Radio Mistakes, Moscow 1941 February 25, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
This is a very weird little episode that Beach can’t get out of his head. First, though, some background. From about 13 to 20 October 1941 Moscow lived under the threat of invasion. The German army was practically at the suburbs of the city and the populace thought that they were living on borrowed time. As often in these situations – think of the last week at Singapore before the Japanese arrived – people did very unusual things. Rioters and looters took to the streets and for the only time in its history the Soviet Union lost control of parts of the Bolshevik city. However, the episode that fascinated Beach took place on, of all places, the radio.
16 October with rumours about German paratroopers and German soldiers dressed in Red Guard uniforms doing the rounds, SovInformBuro radio began broadcasting the morning news. In the middle of the announcements a song started playing. Muscovites were probably used to these kind of SNAFUs on Soviet public broadcasting and settled down to listen to a suitably marshal theme. Only the song being played was a German piece, Horst Wessel Lied, the anthem of the Nazi party! The music went on for a minute or so and then disappeared and the news announcements returned.
Where to even begin?! A Russian radio station would very possibly have a copy of Horst Wessel Lied from the days of Soviet-Nazi rapprochement. So that it was played does not mean that the record was actually smuggled into the radio station. But let’s say that the disc was there, under what circumstances could it possibly have gone on the air? It is not clear from the descriptions that Beach has read (none in Russian!) whether the news reader stopped to let the disc play, or whether the record cut in. Could this possibly have been some sort of advanced German radio jamming? Or was it simply a joke that went horribly, horribly wrong? ‘I was trying to make you laugh, I didn’t realize you’d sit on the switch and actually broadcast it!’ etc.
Beach would love to learn more about this episode and if possible discover how many people died as a result. Can anyone help please? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Bruce T with some expert knowledge, 28 Feb 2018. ‘It was likely a Wehrmacht disinfo station operating near the front. The Germans used top of the line equipment for that stuff, their newly invented wire reel to reel recorder/players were rugged and tough, still being copied and used by US forces running the same sort of stations into the Vietnam era. they pulled the fake radio station stunt in Poland in 1939, also. Somewhere around here I’ve got a pic of of one the antenna’s and “portable” transmitter on it’s trailer from that era. God knows how large the generator was to power that behemoth? Disinfo stations were used a bit in along the fronts by both sides. The Americans ran very successful operation from the area around junction of the Moselle and the Rhine using native German speakers from the Midwest as announcers. They had the German populace so confused about the state of affairs using tales of various Wehrmacht unit’s surrendering that the locals weren’t reporting Allied troops wandering around on the German side the locals thinking their war had ended when they heard the reports on that “loyal” radio station.’
