It lacked the necessary staff, equipment and organisation to approach the daily task of counter-propaganda adequately. Furthermore, this was unchartered territory. Radio was still relatively new, and broadcasting to the enemy was a completely novel experience. This brought about a spirit of creativity and adventure. It was also true that, by 1940, there was an air of desperation. “All right, we might as well give it a try,” the BBC told Lucas when it commissioned Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal.

The satirical programmes relied on an unlikely coalition between the BBC, British propaganda officials and disaffected German-speaking exiles. On the one hand, the British officials insisted that the message of the German Service had to sound “as English as Yorkshire pudding”. 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. But the relationship was not always easy; as an “enemy alien”, Lucas and his fellow exiles were often regarded with suspicion.

Lost in translation

The quirky content of the programmes should be understood in the context of this curious alliance. Adolf Hirnschal is a series of fictitious letters written by a German corporal on the front line to his wife. The protagonist reads the letters to his fighting comrade before they are posted. On the surface Adolf Hirnschal is devoted to his “beloved Führer”. Yet so far-fetched are his exclamations of loyalty that the intention is clear: to expose the shallowness and mendacity of Nazi proclamations. In his first letter after war is declared on Russia in 1941 he tells his wife how he welcomed the news from his lieutenant that they are being transferred to the Russian border:

I jump up in joy and say: ‘Mr Lieutenant, kindly asking for permission to express that I am tremendously pleased that we are now fraternising with the Russians. Did not our beloved Führer already say in 1939 that our friendship with the Russians is irrevocable and irreversible?’

Thus Hirnschal exposes the hypocrisy of Hitler’s policy towards Russia, all under the cover of absolute loyalty. This was a method that Bruno Adler – a German art historian and author who had fled to England in 1936 – used for Frau Wernicke. The protagonist is a tough, good-hearted, chatty Berlin housewife who, through her manic monologues, complains about injustices, rationing and the contradictions of everyday life during the war, all the time displaying a robust common sense. By juxtaposing her pseudo-naive support for Nazism and the stark realities of the wartime life she describes, Adler’s subversive intentions are clear. In one instance Frau Wernicke asks her friend why she is so upset, and then immediately answers the question herself:

Only because your husband had to close his business and because your boy is now with the Wehrmacht and has had enough of it and because your girl, Elsbeth, has to do a second mandatory year of state labour and because – as you put it – you don’t have a family life anymore and you are not happy?

Note the heavily ironic use of “only”.