"Any reference to Jews on the wireless might prove a double-edged weapon" : Jewish images in the British propaganda campaign towards the German public, 1938-1939

Abstract

Although the anti-Jewish pogroms staged by the Nazis on 9-10 November 1938 took place shortly after the start of British German-language broadcasting, British propaganda did not report about Kristallnacht and the subsequent intensification of Nazi anti-Jewish policy. This article analyses the representation, or rather non-representation, of the ‘Jewish question’ in British German-language propaganda during 1938-39 and explores the reasons for the conspicuous absence of reports about the Jewish persecution, and indeed of almost all Jewish topics. Four causes for this absence are identified: foreign and defence policy aims; the fear of playing into the hands of Nazi propaganda; certain British assumptions about the German mentality, in particular about the spread of anti-Semitic attitudes among the German public; and finally, latent anti-Semitic tendencies in the British bureaucracy and fears of stirring up domestic anti-Semitism.