Sefton Delmer,OBE | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Delmer at theFriedland Refugee Camp in 1958 | |
| Born | Denis Sefton Delmer (1904-05-24)24 May 1904 |
| Died | 4 September 1979(1979-09-04) (aged 75) |
| Nationality | British |
| Education |
|
| Alma mater | Lincoln College, Oxford |
| Known for | Propaganda work for theBritish inSecond World War |
| Spouse | |
Denis Sefton DelmerOBE (24 May 1904 – 4 September 1979) was a Britishjournalist of Australian heritage andpropagandist for the British government during theSecond World War.
Born inBerlin and fluent inGerman, he became friendly withErnst Röhm, who arranged for him to interviewAdolf Hitler in 1931. As an announcer for the BBC German service in 1939, his provocative on-air reaction to Hitler's offer of peace caused the German authorities to add his name to theSpecial Search List for arrest after they had invaded Britain. During the war, he led ablack propaganda campaign against Hitler by radio from England.
Denis Sefton Delmer, known familiarly as "Tom", was born in Berlin as a British subject, as a son ofAustralian parents living in Germany. His father,Frederick Sefton Delmer, was British of Australian heritage, born inHobart,Tasmania, who became Professor of English Literature atBerlin University and author of a standard textbook for German schools.[1][2]
On the outbreak of theFirst World War his father was interned inRuhleben internment camp, near Berlin, as anenemy alien. In 1917, the Delmer family was repatriated to England in a prisoner exchange between the British and German governments. He was brought up to speak only German until the age of five,[3] and as late as 1939 spoke English with a slight accent.[2]
Delmer was educated at theFriedrichswerdersches Gymnasium [de], Berlin,St Paul's School, London, andLincoln College, Oxford, where he obtained a second-class degree in modern languages.
After leaving university, Delmer worked as afreelance journalist until he was recruited by theDaily Express to become head of its new Berlin Bureau. Whilst in Germany, he became friendly withErnst Röhm, who arranged for him to become the firstBritish journalist to interviewAdolf Hitler, in April 1931.[4]
In the1932 German federal election, Delmer travelled with Hitler aboard his private aircraft. He was "embedded with Nazi party activists" at this time, "taking copious notes on everything from the style of the would-beFührer's oratory to the group think that lay behind the bond he was forming with the German people."[5] He was also present in 1933 when Hitler inspected the aftermath of theReichstag fire. During this period, Delmer was criticised for being aNazi sympathiser, and for a time, the British government thought he was in the pay of the Nazis. At the same time, the Nazi leaders were convinced Delmer was a member ofMI6; his denials of any involvement only served to strengthen their belief that he was not only a member, but an important one.[6]
In 1933, Delmer was sent toFrance as head of theDaily Express Paris Bureau. In 1936, Delmer married the artistIsabel Nichols.[7] Delmer covered important events in Europe including theSpanish Civil War (reporting withErnest Hemingway,Martha Gellhorn andHerbert Matthews[8][9]) and theinvasion of Poland by theWehrmacht in 1939. He also reported on the Germanwestern offensive in 1940.
Delmer returned to Britain and worked for a time as an announcer for theGerman Service of theBBC. After Hitler broadcast a speech from theReichstag offering peace terms, Delmer responded immediately, stating that the British hurl the terms "right back at you, in your evil-smelling teeth".[10] When, in 1945, Delmer learnt that he had been placed on Germany'sSpecial Search List for arrest after the invasion of Britain, he concluded that it was this broadcast that had put him there.[11] Delmer's instant (but unauthorised) rejection had a great impact on Germany, whereJoseph Goebbels concluded it had to have come from the government.[12] The forthright reaction caused consternation in Berlin, where it was assumed that it could not have been made without official clearance, but the lack of authorisation was later condemned in a House of Commons debate, withRichard Stokes, M.P., deploring that the response had been made without the authority of parliament.[13][14][15]
Delmer considered that British wartime attempts to counter German propaganda were misguided, with broadcasts aimed at anti-Nazis who did not need convincing, in what today we call anecho chamber of like-minded people. When he was in a position to do so, he broadcast posing as a fanatical Nazi who was critical of the Nazi leadership, using salacious material about officials'sadomasochistic orgies, luring in listeners and breaking taboos about insulting Nazi officials. About 40% of German soldiers listened to Delmer's stations; they were among the top three in Munich, and very effective.[16]
In September 1940, Delmer was recruited by thePolitical Warfare Executive (PWE) to organiseblack propaganda broadcasts to Nazi Germany as part of apsychological warfare campaign.[17] Leonard Ingrams of the PWE gained clearance for Delmer to work for the Political Intelligence Department of theForeign Office. The operation joined a number of other "research units" operating propaganda broadcasts, based atWavendon Tower (now inMilton Keynes), but in Spring 1941, Delmer was given his own base, a former private house in nearbyAspley Guise.[18][19]
The concept was that the radio station would undermine Hitler by pretending to be a fervent Hitler-Nazi supporter. Under Delmer's leadership a number of notable people played a part:Muriel Spark,[20]Ellic Howe,[21] and Delmer's college friend, the cartoonistOsbert Lancaster. Some of Lancaster'sDaily Express cartoons were reprinted into booklets aimed at civilians under German occupation and dropped by theRAF.[22]
Delmer's first, most notable success was a shortwave station:Gustav Siegfried Eins (Gustave Siegfried One), G3 in the Research units. It was "run" by the character "Der Chef", an unrepentant Nazi, who disparaged bothWinston Churchill ("that flatfooted son of a drunken Jew") and the "Parteikommune", the "Party Commune" supporters who betrayed the Nazi revolution. The station name, "Gustav Siegfried Eins" (phonetic alphabet for "GS1") left a question in listeners' minds – did it meanGeheimsender 1: (Secret Transmitter 1) orGeneralstab 1 (General Staff 1)?
GS1 went on the air on the evening of 23 May 1941 — earlier than intended, to exploit the capture of Hitler's deputy,Rudolf Hess, in Britain.Peter Seckelmann [de], a former German writer of detective stories who had fled Nazi Germany, was recruited from aPioneer Corps bomb-disposal squad in London and he was the first member of the team to arrive at the discreet house known as "The Rookery" in Aspley Guise.[23] He played "Der Chef". (In Delmer'sautobiographyBlack Boomerang he acknowledges that "Some of the names of persons mentioned in this book have been camouflaged [ … ]" and Seckelmann was there named "Paul Sanders". ) A journalist,Frank Lynder [de], using the name "Johannes Reinholz", arrived soon after and played the adjutant to "Der Chef".[24][25][26] Both men assisted Delmer with the scripts.[27] The recordings were made on disc and taken by courier for transmission from a Foreign Office transmitter at nearbySignal Hill, Gawcott.[19]
When SirStafford Cripps discovered what Delmer was involved with (through the intervention ofRichard Crossman, who had sent him a transcript from the broadcast of one of Delmer's more salacious inventions), Cripps wrote toAnthony Eden, thenForeign Secretary: "If this is the sort of thing that is needed to win the war, why, I'd rather lose it."[28] Delmer was defended byRobert Bruce Lockhart, who pointed out the need to reach the sadist in the German nature. GS1 ran for 700 broadcasts before Delmer killed it off in late 1943 with gunfire heard over the radio intimating that the authorities had caught up with "Der Chef". Owing to an error by a non-German-speaking transmitter engineer, the programme was accidentally repeated and "Der Chef's" dramatic on-air murder was broadcast twice.[29]
Delmer created several stations and was successful through a careful use of intelligence using gossip intercepted in German mail to neutral countries to create credible stories. Delmer's credit within the intelligence agencies was such that theAdmiralty sought him out to target German submarine crews with demoralising news bulletins. For this, Delmer had access toAspidistra, a 500 kW radio transmitter obtained fromRCA in the US (their largest off-the-shelf-model), which Section VIII bought for £165,000. Use of Aspidistra, which began in 1942, was split between PWE, theBBC, and theRAF.
Delmer's creation wasDeutscher Kurzwellensender Atlantik (or popularlyAtlantiksender). This station used USjazz (banned within Germany as decadent) and up-to-date dance music from Germany (extracted via Sweden and RAF courier), as well as an in-house German dance band. Important details on naval procedures came from anti-Nazis identified inPOW camps, whose mail was sifted to create personalised announcements. The presenter ("Vicki") wasAgnes Bernelle, a refugee of part-Jewish origin from Berlin.[30]
Christ the King (G.8) broadcast an attack on the conscience of religious Germans, telling of the horrors of the labour and concentration camps, through a German priest.[31]
Soldatensender Calais ("Calais Armed Forces Radio Station") was another clandestine radio station Delmer directed at the German armed forces. Based inMilton Bryan and connected by high-quality telephone lines for transmission from theAspidistra transmitter atCrowborough,[32]Soldatensender Calais producedlive broadcasts, a combination of popular music, "cover" support of the war, and "dirt" – items inserted to demoralise German forces. Delmer's black propaganda sought to propagate rumours that German soldiers' wives were sleeping with the many foreign workers in Germany at the time. Bernelle, again, was presenter.
The station also proved to be popular on the German home front.[33] While the station was in the format of a German military station, it did not pose as an actual Nazi station; but although listeners knew the station was run by the British, they listened to and trusted it, and could use the excuse that they thought it was a legitimate German station if caught listening to it.[16]
Delmer also oversaw the production of a daily "grey" German-language newspaper titledNachrichten für die Truppe ("News for the Troops"), which first appeared in May 1944, much of its text being based on theSoldatensender Calais broadcasts.Nachrichten für die Truppe was written by a team provided to Delmer bySHAEF, and disseminated over Germany, Belgium and France each morning by theSpecial Leaflet Squadron of the USEighth Air Force.[34]
Whenfighting entered Germany itself, black propaganda was used to create an impression of an anti-Nazi resistance movement.
At the end of the war in Europe, Delmer advised his colleagues not to publicise the work they had been involved in, lest unrepentant Nazis claim (as had been the case after theFirst World War), that they had been defeated by unconscionable methods, rather than on the battlefield.[35] Consequently, former Nazis were able to claim, without contradiction, that they had assisted the fictitious resistance movement; Delmer described thisunintended consequence as a "black boomerang".[36][37]
In December 1945, Delmer was appointed an Officer of theOrder of the British Empire (OBE), with the citation specifying merely that he was "Controller of a Division, Foreign Office".[38]
After the Second World War, Delmer returned to theDaily Express as chief foreign affairs reporter.Reinhard Gehlen stated it was Delmer'sDaily Express article of 17 March 1952 which dragged the German intelligence chief into the daylight by unleashing a "flood of further publications".[39] Over the next fifteen years, he covered nearly every major foreign news story for the newspaper. However, he was sacked byLord Beaverbrook in 1959 over an expenses issue,[40] and retired to Lamarsh in Essex, nearLittle Sampford, where his former wife Isabel lived with her third husband. He died at Lamarsh, after a long illness, on 4 September 1979.[2]
Delmer wrote two volumes of autobiography,Trail Sinister (1961) andBlack Boomerang (1962), and several other books, includingWeimar Germany (1972) andThe Counterfeit Spy (1971), an account of theDouble-Cross deception.[41]David Hare based his playLicking Hitler onBlack Boomerang, and his plot included the faked, on-air discovery and shooting of the broadcaster, in the same way as Delmer had finished the career of "Der Chef".[42]
Delmer was the subject of aThis Is Your Life broadcast in 1962, when he was surprised byEamonn Andrews outsideLe Caprice restaurant in London's Mayfair. He was the subject of a book andBBC Radio 4 series byPeter Pomerantsev in 2024.[43][44]
