The secret propaganda war against the Nazis

In September 1939, an unlikely assortment of journalists, politicians, novelists and spies assembled in a Bedfordshire village and set about waging a covert propaganda war on Hitler's Germany. Today on the History Extra podcast, author and broadcaster Terry Stiastny tells Spencer Mizen how the political war executive deployed everything from fake news and pornography to bogus killings to spread fear and confusion in Nazi occupied Europe. So Terry, you're new book tells the story of the political warfare executive, a top secret organization charged with disseminating propaganda and disinformation across Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War. So who came up with the plan to

form this shadowy entity and and and why did they think it was necessary? Well, they were really playing catch up at the beginning of the Second World War. There had been an organization during the First World War which did do propaganda to enemy countries, but basically they didn't have the technology then. They were dropping leaflets over Western Europe via hot air balloon. So they really had to catch up with a new world where Germany was far ahead in terms of using radio as a form of propaganda.

And it didn't really get underway until once you had Churchill in power as Prime Minister, once you had a new government in place from 1940. And they suddenly realized that, you know, we have to be trying to speak to people in occupied Europe. And so there were a variety of people involved. One of the main ones was Robert Bruce Lockhart, who'd been, of course, a spy during the First World War.

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