SEX BOMB

SCRIPT

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Part Three

Archive Footage: Warships.

NARRATOR:
BY 1943 THE NAVY WAS FIGHTING AN INCREASINGLY DESPERATE BATTLE IN THE ATLANTIC AGAINST THE U-BOATS. IT FELT IT NEEDED ITS OWN DISINFORMATION TO COUNTER GERMAN PROPAGANDA AND TO DEMORALIZE THE U-BOATMEN. SO THEY THEN TURNED TO DELMER. WHO SEIZED THE OPPORTUNITY TO RAISE THE PROPAGANDA STAKES.

Archive footage:
U – Boats

Reconstruction:
Pan up Microphone stand. Full red lips approach the Microphone.

NARRATOR:
AND ON THE 22ND OF MARCH 1943, 19 YEAR OLD AGNES BEURNELLE BECAME THE VOICE OF ATLANTIKSENDER.

Vicki:
This is Vicki speaking. Saying hello to all our friends in the Veermacht.

Archive footage:
U-boatmen listening to Vicki.

Vicki:
It shouldn't take us long to get acquainted. Not if we take it easy. Just imagine you and I at a tiny table for two. A glass or Riesling - My eyes look into yours. And in the background...

Herr Bredo: (watch Officer U288)
(laughs). Look, everything what is forbidden is interesting, ya?

NARRATOR:
HORST BREDO, WATCH OFFICER OF U-BOAT 288, REMEMBERS VERY WELL LISTENING TO VICKI ON ATLANTIKSENDER.

Herr Bredo:
Ya - she had an erotic voice. I remember that she had an erotic voice and a lot of our sailors said flowaaar! - You know what I mean.

Interviewer:
Have you ever seen a picture of Vicki?

Herr Bredo:
No.

Interviewer:
Shall I show you one?

Herr Bredo:
Ya - I can get it? A copy?

Interviewer:
Yes.

Herr Bredo:
Oh thank you. Oh look! She's nice. If we had, if there would be television aboard of U-boats and they saw these pictures, maybe a lot of them would say, the war is finished, I go over to the English girls. (laughs). No, no-that was a joke, please excuse me.

Vicki:
Now the music changes. You stand up tall and handsome. Will you dance you say. I smile and move into your arms. And we glide off together.

NARRATOR:
WITH ATLANTIKSENDER, DELMER PUT ANOTHER OF HIS RULES OF PROPAGANDA INTO PRACTICE. THAT PROPAGANDA RELIED ENTIRELY ON TELLING THE TRUTH. ONLY BY HAVING REPUTATION FOR TRUTH AND ACCURACY COULD YOU SLIP THE LIE BY. THE BLACK HEART OF ATLANTIKSENDER WAS TO BE INTELLIGENCE. ATLANTIKSENDER WAS TO BE THE U-BOATMAN'S FRIEND - BUT A FALSE FRIEND. BECAUSE THE STATION HAD A DARKER MISSION.

Dr Ortwin Buchbender:
Well the trumps cards were music first - jazz with a German flair and flavour and news of course, The intelligence was excellent, much better than the German intelligence.

NARRATOR:
THE ARMED SERVICES GAVE DELMER ACCESS TO THEIR INTELLIGENCE GLEANED FROM INTERROGATING CAPTURED U-BOATMEN. IN FACT THEY EVEN GOT SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE SPECIFICALLY FOR HIM.

NARRATOR:
ONE OF THE NAVAL INTELLIGENCE INTERROGATORS WHO GOT DELMER'S INTELLIGENCE, WAS CHARLES WHEELER.

Charles Wheeler:
The really important stuff was to try and find out what the latest German technological innovations were In addition to that, we were, as a sideline, collecting information for the propaganda services, for the black radio stations. For example, if we had a prisoner He might not be willing to talk about radar but he might be willing to tell you where he went in the evenings if he went ashore on shore.

Reconstruction of Interrogation

Charles Wheeler:
We'd collect this information in as much detail as possible - the names of the whores in the local whore house they used to go to - this sort of thing. I was as much detail as possible - and pass this on down the line to the propaganda people who would then incorporate it in their programmes

Herr Bredo:
It was for us a real miracle what they sometimes knew about us. They knew our names, they knew our birthdays, they knew the birthdays of our mother and father and so on. So that we thought they knew everything. And the not so intelligent people, when-then they made their smear campaign against Germany or against the German navy or against the German U-boats, then they said -when they knew this, maybe that is also right.

Charles Wheeler:
You imagine you're sitting in a U-Boat base in France and you're listening to one of these black radio stations and you suddenly find that they know all about the base and they know about the whore houses, they know about the bars, they know names of officers at the base and so on - you suddenly think, oh my God, we're infiltrated, there are spies in here. So that gives the black radio programme credibility.

Reconstruction:
Vicki on microphone

Vicki:
I smile and move into your arms and we glide off together our hearts beating in time to 'I love you truly'.

NARRATOR:
DELMER USED SEX AND MUSIC TO LURE HIS LISTENER, INTELLIGENCE ABOUT THEIR PRIVATE LIVES TO IMPRESS THEM - AND THEN YET MORE INTELLIGENCE, THIS TIME FROM THE AIR-FORCE, TO INJECT HIS POISON.

Reconstruction: Air Recon

NARRATOR:
THE AIR FORCE LET HIM SEE THE RECONNAISSANCE PHOTOS OF THAT EVENING'S AIR RAID AS SOON AS THEY CAME IN. BY COMPARING THEM WITH MAPS OF THE CITIES HIS TEAM WAS ABLE TO COMPILE LISTS OF THE STREETS AND EVEN INDIVIDUAL HOUSES THAT HAD BEEN BOMBED.

NARRATOR:
U-BOATMEN WOULD SUDDENLY HEAR THE NAME OF THEIR STREET READ OUT.

Reconstruction:
Male announcer reading out street names.

Herr Bredo:
I'm a Berlin boy, ya - I come from Berlin - Marine felder? Daimler Benz that was the big plant-big firm. Ya, we lived about one and a half kilometre from Daimler Benz.

Archive Footage:
Bombing and maps.

Marion Whitehorn:
I remember correcting the Hamburg ones which was horrendous. It named every number of every street all over Hamburg and it got longer and longer and longer

Male announcer:
Mine Damen and Herren reports are just coming in of a raid in progress over Cologne. The whole south side is on fire.

Memoirs of Delmer:
We would sometimes describe the raid as if it was still going on. With harrowing eye witness accounts of men and women and children being caught up in the melting asphalt.

Male announcer:
His brave fire fighters are risking their lives to save innocent lives. Reports are that the enemy have bombed Hamburg, Hanover and Berlin.

NARRATOR:
THE U-BOATMEN WOULD NEVER KNOW IF THEIR LOVED ONES WERE AMONG THE LIVING.

NARRATOR:
OR THE DEAD.

Archive footage: lined up corpses of bombing victims.

Herr Bredo:
So we had been anxious - happened something to my house, happened something to my family. That made anxious, that made-gave some inner problems, you know.

Pan to dead child.

NARRATOR:
AND THE LEAFLETS TOO CARRIED THE SAME MESSAGE. LEAFLETS SHOWING THE FACES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN FROM THE MORGUE WERE DROPPED ON THE U-BOAT HOME BASES.

Vicki:
Now until we meet again I return to my spinster existence, and that's no life for me. Goodnight comrades. You'll be hearing from me. Good Luck!

Sex and Death - Vicki and mutilated bodies..

Image:
Black oily ink swirling and twisting.

NARRATOR:
THIS WAS THE POISON IN DELMER'S COCKTAIL.

Dr Ortwin Buchbender:
Propagandists don't know the Geneva Convention, for instance, to do this of course. Tommy Delmer said sometimes, there's no Geneva Convention in Black Propaganda. All is allowed. Deception, lies, subversive propaganda and all these things. Nasty things of course. He was the king of nasty things without any doubt.

End of Part 3