The quirky content of the programmes should be understood in the context of this curious alliance. But the relationship was not always easy as an “enemy alien”, Lucas and his fellow exiles were often regarded with suspicion. But it also needed to demonstrate an intimate knowledge of the German psyche, and for that it was much in debt to the contribution of the exiles. On the one hand, the British officials insisted that the message of the German Service had to sound “as English as Yorkshire pudding”. The satirical programmes relied on an unlikely coalition between the BBC, British propaganda officials and disaffected German-speaking exiles. “All right, we might as well give it a try,” the BBC told Lucas when it commissioned Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal. It was also true that, by 1940, there was an air of desperation. This brought about a spirit of creativity and adventure. Radio was still relatively new, and broadcasting to the enemy was a completely novel experience. Furthermore, this was unchartered territory. It lacked the necessary staff, equipment and organisation to approach the daily task of counter-propaganda adequately. The aim of the German Service from the beginning – when it broadcast a translation of a Neville Chamberlain speech shortly before he signed the infamous Munich Agreement – was to break the Nazi monopoly on news within the Third Reich. Lucas had been working for the German Service of the BBC ever since it haphazardly sprang to life during the height of the Sudeten Crisis in September 1938. How the children of Nazi Germany remember WW2 But this is not a passionate plea for them to come to their senses. He is composing a radio broadcast aimed at citizens of the Third Reich. In spite of the air-raid sirens and, as he put it “the hell’s noise of the war machinery" going off all around him, Lucas is focused on the job at hand: to “fight for the souls of the Germans”. Bombs are raining down on the city every night, Hitler’s army is winning throughout Europe and the invasion of England has become a genuine prospect. It’s a late night in London in 1940, and Austrian exile Robert Lucas is writing at his desk.
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