World War Ii The Radio War

"By focusing on the medium of radio during World War II, Horten has provided us with a window into an important change in radio broadcasting that has previously been ignored by historians. The depth of research, the book's contribution to our understanding of radio and the war make Radio Goes to War an outstanding work."—Lary May, author of The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way "Radio broadcasting, and its impact on American life, still remains a neglected area of our national history. Radio Goes to War demonstrates conclusively how short-sighted that omission is. As we enter what is sure to be another era of contested claims of government control over freedom of speech, the controversies and compromises of wartime broadcasting sixty years ago provide an ominous example of difficult decisions to be made in the future. The alliance of big business, advertising, and wartime propaganda that Horten so convincingly illuminates takes on a heightened significance, especially as this relationship has tightened in the last several decades. When radio and television go to war again, will they follow the same course? This is cautionary reading for our new century."—Michele Hilmes, author of Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922-1952

Words at War describes how 17 radio dramatists and their actors fought a war of words against fascism abroad and injustice at home. Beginning in the late 1930s, the commercial networks, private agencies, and the government cooperated with radio dramatists to produce plays to alert Americans to the Nazi threat. They also used radio to stimulate morale. They showed how Americans could support the fight against fascism even if it meant just having a "victory garden." Simultaneously as they worked on the war effort, many radio writers and actors advanced a progressive agenda to fight the enemy within: racism, poverty, and other social ills. When the war ended, many of these people paid for their idealism by suffering blacklisting. Veterans' groups, the FBI, right-wing politicians, and other reactionaries mounted an assault on them to drive them out of their professions. This book discusses that partly successful effort and the response of the radio personalities involved. This book discusses commercial drama series such as The Man Behind the Gun, network sustained shows such as those of Norman Corwin, and government-produced programs such as the Uncle Sam series. The book is largely based on the author's interviews with Norman Corwin, Arthur Miller, Pete Seeger, Arthur Laurents, Art Carney and dozens of others associated with radio during its Golden Age. It also discusses public reaction to these broadcasts and the issue of blacklisting. Words at War weaves together materials from FBI files and materials from archives around the country, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the National Archives and a dozen university special collection libraries, to tell how the nation used a unique broadcast genre in a time of national crisis. Readers in the era of the current World Trade Center terrorism crisis will be particularly interested to read about censorship, scapegoating, and the government's role in disseminating propaganda and other issues that have once again

World War II: the Radio War relates concerns and conditions facing American homes during The War and the role that radio played in maintaining morale, providing information and incentive to achieve patriotic responsibility. This human account of public sacrifice and national involvement is relevant to current attitudes and concerns facing our country today in spite of the events occurring some seventy years ago. Although the subject is American-based, the narrative of this book applies to other peoples and has appeal in their countries, especially England.

During the Second World War German intelligence had deployed wireless teams throughout occupied Europe. Agents had even been deployed to mainland Britain to spy on British military activity. Monitoring and reporting of their wireless transmissions fell to a small, secretive and largely unknown unit manned almost exclusively by volunteers. The Voluntary Interceptors (VI) as they became known would spend hours every day at home monitoring the short wavelengths for often faint and difficult to copy signals transmitted by these German secret intelligence services. This unit was to become known as the Radio Security Service (RSS) and was at the core of the signals intelligence production effort at Bletchley and the insights into German military tactical and strategic planning. Without interceptors like the RSS, Bletchley would not have existed. Their story has never truly been written and RADIO WAR focuses on the secret world of wireless espionage and includes first-hand accounts from the surviving veterans of the unit. Its existence was only made public 35 years after WWII ended, shortly after Bletchley Park's secrets were exposed. Patrick Reilly, the Assistant to Head of MI6 Stewart Menzies, was to say of the RSS.... `a team of brilliance unparalleled anywhere in the intelligence machine.'

During World War II, the civilian Office of Censorship supervised a huge and surprisingly successful program of news management: the voluntary self-censorship of the American press. In January 1942, censorship codebooks were distributed to all American newspapers, magazines, and radio stations with the request that journalists adhere to the guidelines within. Remarkably, over the course of the war no print journalist, and only one radio journalist, ever deliberately violated the censorship code after having been made aware of it and understanding its intent. Secrets of Victory examines the World War II censorship program and analyzes the reasons for its success. Using archival sources, including the Office of Censorship's own records, Michael Sweeney traces the development of news media censorship from a pressing necessity after the attack on Pearl Harbor to the centralized yet efficient bureaucracy that persuaded thousands of journalists to censor themselves for the sake of national security. At the heart of this often dramatic story is the Office of Censorship's director Byron Price. A former reporter himself, Price relied on cooperation with--rather than coercion of--American journalists in his fight to safeguard the nation's secrets.

A groundbreaking handbook that takes a cross-national approach to the media history of Europe of the past 100 years The Handbook of European Communication History is a definitive and authoritative handbook that fills a gap in the literature to provide a coherent and chronological history of mass media, public communication and journalism in Europe from 1900 to the late 20th century. With contributions from teams of scholars and members of the European Communication Research and Education Association, the Handbook explores media innovations, major changes and developments in the media systems that affected public communication, as well as societies and culture. The contributors also examine the general trends of communication history and review debates related to media development. To ensure a transnational approach to the topic, the majority of chapters are written not by a single author but by international teams formed around one or more lead authors. The Handbook goes beyond national perspectives and provides a basis for more cross-national treatments of historical developments in the field of mediated communication. Indeed, this important Handbook: Offers fresh insights on the development of media alongside key differences between countries, regions, or media systems over the past century Takes a fresh, cross-national approach to European media history Contains contributions from leading international scholars in this rapidly evolving area of study Explores the major innovations, key developments, differing trends, and the important debates concerning the media in the European setting Written for students and academics of communication and media studies as well as media professionals, The Handbook of European Communication History covers European media from 1900 with the emergence of the popular press to the professionalization of journalists and the first wave of multimedia with the advent of film and radio broadcasting through the rapid growth of the Internet and digital media since the late 20th century.

This book, first published in 1983, brings together leading world experts on film and radio propaganda in a study which deals with each of the major powers as well as several under occupation. By examining each nations’ propaganda content and comparing its various strands of output designed for different audiences, the historian is provided with an important source of a nation’s official self-image. Total war forced governments to formulate goals consistent with the received national ideology in order to support the war effort. To this extent, much of the domestic propaganda was directed towards stimulating the population to make sacrifices with promise of a new world if the peace were won.