Sefton Delmer - Early Career and Work During Wartime

Early Career and Work During Wartime

After leaving university, Delmer worked as a freelance journalist until he was recruited by the Daily Express to become head of its new Berlin Bureau. Whilst in Germany, he became friendly with Ernst Röhm, who arranged for him to become the first British journalist to interview Adolf Hitler.

In the 1932 German general election, Delmer travelled with Hitler aboard his private aircraft. He was also present when Hitler inspected the aftermath of the Reichstag fire. During this period, Delmer was criticised for being a Nazi sympathiser and, for a time, the British government thought he was in the pay of the Nazis. Perversely, Nazi leaders were convinced Delmer was a member of MI6; his denials of any involvement only served to strengthen their belief not only was he a member, but also an important one.

In 1933, Delmer was sent to France as head of the Daily Express Paris Bureau. In 1935, Delmer married Isabel Nichols. Delmer covered important stories in Europe including the Spanish Civil War and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in 1939. He also reported on the German western offensive in 1940.

Delmer returned to Britain and worked for a time as an announcer for the German service of the BBC. After Hitler broadcast a speech from the Reichstag offering peace terms, Delmer responded immediately, stating the British cast the terms in "your lying, stinking teeth." The instant—and unauthorized—rejection produced a great impact on Germany, where Goebbels concluded it had to come from the government. This gave it an impact authorization would have prevented, and produced consternation in Whitehall: though the effect was desirable, it was unclear whether such a spokesman would again happen to say what the government wanted.

In September 1940, Delmer was recruited by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), to organize black propaganda broadcasts to Nazi Germany as part of a psychological warfare campaign. Leonard Ingrams gained clearance for Delmer to work for the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office. The operation was based at Wavendon Tower in what is now Milton Keynes new town. Selmer's creations would join a number of other "Research Units" operating propaganda broadcasts.

The concept was that the radio station undermine Hitler by pretending to be a fervent Hitler-Nazi supporter.

Delmer's first, most notable success was a shortwave station: Gustav Siegfried Eins (Gustav Siegfried One), G3 in the Research units. It would be “run” by the character "Der Chef”, an unrepentant Nazi, who disparaged both Winston Churchill ("that flatfooted son of a drunken Jew") and the "Parteikommune", the "Party Communists" who betrayed the Nazi revolution. The station name, "Gustav Siegfried Eins" (abbreviated "GS1", left a question in listeners' minds – did it mean Geheimsender 1: (Secret Transmitter 1) or Generalstab 1 (General Staff 1)?

GS1 went on the air on evening of 23 May 1941. Der Chef, played by Peter Secklemann, a former Berlin journalist, was (then) the only member of the team to have arrived at the discreet house known as "The Rookery" in Aspley Guise, Bedfordshire. Another journalist, Johannes Reinholz, played an adjutant to Der Chef.

When Stafford Cripps discovered what Delmer was involved with (through the intervention of Richard Crossman) Cripps wrote Anthony Eden, then Foreign Secretary: "If this is the sort of thing that is needed to win the war, why, I'd rather lose it." Delmer was defended by Robert Bruce Lockhart, who pointed out the need to reach the sadist in the German nature. GS1 ran for 700 broadcasts before Delmer killed it off in late 1943 with gunfire heard over the radio intimating the authorities had caught up with Der Chef.

Delmer created several stations and was successful through a careful use of intelligence using gossip intercepted in German mail to neutral countries to create credible stories. Delmer's credit within the intelligence agencies was such that the Admiralty sought him out to target German submarine crews with demoralizing news bulletins. For this, Delmer had access to Aspidistra, a 500 Kw radio transmitter sourced from RCA in the US, (their largest off-the shelf-model), which the Section VIII bought for £165,000. Use of Aspidistra, which began in 1942, was split between PWE, BBC, and the RAF. Delmer's creation was Deutsche Kurzwellensender Atlantik (or popularly Atlantiksender). This station used US jazz (banned within Germany as decadent) and up-to-date dance music from Germany (extracted via Sweden and RAF courier) as well as an in-house German dance band. Important details on naval procedures came from anti-Nazis identified in POW camps and mail were sifted to create personalized announcements. Agnes Bernelle "played" the seductive "Vicki" and announced news bulletins.

Christ the King (G.8) broadcast an attack on the conscience of religious Germans, telling of the horrors of the labour and concentration camps, through a German priest.

Soldatensender Calais ("Calais Armed Forces Radio Station") was another clandestine radio station directed by Delmer at German armed forces. Transmitting from Crowborough, Soldatensender Calais broadcast a combination of popular music, "cover" support of the war, and "dirt" - items inserted to demoralize German forces. Delmer's propaganda stories included spreading rumours that foreign workers were sleeping with the wives of German soldiers serving overseas. The station, broadcast by Aspidistra, was popular on the German home front also. Delmer oversaw the production of a daily "grey" German-language newspaper titled Nachrichten für die Truppe ("News for the Troops"), which first appeared in May 1944 much of its text being based on the Soldatensender Calais broadcasts. Nachrichten für die Truppe was written by a team provided to Sefton by SHAEF and was disseminated over Germany, Belgium, and France each morning by the Special Leaflet Squadron of the U.S. Eighth Air Force.

As the fighting progressed into Germany itself, black propaganda was used to create an impression of an anti-Nazi resistance movement. Delmer criticised this later as the "black boomerang", with Nazis claiming they had been allied to this fictitious movement. With the end of the war in Europe, Delmer advised his colleagues to say nothing of the work they had been in lest, as the Nazis did after the First World War, the Germans could claim they had not been beaten militarily but by underhanded means.