Sefton Delmer

Sefton Delmer (1958)

Denis Sefton Delmer (born 24 May 1904, Berlin, Germany – died 4 September 1979, Lamarsh, Essex) was a British journalist and propagandist for the British government. Fluent in German, he became friendly with Ernst Röhm who arranged for him to interview Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. During the Second World War he led a black propaganda campaign against Hitler by radio from England.

Early life

Denis Sefton Delmer, known familiarly as "Tom", was born in Berlin, Germany, but was registered as a British citizen with the British Consulate. His parents were from Australia. His father, Frederick Sefton Delmer, born in Hobart, Tasmania, was Professor of English Literature at Berlin University and author of a standard textbook for German schools. On the outbreak of the First World War he was interned in Ruhleben internment camp as an enemy alien. In 1917, in a prisoner exchange between the British and German governments, the family was repatriated to England.

Denis was educated at Friedrichwerdersches Gymnasium, Berlin, St Paul's School, London and Lincoln College, Oxford, where he obtained a second class degree in modern languages. He was brought up to speak only German until the age of five and as late as 1939 spoke English with a slight accent.

Early career and work during wartime

After leaving university he worked as a freelance journalist until he was recruited by the Daily Express to become head of its new Berlin Bureau. Whilst in Germany, he became friendly with Ernst Röhm who arranged for him to become the first British journalist to interview Adolf Hitler.

In the 1932 German general election, Delmer travelled with Hitler aboard his private aircraft. He was also present with Hitler when Hitler inspected the Reichstag fire. During this period, Delmer was criticised for being a Nazi sympathiser and, for a time, the British government thought he was in the pay of the Nazi regime. Perversely, Nazi leaders were convinced that Delmer was a member of the British secret service; his denials of any involvement only served to strengthen their belief that not only was he a member, but also an important one.

In 1933, Delmer was sent to France as head of the Daily Express Paris Bureau. In 1935, Delmer married Isabel Nichols (she later married composer Constant Lambert and after his death married again in 1955 to composer Alan Rawsthorne). Delmer covered important stories in Europe including the Spanish Civil War and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in 1939. He also reported on the German western offensive in 1940.

Delmer returned to Britain and worked for a time, as an announcer for the German service of the BBC. After Hitler broadcast a speech from the Reichstag offering peace terms, Delmer responded immediately, stating the British cast the terms in "your lying, stinking teeth." The instant—and unauthorized—rejection produced a great impact on Germany, where Goebbels concluded it had to come from the government. The speed unquestionably led the great impact, which authorization would have prevented; this produced consternation in the government, as the effect was desirable, but they did not know whether such a spokesman would again happen to say what the government wanted.

In September 1940, Delmer was recruited by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), to organize black propaganda broadcasts to Nazi Germany. Leonard Ingrams gained clearance for Delmer to work for the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office. The operation was based at Wavendon Tower in what is now Milton Keynes new town. Selmer's creations would join a number of other "Research Units" operating propaganda broadcasts.

The concept was that the radio station should undermine Hitler by pretending to be a fervent Hitler-Nazi supporter. His first, most notable success, was a shortwave station: Gustav Siegfried Eins (Gustav Siegfried One) which was G3 in the Research units. It would be “run” by the character "Der Chef”, an unrepentant Nazi, who disparaged both Winston Churchill ("that flatfooted son of a drunken Jew") and the "Parteikommune", the "Party Communists" who betrayed the Nazi revolution. The station name: "Gustav Siegfried Eins" (abbreviated to "GS1") left a question in listeners' minds – did it mean Geheimsender 1: (Secret Transmitter 1) or Generalstab 1 (General Staff 1) [?].

GS1 went on the air on evening of 23 May 1941. Der Chef played by Peter Secklemann, a former Berlin journalist, was the (then) only member of the team to have arrived at the discreet redbrick house known as "The Rookery" in Aspley Guise, Bedfordshire. Another journalist Johannes Reinholz played an adjutant to the Chief. Rudolf Hess had arrived in Scotland 12 days later.

When Stafford Cripps discovered what Delmer was involved with (through the intervention of Richard Crossman) he wrote to Anthony Eden, then Foreign Secretary: "If this is the sort of thing that is needed to win the war, why, I'd rather lose it." Delmer was defended by Robert Bruce Lockhart who pointed out the need to reach the sadist in the German nature. GS1 ran for 700 broadcasts before Delmer killed it off in late 1943 with gunfire heard over the radio intimating the authorities had caught up with Der Chef.

Delmer created several stations and was successful through a careful use of intelligence using gossip intercepted in German mail to neutral countries to create credible stories. Delmer's credit within the intelligence agencies was such that the Admiralty sought him out to target German submarine crews with demoralizing news bulletins. For this Delmer had access to Aspidistra, a 500 Kw radio transmitter sourced from RCA in the US, (their largest off-the shelf-model), which the Section VIII bought for £165,000. Use of Aspidistra, which began in 1942, was split between PWE, BBC and the RAF. Delmer's creation was Deutsche Kurzwellensender Atlantik (or popularly Atlantiksender). This station used US jazz (banned within Germany as decadent) and up-to-date dance music from Germany (extracted via Sweden and RAF courier) as well as an in-house German dance band. Important details on naval procedures came from anti-Nazis identified in POW camps and mail were sifted to create personalized announcements. Agnes Bernelle "played" the seductive "Vicki" and announced news bulletins which effectively undermined crew morale - one (fake) announcement being credited with causing a submarine commander to surrender to the Allies.^{[citation needed]}

Christ the King (G.8) broadcast an attack on the conscience of religious Germans, telling of the horrors of the labour and concentration camps, through a German priest.^{[citation needed]}

Soldatensender Calais ("Calais Armed Forces Radio Station") was another clandestine radio station directed by Delmer at German armed forces. Transmitting from Crowborough, Soldatensender Calais broadcast a combination of popular music, "cover" support of the war, and "dirt" - items inserted to demoralize German forces. Delmer's propaganda stories included spreading rumours that foreign workers were sleeping with the wives of German soldiers serving overseas. The station, broadcast by Aspidistra, was popular on the German home front also. Delmer oversaw the production of a daily "grey" German-language newspaper titled Nachrichten für die Truppe ("News for the Troops") which first appeared in May 1944 much of its text being based on the Soldatensender Calais broadcasts. Nachrichten für die Truppe was written by a team provided to Sefton by SHAEF and was disseminated over Germany, Belgium and France each morning by the Special Leaflet Squadron of the US 8th Air Force.^{[citation needed]}

As the fighting progressed into Germany itself, black propaganda was used to create an impression of an anti-Nazi resistance movement. Delmer criticised this later as the "black boomerang" with Nazis claiming they had been allied to this fictitious movement. With the end of the war in Europe, Delmer shaved his beard off and advised his colleagues to say nothing of the work they had been in lest, as the Nazis did after the First World War, the Germans could claim they had not been beaten militarily but by underhanded means.

Later career and retirement

After the Second World War, Delmer became chief foreign affairs reporter for the Daily Express. Over the next fifteen years Delmer covered nearly every major foreign news story for the newspaper. Lord Beaverbrook sacked Delmer in 1959 over an expenses issue. and he retired to Lamarsh in Essex, near to Little Sampford where his ex-wife Isabel lived with her third husband. He wrote two volumes of autobiography, Trail Sinister (1961), Black Boomerang (1962) and several other books including Weimar Germany (1972) and The Counterfeit Spy (1971). David Hare based his play Licking Hitler on Black Boomerang, and his plot included the faked, on-air discovery and shooting of the broadcaster, in the same way as Delmer had finished the career of "Der Chef".

External links

• Sefton Delmer - Black Boomerang: Sefton Delmer was head of British black propaganda^{[citation needed]} during World War II. His book Black Boomerang tells the story of his work.
• PsyWar.Org - Black Propaganda and propaganda leaflets database: A website with various articles on black propaganda and psychological warfare. The site has an extensive library of propaganda leaflets from World War I to the present day.
• Gray and Black Radio Propaganda against Nazi Germany Extensively illustrated paper describing the Allied effort in World War II to undermine Germany through unidentified or misidentified radio broadcasts.
• Yours Faithfully, Adolf Hitler Correspondence between Delmer and Hitler in 1931.