StudienVerlag - Oapen

Memorandum [über BBC-Sendungen für Österreich] [1942]
DV: Ms., o. J. [etwa Ende November 1942], ÖNB 21.566 b
Very close observation on the B.B.C. Austrian transmission over a considerable
period, and several talks which our representatives have had recently with authoritative
officials concerned with propaganda to Austria, lead us once more to deal in a
memorandum with some of the fundamental questions whose satisfactory solution,
in our opinion, is essential to ensure the full effectivness of propaganda to Austria.
The two main points of our criticism are:
1) A discrepancy between the line of propaganda put out by Great Britain and that
of the Soviet Union, and
2) A certain inconsistency in the B.B.C. broadcasts to Austria.
Point 1. The essential difference between the propaganda to Austria from Moscow
and London is that the first appeals to Austria from the national point of view – to
the whole Austrian people, and treats them as a separate nation; it encourages and
calls on them to throw off the foreign domination of their Nazi German rulers and
supports them in their fight for independence and national sovereignty. British
propaganda to Austria, however, does not treat the Austrians as a separate nation,
and therefore fails to develop a consistent line for the struggle for national liberation
[sic] leading to the restoration of Austria’s independence and national sovereignty.
As Nazi propaganda persistently tries to construe differences between Britain
and the Soviet Union, it is the urgent task of those responsible for political warfare:
to render such attempts completely ineffective, and to make the Allied propaganda
to Austria fully effective, by removing this discrepancy.
Point 2. The inconsistency of the B.B.C. transmissions to Austria themselves is that
a line of propaganda which is almost equivalent to a national appeal to the Austrian
people, often changes suddenly and abruptly into exactly the opposite, and actually
emphasizes that the Austrians are not regarded as a separate nation. This is the case
particularly since the recent introduction of the weekly talk by Mr. Richard Crossman,
who in all his broadcasts up to date has stressed that he does not talk „to all
Austrians“, but to „those few“, that „minority“, „those weak group of politically conscious
people“, to his „midnight listeners, the real fighters in Austria – not to those
who indeed tell anti-Nazi jokes, but at the same time boast of ‚our victories‘ when
they talk of Hitler’s „successes“ in these talks, and of recent weeks to an increasing
extent in other broadcasts as well, an incorrectly pessimistic picture of Austria is
given. As far as any call to resist is made, it is not made in the sense of an appeal
to national unity and the national fight for freedom, but in a purely sectional way.
For example, only the workers are called on to develop resistance – and then not as
Austrian workers, as a part of the Austrian people, but as workers pure and simple.
Such broadcasts drastically contradict others, such as, for example, a talk on 22nd
June by Mr. Patrick Smith, in which he spoke of an honourable […?] mutiny of the
second and third Mountain Divisions against their Nazi officers, and reported that in
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