Sefton Delmer

Denis Sefton Delmer (May 24, 1904-September 4, 1979) was a British journalist and propagandist for the British government.

Early life

Delmer was born in Berlin, Germany, his father, Frederick Sefton Delmer, was an Australian lecturer in English at Berlin University and on the outbreak of the First World War was interned as an enemy alien. In 1917 Frederick Delmer and his family were allowed to go to England.

Sefton was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he obtained a second class degree in German.

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. While 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 general election Delmer travelled with Hitler on his private aircraft. He was also with Hitler when he inspected the Reichstag Fire. During this period Delmer was criticized for being a Nazi sympathizer and for a time the British government thought he was in the pay of the Nazi regime. Ironically the 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 an important one.

In 1933 Delmer was sent to France as head of the Daily Express Paris Bureau. In 1935 Delmer married Isabel Nicholas (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 German Army in 1939. He also reported on the German western offensive in 1940.

Delmer returned to England and worked, for a time, as an announcer for the German service of the BBC. After Adolf Hitler broadcast a speech from the Reichstag offering peace terms, Delmer responded immediately, stating the British cast the terms in "your lying, stinking teeth."

In September 1940 he was recruited by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) to organize black propaganda broadcasts to Nazi Germany. His first, most notable success, was a shortwave station, Gustav Siegfried Eins, which came on the air shortly after the flight of Rudolf Hess to England in 1940. Gustav Sigfried Eins featured "Der Chef," an unrepentant Nazi, who disparaged both Churchill ("that flatfooted son of a drunken Jew") and the "Parteikommune", the "Party Communists" who betrayed the Nazi revolution. When Stafford Cripps discovered what Delmer was up to he wrote to Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary: "If this is the sort of thing that is needed to win the war, why, I'd rather lose it."

Soldatensender Calais was another clandestine radio station directed by Delmer for the German armed forces. Transmitting from Crowborough, Soldatensender Calais broadcast a combination of good 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. Delmer also oversaw the production of a daily 'grey' German-language newspaper titled "Nachrichten für die Truppe" with much of its text being based on the Soldatensender broadcasts. Nachrichten was disseminated over the German frontlines each morning by the Special Leaflet Squadron of the US 8th Air Force.

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 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, Trial Sinister (1961), Black Boomerang (1962) and several other books including Weimar Germany (1972) and The Counterfeit Spy (1973).

Sefton Delmer died at Lamarsh, Essex, in 1979.

External links

• Sefton Delmer -Black Boomerang: Sefton Delmer was head of British Black Propaganda during WWII. 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 WWI to the present day.

• Gray and Black Radio Propaganda against Nazi Germany Extensively illustrated paper describing the Allied effort in WW II to undermine Germany through unidentified or misidentified radio broadcasts.