war. Above all, he was scathingly contemptuous of the Nazi party rabble that had seized the Fatherland in the Fuehrer’s name. Listeners tuning in would naturally gain the impression that they were listening to a clandestine German military transmitter broadcasting coded strategic messages and diatribes from a senior officer who could not contain his opinions any longer. Little would they realise, or so it was intended, that GS1 was a clandestine British military operation. Indeed, American State Department officials in Berlin soon reported back to Washington about strange clandestine radio broadcasts from a German army officer called “Der Chef”. However, lest the Americans should be under any illusions, the British let President Roosevelt in on the little secret – and he was very amused!

In one of his first broadcasts “Der Chef” bitterly attacked Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess who, a few days previously, had made his famous but abortive flight to Scotland. To quote him: “As soon as there is a crisis, Hess packs himself a white flag and flies off to throw himself and us on the mercy of that flat-footed bastard of a druken old cigar-smoking Jew, Churchill!” However, the bulk of Der Chef’s invective was not directed against leading Nazis, but against local Party officials and functionaries with whose lives and careers he seamed to have a very intimate knowledge. With the help of such sources of inside information as German newspapers and magazines, plus letters to and from former prisoners-of-war held in Britain, “Der Chef” was able to portray these people as nothing more than a bunch of corrupt, self-seeking, infighting, racketeers whose conduct was in shameful contrast to ‘the devotion to duty shown by our brave troops freezing to death in Russia’. “Der Chef” was especially disgusted that the German armed forces continued to complain of a manpower shortage when the Nazi party provided cushy jobs for over 3 million people. In another talk “Der Chef” denounced the wives of party officials in the Schleswig-Holstein area who had rushed to the stores and bought up all the clothing that their coupons had entitled them to, because ‘their traitorous husbands had told them that the Fatherland’s supply was running out!’ The proof that the talk got through came six weeks later when the British noticed that a Kiel newspaper carried a report of a run on clothing stores.

“Gustav Siegfried Eins” continued on the air until November 1944, by which time some 700 broadcasts had been made by “Der Chef”, who was in fact a Berliner named Peter Seckelmann who had left Germany for Britain before the war. By then, the tide had turned against Germany, with Italy collapsing, as “Der Chef” had predicted. To his mind, Italy had only been a ‘traitor ally’ and its main contribution to the war had been to send its workers to Germany to keep the local women company while their husbands were at the front! “Der Chef” had done his duty, and it was time for the scope of ‘black radio’ to take a new turn.

Part 5

By 1943, with “Gustav Siegfried Eins” well established, it was time for British subversive radio operations to branch out. “GS1″ had of course always purported to be a clandestine German station, but now it was time for an operation in the guise of an official German station, this idea having been mooted by the British Admiralty at the end of 1942. For the benefit of their Forces in the occupied territories and at sea, the Germans set up a number of stations broadcasting popular music of the time, greetings and news from home, etc. So, for the benefit of the German naval forces serving in the Atlantic Ocean, “Deutsche Kurzwellensender Atlantik” (or “Atlantiksender”) began broadcasting on 22nd March 1943. A constant flow of news, information and entertainment was provided in no less than eighteen half-hour daily broadcasts. But this was in point of fact no official German station: It was operated by the British Political Warfare Executive, using four 7.5kW short wave transmitters as well as new studios in a two-story brick building in a five acre tract at Milton Bryan, near Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.

The launch of this new ‘Navy’ station ‘Atlantiksender’ meant that fresh talent had to be engaged. A number of German émigrés joined the new broadcasting team, including a one-time Berlin art dealer and a pre-war Austrian diplomat who became expert news writers. But 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.

The topical material used by Vicky and the other announcers was gathered from German newspapers, plus letters to and from German prisoners-of-war. The prisoner-of-war camps were now proving to be a valuable source of such information, much of which was provided by hidden microphones and recorders in the camps. Soon, a number of the broadcasters themselves would be drawn from the prisoners-of-war too. The whole operation was backed-up by a team of researchers and continually expanding archives. One of the researchers was C.E. Stevens (”Thomas Brown”) an Oxford ancient history don who, as co-director of the intelligence unit, was in Delmer’s words “a walking encyclopedia”. Stevens, in a meeting of the V Committee planning the “V for ‘Victory” campaign on the BBC European Service, was the man who had suggested the idea of using the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

As “Atlantiksender” became established and gained a large audience, Sefton Delmer recommended that the station should be expanded so as to serve the German forces in France too, and to soften them up before D-Day. Until now, all of the operations of “SS1″ and “Atlantiksender” had used relatively low power short wave transmitters only, but now Delmer pressed for the use of “Aspidistra” to expand the scope of his operations. After endless arguments with the BBC, who were using “Aspidistra” for their European Services, Delmer was eventually allowed to use the super-power Medium Wave transmitter at least part of the time. And so, on 14th November 1943, “Soldatensender Calais”, the new station for the German forces in France, began broadcasting nightly between 8pm and 11pm on a wavelength of 360 metres. By this time “Atlantiksender” had expanded its output too and was broadcasting from 6.30pm through until 7am the following morning. “Soldatensender Calais” reached an enormous audience in France, as the super-power signals drowned out all other signals on the small insensitive radio receivers issued to the German servicemen in France. The broadcasting hours of the station were gradually increased throughout late 1943 and 1944. By D-Day (6th June 1944) it was on the air from 8pm through to 5am.

Meanwhile, the ‘clandestine’ station “Gustav Siegfried Eins” had disappeared. During his 2.5 years behind the microphone, “Der Chef” made some 700 broadcasts, but by November 1943 it was felt he had outlived his purpose. On 10th November 1943, four days after “Soldatensender Calais” had made its debut, it was time for the final transmission of “GS1″. And it certainly was a brilliant piece of radio theatre with a big finish! Listeners were amazed to hear his talk interrupted by a burst of machine gun fire and the shout of “Got you, you swine” as the Gestapo finally tracked him down! It was, however, most unfortunate that the impact was rather lost as it had been forgotten that the same broadcast was due to be repeated later in the evening. Listeners therefore heard “Der Chef” being assassinated twice within about an hour!

Part 6

“Soldatensender Calais” carried on entertaining the German armed forces in France from November 1943 just as “Atlantiksender” catered for the German naval forces serving in the Atlantic. Star announcer of the Soldatensender was probably Sepp Obermeyer, an outspoken Bavarian who had served with the Luftwaffe but had become disaffected with the Nazis and defected by flying a Messerchmitt night-fighter through British radar and anti-aircraft defences to land it on an Essex airfield. In his career as a broadcaster, Obermeyer wrote all his own talks, full of gossip, aircraft news and denunciations to his “fellow Luftwaffe officers” of the impossible conditions under which they were expected to fight the enemy. “Atlantiksender” had its counterpart in Eddy Mander. A former U-boat wireless operator from Hamburg, Mander had been captured in the Atlantic, along with his U-boat codebook containing all the current cipher. He had a wonderful gift of German Naval slang and a forte for thinking up new rouses and ‘tips’ on how the men serving on the U-boats might delay the departure from port of their vessels.

Music was a very important part of the broadcasts. To indicate to the Germans that their security measures were inadequate, “‘Atlantiksender” would often play “special request numbers” for a German submarine which the Admiralty had informed the station was likely to have been on a cruise. Some of the records played on ” Atlantiksender” and “Soldatensender Calais” were the latest German hits flown over from Stockholm, and from time to time arrangements were made for such German-speaking artists as Marlene Dietrich to make special recordings. But many of the records used were made especially for the stations by a German band that had been touring North Africa when they were captured and sent back to Britain.

News was the most vital part of the output, and carefully selected news items could be the most subversive propaganda of all, especially if given an emphasis or twist that was never originally intended. Such psychological propaganda was a feature of many of the news broadcasts from “Soldatensender Calais”. Accurate reporting of terror raids by Allied bombers on German cities must have impressed the listener in the way that they gave detailed street-by-street accounts of the extent of the damage caused by each raid. These were in fact compiled from photographs brought back by Allied reconnaissance aircraft, interpreted with the aid of stereoscopic viewers and guides and plans of the cities concerned. And naturally, in case servicemen were worried for the safety of their families back home, they were advised on how to apply for compassionate leave. And once on leave, it was possible that they would consider desertion, in which case they were encouraged – obviously not by direct appeals – but by subtle repeated suggestions along the lines of ‘the authorities do not know who is missing because he has been killed or because he has deserted.’ Methods used by soldiers fleeing to neutral countries were deplored – but in thorough and informative detail!

News items generally ran a few phony or distorted items amongst otherwise genuine material. The genuine news was in fact provided by the DNB, Dr. Goebbels’ news agency. The DNB had set up a fast and efficient wireless teleprinter service to cover its offices all over Europe. On the outbreak of the war, the DNB’s London correspondent has left his “Hellscreiber” teleprinter behind, so this meant the British could receive Dr. Goebbels’ news at the same time as the German newspapers and radio stations, and put it on the air (via Soldatensender Calais) quicker than they could. This straight news consisted of decorations and promotions in the services, communiqués and speeches of Nazi leaders and officials, sports news, etc. But among all the genuine material would be a phony item, e.g. praise and tributes to doctors at camps housing civilians bombed out of German cities, their dedicated work having reduced the death rate due to cholera and typhus to only 60 a week.

Also making appearances from time to time on Soldatensender Calais were Dr. Goebbels or even the Fuehrer. When they delivered important speeches, these were picked up from the German stations and relayed over “Aspidistra”, often immediately after Sepp Obermeyer or Vicky had been at the microphone!

Part 7

With its huge signal, Soldatensender Calais gained a large audience, not only among German forces but also among civilians too. A letter of March 1944 from the local Munich division of the S.S. to its high command gives an illuminating insight into the influence of the station on the civilian population in Munich and Upper Bavaria. Indicates that large proportions of the population believe Soldatensender Calais to be a genuine German station, run for the armed forces. Most preferred it to their home service because they believed that the German authorities, and their propaganda machine, could not deceive the soldier at the front with the same propaganda as was given to the civilians at home! According to this letter, Soldatensender Calais gained a particularly large audience in Munich and Bavaria in September 1943 when the local Reichssender station at Munich had – instead of broadcasting the home service – been required to broadcast the Italian Fascist Republican Radio service for northern Italy during the evening hours. The result was that many Munich listeners had tuned elsewhere for information and discovered Soldatensender Calais with a strong signal on a nearby frequency. The authorities therefore decided that the station should be jammed, but the noise of the jamming had unpleasant consequence too. For, when Munich resumed broadcasting its normal home service during the evenings, it made reception of the Munich station impossible in many localities too. However, the Soldatensender, by virtue of “Aspidistra’s” agility to change frequency in an instant and avoid the jamming, could usually be heard clearly. Moreover, according to the letter, some local people believed that the jammer was operated by the enemy who wished to drown out the German station!

German servicemen also continued to be taken in. For instance, indisputable evidence was received from prisoners-of-war that a Wehrmacht sergeant had broadcasts from the station wired into all his men’s recreation huts. Only when a senior officer reprimanded him did he realise that he had been entertaining his comrades with a forbidden enemy station. Such was the fame and notoriety of Soldatensender Calais. But, naturally, it was realised that many listeners would soon be aware that it was not an official German armed forces station. However, even when its cover was blown, Soldatensender could be just as effective. For instance, interrogators of German prisoners-of-war noticed that their captives were more ready to talk, the Soldatensender’s broadcasts having convinced them that “the British know it all already, so I may as well talk.” A Korvettencapitan attached to the Officer commanding the Sherbourg Peninsula, who was taken prisoner after the D-day landings, indicated that he had listened to nothing except Soldatensender Calais while in France. This was because the radio sets issued to the troops had been too poor to receive anything else, and Calais drowned out every other station. He also indicated that the station had the great advantage of broadcasting throughout the night, when all other stations were off the air, and it was so cleverly camouflaged that the listener’s first reaction was ‘that can’t be an enemy station’. Sefton Delmer had maintained that even if a German listener believed correctly that the Soldatensender was a subversive British operation, he would continue to listen, and be influenced by it, because of its unequalled entertainment and information content. Such a listener was a Luftwaffe Squadron Leader of a unit stationed at Cognac in France who, in January 1944 said that he and his fellow officers listened regularly. They were obliged to stop other ranks from listening, but could not prevent them from doing so. He added that he sometimes listened in with naval officers he met in Bordeaux. A Luftwaffe captain, sent under conditions of utmost secrecy to interview blockade runner captains waiting in the Gironde, related an interesting story. Returning to his quarters he heard on the Soldatensender a programme of Japanese music, and verbatim repetition of the instructions he had just delivered to the captains of the blockade runners, adding that it made him laugh and laugh until tears ran down his cheeks! But British naval intelligence knew that armed blockade runners in the Gironde were preparing to sail to Japan, and the Soldatensender’s broadcast was made at just the right time.

The head of the BBC German Service, Hugh Carleton Greene, made the following comment after the war. “Looking back at the broadcasts of Soldatensender Calais, they were so funny that I have often wondered whether they did not raise rather than depress morale.” But at least the Soldatensender had this distinct advantage over the BBC German service – to many listeners it would seem to be speaking from a point of view held by a large and increasing number of German citizens.”

Part 8

On D-Day, Soldatensender Calais grabbed a scoop. It was the first station to give news of the Allied invasion of the Normandy beaches. At 4.50am on 6th June 1944 a Calais announcer interrupted the station’s dance music programme to flash a report that the invasion had begun. It was so graphic that Swedish monitors picking up the broadcast decided that the radio station must be either in the invasion area or very close to it.

What had actually happened behind the scenes was this. Donald McLachlan, the only member of the Milton Bryan team to be in on the secret of D-Day, had spent most of the previous day at the SHAEF headquarters. In the evening he reported to Sefton Delmer that the invasion would be going ahead the following morning. So, the Milton Bryan team decided to go ahead with their plan as well – to prepare reports based on the disclosed invasion plans and projections of what would happen, and then wait for the DNB Hellschreiber to give them the signal to put them on the air. Later that evening the chief newswriter on Soldatensender Calais was let in on the plan, or rather correctly guessed that something was in the offing. And that is how the station came to capture what should have been Dr Goebbels’ greatest scoop. For, when the DNB flash came through on the teleprinter tape, Delmer’s team were fully prepared and immediately put out the following flash: “The enemy is landing in force from the air and from the sea. The Atlantic wall is penetrated in several places. The command has ordered Alarm Grade 3.” It was at least twelve hours in advance of any official news release.

As the invasion progressed, the breakdown in the Germans’ field communications became so grave that many of their commanders began tuning in to Soldatensender Calais for situation reports, and using them to constantly update the changing order of battle on their staff maps. The reports, obtained directly from SHAEF headquarters, were accurate 99 times out of 100. The hundredth time came when some false information was inserted at the request of tactical deception experts, to send the enemy headlong into a trap.

The Germans were offer puzzled by the speed at which the Soldatensender was able to broadcast news, not only of the invasion operations, but also of events inside Germany or even news, which emanated from the Fuehrer’s headquarters. Allied intelligence services stated that there were now indications that the German authorities were convinced that Calais had special information as to what was going on inside Germany. In a private conversation, a senior German official in Sweden said it was believed that Calais had many correspondents in Germany, and people were checking statements in the hope of catching informants. As an example, he quoted the Calais statement that the German naval attaché in Stockholm, von Wahlert, was implicated in Colonel von Stauffenberg’s unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler on 20th July 1944. In consequence, some of the legation officials decided to investigate the matter secretly, and came to the conclusion that the report was probably true. Moreover, soon after the 20th Jul putsch attempt, the very large telephone installation at Hitler’s headquarters was occupied by 200 signals specialists who searched diligently for secret parallel lines which could transmit conversations to unauthorised destinations, but found nothing suspicious.

Part 9

In the final days of the war “Aspidistra” was used for another of ‘black’ radio’s most ambitious schemes. Until March 1945 the BBC and Voice of America, in their broadcasts to Germany, had been advising the civilian population not to evacuate as the Allied armies approached, but to stay put. This was in accordance with a directive given to them by SHAEF, the Allied High Command. But when Winston Churchill learned of this, he blew his top, maintaining that the Allies should instead be driving the German civilians out onto the highways to impede the strategic communications of German armies, just as the French civilians had hampered their armies in the German invasion of 1940. However, since the BBC and VOA could not go back on what they said, it was decided to use ‘black’ radio for this dirty work. “Aspidistra”, with its ability to make lightning changes of frequency and hop all over the Medium Wave band to occupy any German domestic channel, was ideally suited to the task. The way that “Aspidistra’s” frequency-skipping ability was used to ‘capture’ German stations was as follows. The German home service networked programme was broadcast on several Medium Wave stations in variety of locations all over Germany. But, at the approach of Allied bombers to a certain city, the local transmitter there would be switched off so as not to serve as a navigational beacon for the enemy aircraft, leaving the frequency vacant. “Aspidistra” could, however, pick up the German broadcast from another transmitter in the network and continue to broadcast it on the vacant frequency, almost without a break. Then, with the continuity established, the genuine programme could be interrupted with bogus ’special announcements’ supposedly from the local authorities.

The first such ‘intruder’ operations were carried out on the evening of 24th March 1945, in close conjunction with the military operations for, on the previous evening, Field Marshal Montgomery’s 21st Army Group began to cross the Rhine at four places between Rees and a point south of Wesel. The first ‘intruder’ operation with ”Aspidistra” was on the Civil Defence Channel of 599 kHz at 8.19pm with the interval signal used by the Germans during their commentaries on the movements of Allied aircraft. A bogus announcement was repeated twice – Supposedly from the Reich Defence Commissioner of Gau Dusseldorf, concerning the evacuation measures (codenamed Operation Seigfried). These announcements limited the evacuation to a very small number of people. About thirty minutes later “Aspidistra” again went off the air.

The second operation followed about an hour later the same evening, with Reichssender Cologne the target. The PWE’s radio monitors, who kept watch on German stations, had always been able to predict, with great accuracy, the exact time at which the approaching Allied bombers would force the station to go off the air. So, when Cologne closed down that evening at the expected time of 9.40pm, “Aspidistra” immediately appeared or its frequency of 658 kHz with a relay of the German home service, received from another transmitter. Bogus ’special announcements’, supposedly from the Gauleiters and Reich Defence Commissioners of Essen, Dusseldorf, Westphalia North and Westphalia South, were inserted into the programme. These were designed to create panic and depress morale among the civilian population. They explained that it would not be possible to evacuate the civilian population, despite the fact that the enemy was almost upon them, and that only those who could ‘carry on the struggle’ would be evacuated. The majority, who would be forced to stay behind, were warned that although they were threatened with all the horrors of modern warfare and the possibility of complete destruction, they should ’stick it out and if need be face death bravely’. This ‘intruder’ operation on the Cologne channel continued for twenty minutes, and then “Aspidistra” finally left the air.

Part 10

‘Intruder’ broadcasts on the German home service channels, of` which there were probably no more than a dozen in all, continued in late March and early April 1945. On the evening of 25th March, “Aspidistra” intruded on the Frankfurt frequency at 2045 hours, relaying the German Home Service interspersed with its own bogus announcements giving positions of Allied columns, and also advice to doctors, Red Cross workers and even butchers. This intruder broadcast continued for over three hours, until midnight, and included about fifteen false announcements in all. On the following evening another intruder operation on the Frankfurt channel ordered the diversion of evacuation columns to avoid allied positions which did not, in fact, exist as well as the arrival of nor-existent relief trains at certain stations. The Germans responded on 27th March when announcements in their Forces programme stated that the Allies were broadcasting on German wavelengths. Two days later, they began to confine all civil defence and evacuation instructions to their Long Wave Deutschlandsender station, into which “Aspidistra” did not have the capability to intrude.

On the evening of 30th March “Aspidistra” intruded into the Berlin and Hamburg frequencies warning that the Allies were trying to spread confusion by sending false telephone messages from occupied towns to unoccupied towns. The message advised that, from now on, any instructions or reports received by telephone should not be believed or acted upon immediately, but should be confirmed by telephoning the supposed source of the call. This instruction, if fully followed, would have seriously delayed the carrying out of orders and placed extra strain on the already half-crippled German telephone network. Or the evening of 8th April, “Aspidistra” intruded into the Hamburg and Leipzig channels to warn of forged banknotes in circulation. Then, on the following evening, there were announcements encouraging people to evacuate to seven bomb-free zones in central and southern Germany, where it was claimed that they would be safe from further enemy air attacks. By now, the following announcements continued to be broadcast by the German radio stations: “The enemy is broadcasting counterfeit instructions on our frequencies. Don’t be misled by them. Here is an official announcement of the Reich authority.” But, of course, these same announcements began to precede any bogus messages broadcast by “Aspidistra” too!

Part 11

Meanwhile, Soldatensender West was continuing on the air. In late 1944, with the fall of Calais to the Canadians, “Soldatensender Calais” simply renamed itself “Soldatensender West” and continued as before. It still had a lot more to say on the progress of the war, and in its role as “spokesman for the decent fighting front line soldier” was now demanding an end to the war, in order to save Germany. The target of the Soldatensender’s attack was now Hitler, who previously had never been criticised directly. The station reported how he had been reduced to a shambling, nervous wreck, kept alive only by repeated injections of drugs. “The enemy can wish for nothing better than to have us led by a man who, in his conceit and ignorance, interferes in everything and everywhere” proclaimed a speaker on the station, “A fellow like that is for the Allies, an ally.”

By now the war was in its final stages, but before the end, the Soldatensender played a role at the famous bridge at Remagen over the Rhine, left intact by the Germans as they retreated in the face of the Allied advance. Units of the U.S. 1st Army crossed the bridge on 7th March 1945. On the following day the German Chief of Army Operations reported to the Fuehrer that two naval demolition teams had been assigned to destroy the bridge, but apparently the Admiral responsible knew nothing of this. However, the teams were being sent to Remagen early on the following day. Meanwhile Soldatensender West announced, on 11th March 1945, that the Germans planned to destroy the bridge by exactly the same methods in a fabricated story that, quite fortuitously, turned out to have anticipated the Germans’ intentions. Admiral Doenitz reported to the Fuehrer that he knew of this report on the Soldatensender, but that he intended to proceed with the operation. However, as the Americans had already been tipped off by the report, the frogmen sent to carry out the mission surfaced and surrendered before getting near the bridge.

With Germany finally disintegrating, it was now felt that the Soldatensender had outlived its purpose. If it was purporting to be the station it claimed, then it now appeared to be the last vestige of the enemy military machine functioning with any degree of coherence, according to Delmer. The German defences and lines of communication were steadily collapsing and, on 23rd April, one of the station’s main news sources disappeared when the DNB (German news agency) services ceased and the Hellschreiber receivers finally went silent. So, on the morning of 30th April, Soldatensender made its final broadcast and went silent. There were no announcements that the station was closing; it just faded away. Britain’s ‘black broadcasters’ had done their job and it was now time for staff at Milton Bryan to have a final farewell and celebration party. Soon, many of them would be returning home to Germany or liberated Europe.