How a British Radio Show Used Humor and ‘Fake News’ to Fight the Nazis
The story of a fake radio show that undermined the power of the Nazis.
In the evening of May 23, 1941, a man who called himself ‘der Chef’ (‘The Chief’), appeared on the radio, broadcasting from a radio station called Gustav Siegfried Eins (G.S. 1), and proceeded to spread fake news and scandalous rumors about the Nazis.
It was later revealed that the station and broadcaster’s persona was in fact, the brainchild of former BBC German service announcer Sefton Delmer.
Hier ist Gustav Siegfried Eins
The unknown voice of ‘der Chef’ echoed over the radio as he spewed foul language, extremist rhetoric, and graphically pornographic descriptions to describe various events involving the corruption and incompetence of members of the Nazi Party and of the Nazi cause itself.
In this first broadcast, he openly criticized Hitler’s former deputy Fuhrer and confidante, Rudolf Hess, claiming that whenever Hess was faced with a crisis, he,
“packs himself a white flag and flies off to throw himself and us on the mercy of that flat-footed bastard of a drunken old cigar-smoking Jew, Churchill.”
