Berlin Red by Sam Eastland Read Free Book Online Page B

static. Along with sender stations in Berlin and Belgrade, the Elbe network was the last functioning transmitter in the Reich. Designed to keep soldiers at the various fronts informed about the war, each sender station operated with some degree of autonomy. Of course, they were all controlled by the Ministry of Propaganda, which had instituted strict guidelines as to what music could be played, what news could be broadcast and what kinds of messages could be read out from loved ones at home. But those responsible for each sender station were allowed to choose the scheduling, and could even insert their own news stories, to add local flavour to the regional broadcasts. These included history lessons about famous landmarks, such as a very successful programme about the Acropolis broadcast by Sender Station Athens, shortly before it went off the air back in 1942. There was also a series of lectures on French wine broadcast by Sender Station Paris, although that station, too, had gone off the air months ago.
    These stations had proved to be a great success, keeping soldiers in touch with events at home at the same time as the local broadcasts allowed them to glimpse their surroundings through lenses not clouded by war.
    No station had proved to be more popular than the Elbe network. Their broadcasts were expertly produced, the signal always strong and easy to locate and, with its lighthearted irreverence, spoke most convincingly to soldiers grown weary of the kind of incessant, humourless and increasingly far-fetched pronouncements about miracle weapons which would alter the course of the conflict.
    What only Hitler, and a few others in his administration, knew, however, was that Sender Station Elbe did not originate from the German Ministry of Propaganda.
    It was actually run by the British.
    This pirate radio station had first come to Hitler’s attention back in early 1944, when it came on the air as Sender Station Calais. As it was named after a town on the French coast, those who tuned into its signal could be led to believe that the broadcasts originated from there, when in fact the programmes were being transmitted from England, on the other side of the Channel.
    The Calais station had been in operation for some time before anyone in Berlin realised that it even existed. The reason for this was that, at first, no one listening to the programmes thought any of their content worth reporting. It was just the usual array of songs – the ‘Erika Marsch’, ‘Lili Marlene’, ‘Volks ans Gewehr’ – and the predictable anti-American, anti-British, anti-Russian stories.
    It was only when a special programme appeared, narrated by a jovial, but disgruntled SS officer known only as Der Chef, that Berlin began to take notice. Der Chef spoke in the blunt, abbreviated language of a front-line soldier. His informal chats, broadcast for five or ten minutes between long stretches of popular music, were filled with sneering remarks about the effete quality of British soldiers, the drunkenness of Russians and the overindulgence of Americans. But he also did not hesitate to share whatever gossip he had picked up about the leadership in Berlin. It was Der Chef who exposed the juicy goings-on between Gerda Daranovski, one of Hitler’s private clerks, and Hitler’s chauffeur, Erich Kempka. Having left the womanising Kempka, Gerda married Luftwaffe General Christian. Soon afterwards, the jilted Kempka married a known prostitute from Berchtesgaden. Gerda, meanwhile, had begun an affair with SS Lieutenant-Colonel Schulze-Kossens. In other news, Hitler’s chief architect, Albert Speer, was having a fling with film-maker Leni Riefenstahl. Three members of Hitler’s private staff had been sent to a special venereal disease clinic in Austria. Martin Bormann, chief of Hitler’s secretarial staff, kept a mistress at his ski chalet in Obersalzberg, with the complicity of his wife.
    There was never anything critical about Hitler himself. That