MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD N1COLSON " AN you tell me," I was asked by a German Minister of
Education in 1927, "Can you tell me how you people in England organised the week-end movement?" Those were the days when it seemed probable that the Weimar Republic, if given an even average chance, would succeed in rendering Germany a civilian country ; when the youth of Germany were recovering from the rigours of the b:ockade and spending their winter evenings in the Wellenbad and their summer afternoons upon the lakes ; when the statesmanship of Stresemann was restoring to the Germans their rightful place within the comity of nations ; when the bankers of New York and London were with reckless generosity lavishing upon the Weimar Republic sums greater than even Poincare had extracted in reparation ; and when Berlin was beginning to forget both Potsdam and Versailles and settling down with bourgeois satisfaction to a life of art, commerce and indulgence. In those days one hoped that Mercury had conquered Saturn and that the Germans' capacity for enjoyment—one of their most charming attributes—had triumphed over the habit of self-pity which is their more constant and distressing defect. Fate willed it, however, that the Weimar Repub:ic should not be given even an average chance ; she was given the great slump of 1929. Saturn resumed his baleful sway, and Hitler rose upon a threat of fresh inflation. Yet even in those happy, hopeful days, when many men had almost come to believe in the feasibility of a democratic Germany, there would be moments and presages (as when I was asked that strange question by the Minister of Education) which would prick this bubble-dream and remind one that the Germans were still completely unaware of the meaning and purposes of individualism. Since then, with some relief, they have abandoned their souls, their minds and bodies to the Moloch of the State. My attention has been drawn recently to a curious example of that abandonment. I have been reading a book by Gerhard Eckert, published in Berlin in 1941, and entitled Der Rundfunk als Fahrungsmittel, or "The Wireless as a Means of Dictatorship." It is a long, detailed, rather illegible, but not ill- balanced, statement of the principles of Nazi broadcasting.
"Every country," writes Herr Eckert in his introductory pages, "possesses the radio-condition that corresponds to the -circum-
stances and necessities of its own life," or, as we should more simply express it, "Every country has the wireless which it deserves." The first transmission sent out from the Berlin station took place at 8 p.m. on October 29th, 1923. The Weimar Republic, in the nine years that followed, went through the same processes of experiment and organisation as we did ourselves. They also, and this is interesting, evolved the same general principles. So late as November, 1932, the pre-Nazi Government published a statement of their wireless principles. "The German wireless," they stated, "is the servant of the German people. It serves no political party. All political matters must be objectively treated." Four months later, with the advent of the Nazis to power, these admirable principles were reversed. With the establishment, on March 13th, 1933, of the Reich Ministry for Enlightenment and Propaganda steps were immediately taken to incorporate the German wireless within the party machine. "In the domain of wireless," wrote Dr. Goebbels, "we have been able to carry through the unification so essential in all realms of culture. The wireless is now exclusively in the hands of the State. We have rid ourselves of the old eternal disparity of direction, and by this means we have provided a clear principle of leadership." Herr Eckert in this book describes how this principle has since been expanded, rationalised and enforced. "The National Socialist State," he writes, "from the first moment recognised in the wireless a means of leadership." "Politics," he writes again, "no longer come into the programme just by chance ; they are the starting-point of the whole wireless output." By what means, and by what devices, has the Run Hunk thus been gleichgeschahet? Herr Eckert provides us with a full and very frank exposition of the system pursued. Even before the war Dr. Goebbels sought to discourage di German people from listening to any broadcasts other than hi own. From the first, as Herr Eckert informs us, he realised that i would be " inappropriate " for Germans to listen to foreign station "since the tendency of these stations was to wean the Germ people away from National Socialism." The first method adopte by the Nazi Party was to inform the people that their sense responsibility should teach them that to listen to a foreign statio was "an act of ill-conduct." The second method was to provide them with receivers at popular prices such as would render difficult for them to "turn from the transmissions specially mean for them to a joyously-greeted substitute in the shape of other perhaps even foreign, stations." With the approach of war, these precautions were not considered sufficient. On August 30th, 1939, an order was issued forbidding the German people to listen to any foreign station and warning them that those who spread rumours based upon alleged statements heard over the foreign wireless might be punished by death. "The democratic countries," continues Herr Eckert with some ingenuousness, "were, owing to their political 'philosophy, not in the position to issue similar ordinances, with the result that the commentator who speaks in English upon the German wireless has actually become a popular figure, and is referred to in the British Press_ and upon the variety stage by the nickname of 'Lord Haw-Haw." Herr Eckert is evidently pleased that such disgracef merriment could not possibly occur within the borders of the Reich * * * * It is not, he confesses, sufficient to prevent the German public from listening to foreign transmissions ; it is also essential, not merely that they should listen carefully and regularly to the German wireless, but that they should listen to it with appropriate emotions. With this in mind, he argues in favour of community, as opposed to private, listening. A system of broadcasting which is devised to appeal to the individual listener is not a rightly totalitarian system. "Community listening," he writes, "is particularly important for the Hitler Youth, because it forces the individual to subordinate his will to that of the community. He cannot simply go out of the room or turn the wireless off and on when he wants to, but he has to listen to the broadcast with the others. We thus teach the growing children to use the wireless set correctly." Even entertain- ment, even music, must be subordinated to the main political con- ception. "The conception of art," writes Herr Eckert, "as an
aim in itself has been abandoned ; we see art today as such an important source of power that we must not forget to include it in the pattern of wireless leadership." No sound wireless policy should, according to this theory, give the people what they want. Herr Eckert dislikes even any publication of wireless programmes in advance, since they "may enable the listener to choose only those items which particularly interest him so that some commentary which is published for a special propaganda reason may not reach him." "Nothing," he adds, "is so barbarous (kulturlos) as the liberalistic way of picking out such broadcasts as happen to appeal to the mood of the moment." One might suppose that under all this regimentation the German listening public had been drilled into a high conceptio-i of Kultur. Yet I was glad to find in Herr Eckert's book a list of Germqn wireless items in their order of popularity. First comes variety, or what he calls (a grim phrase) " Lustige bunte Abende," with an estimated audience of 13.1 million. Close to that comes military music, with an audience of 12.7 million. Then in order of popularity follow dance-music, folk-songs, plays, sport, light music, light opera, songs, commentaries, features, talks, operas. There is an interesting distinction between "old dance- music," which attracts an audience of 12.4 million, and "new dance-music," the audience for which is only 4.7 million. His list ends, as with us, with the following gloomy minorities: "Symphony concerts, 1.2 million ; chamber music, r.t million ; poetry readings, 0.9 million." The taste of the German listening public, it would seem, is, in spite of Dr. Goebbels, much the same as in our own kulturlose island.
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