"Hitler, he only had one . . ."

A meticulously organised British propaganda campaign to spread tales of paedophilia and perversion among leading Nazis has been unearthed by new research.

The research among files at the national archives in Kew, London, has revealed in full the work of a secret intelligence unit of the Foreign Office. The unit was run by Sefton Delmer, a British tabloid journalist who had been brought up in Berlin.

Much of the information was thought to have been destroyed after the war but new pictures, transcripts of broadcasts and Cabinet Office files have gradually emerged this year from government archives and private collections.

They reveal the full extent of Delmer’s “spin” operation at the political intelligence department as well as the unease at his tactics felt by some figures in the British government. . .

“Before, some of the evidence, which has come out in dribs and drabs, was seen as an aberration but we can now show it as a systematic and concerted policy,” said David Monaghan, a historian and producer of Sex Bomb, a forthcoming Channel 4 programme that will detail the story of Delmer’s operation.

Delmer’s stories, distributed on obscene postcards and in lurid radio broadcasts, include imagined stories of SS troops assembling the “perfect Aryan girl” from the legs, arms and torsos of Berlin air raid victims. Other black propaganda included stories of wandering pederasts preying on children in family homes.

Delmer realised that leaflets featuring pornography were kept or circulated among soldiers, while everyday propaganda sheets were quickly discarded. His mock radio personalities also broadcast sexually explicit material to German combat personnel in the field. U-boat crews were entertained by a jovially smutty character created by Delmer called “der Chef” — the Chief — voiced by a German émigré called Paul Saunders.

Saunders told dirty jokes to win the trust of the audience before naming actual streets and house numbers destroyed by allied bombing raids to upset morale and, it was hoped, ensure that some men who had lost homes were sent home on compassionate leave.

“The British have never been seen to have benefited in an obvious way from civilian casualties before, so this is quite a damning revelation,” added Monaghan. . .

Delmer also capitalised on the racial fears already prevalent in Germany, disseminating a picture painted by his wife of a black farm worker having sex with a German housewife.

One of his acts in the final stages of the war was to distribute explicit drawings of the sons of German soldiers being raped by male Hitler Youth leaders, and wives having lesbian sex because they were “lonely”.

A number of British ministers raised concerns at the obscenity of Delmer’s work. The documents reveal how Stafford Cripps, the left-leaning lord privy seal in Winston Churchill’s wartime government, tried to get der Chef banned after hearing a broadcast about an orgy between an admiral, his mistress, four sailors and a “helmet”.

Cripps is shown in government documents accusing Delmer of running a “beastly pornographic organisation”. In 1941 he urged 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.”

From today's Times of London. More on the title reference here.

Posted by David on June 20, 2004 12:25 PM