Hitler's Irish Voices: The Story of German Radio's Wartime Irish Service

It is nearly 75 years since Nazi Germany began targeting neutral Ireland with night-time radio propaganda programmes following the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. In one of Dr. Josef Goebbels' more unusual ploys, two German academics were chosen to bring Hitler's message into Irish homesteads - as much for their party loyalty as for their command of spoken Irish. The Germans knew that Irish was not widely spoken but, nonetheless, they wanted to target extreme nationalists with a hard hitting anti-English slant which included lurid tales of British Army brutality in pre- independence Ireland. In addition, the regime in Berlin wanted Dublin to stay out of the war. But a more sinister aspect of the propaganda beamed to Irish radio listeners was the fact that it contained coded messages for German sympathisers, including the IRA, in Ireland. Hitler's Irish Voices is the first detailed study of the Nazis' wartime propaganda message to neutral Ireland. It includes pen-pictures of the broadcasters, details of how the service began and how its message evolved as the war turned inexorably against the Third Reich. The book contains eye-witness accounts of what was going on behind the scenes in the Berlin radio centre as Hartmann's team of broadcasters sought to persuade the Irish public that a German victory was in their best interests.