The Radio as the Eight Great Power

The Nazis were convinced of the power of the spoken word.

Adolf Hitler ordered shortly after his rise to power in 1933, German radio manufacturers to produce the Volksempfänger ("People's Receiver") named VE301 as an inexpensive , means to give every German family access to the Nazi Party's Radio broadcasts, to ensure that the Nazi propaganda machine was able to transmit to all homes.

The name VE301 was taken to remind at the 30.1.1933 day of Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

Made to Third Reich specifications, its an insensitive two-tube regenerative receiver which was not capable of receiving distant allied radio stations - the chief design criterion.


(Poster text: Throughout Germany, everyone listens to the Führer)



In this speech* given 70 years ago, on 18 August 1933, Goebbels develops his thinking on the directions German radio would take. The occasion was the opening of a radio exhibition. As Goebbels notes, a cheap radio receiver, the Volksempfänger, had just been introduced as a way of making the radio affordable for the average citizen.


*link to website with "this speech"



A welknown joke of the 30's was:
Lieber Gott, mach mich taub,
dass ich nicht am Radio schraub!

(Dear lord, let me become deaf
so that I don't turn the radio dial)

That was, because listening to foreign stations was to punished with jail, later capital punishment:

(Text: Listening to foreign radio staions is a severe crime against national security of our nation. On order of the Führer, this will be punished with longduring penal servitudes.