Honest reporting???

[timmy872]

On the whole was german reporting of the war honest and accurate, bar obvious propaganda as compared to anyone else? I watched a wochenshau from 6/7 June 44 and it showed the invasion rather than maybe saddam husseins regime would have done
I know each side kept shocking losses out of the press at times but some defeats can have good moral building prospects...
Any info either way would be apreciated.

[phylo_roadking]

Werll, the first and obvious one that comes to mind is the famous Stalingrad "Christmas" radio broadcast on eich radio....when in fact Stalingrad had gone radio-quiet the week before...

[Jan-Hendrik]

Was any "reporting" done in WW2 'honest'...or was it part of the war propaganda of each nation?

You rather stick to the internal documents of the Armies Staffs' ...



Jan-Hendrik

[timmy872]

what i meant was more the course of the war... each side would play their part up or down depending on what sounds the best but did the germans accuratly report the overall events? i heard that the japanese kept Midway and the loss of 3 carriers quiet (dont know if never mentioned it or just "drip fed" the news) anything like that?

the stalingrad radio message was mentioned (good properganda for christmas) but i assume the fall of stalingrad was infact told to the public at or around the time it fell... or was it???

armies being wiped out in russia etc, was this made public or individual deaths notified without a link to the big picture.

basically if the germans lost did they say they lost?

regards

[Alex Coles]

what i meant was more the course of the war... each side would play their part up or down depending on what sounds the best but did the germans accuratly report the overall events? i heard that the japanese kept Midway and the loss of 3 carriers quiet (dont know if never mentioned it or just "drip fed" the news) anything like that?

the stalingrad radio message was mentioned (good properganda for christmas) but i assume the fall of stalingrad was infact told to the public at or around the time it fell... or was it???

armies being wiped out in russia etc, was this made public or individual deaths notified without a link to the big picture.

basically if the germans lost did they say they lost?

regards

Nazi media attempted to distort the progress of the war as much as possible. Antony Beevor in his book Berlin states that by January 1945 (by which the Soviets were advancing in to Germany), Goebbels was trying to make out that the front was still as far in front as Warsaw. Hitler also prematurely declared victory at Stalingrad; a few months later in late January 1943 once the situation had become hopeless, the Nazis switched their tune by declaring that "[...] the gigantic struggle to the 'fortress' of Stalingrad where the Russians were making a last, desperate effort despite the fact that they were at the end of their tether.The enemy had been forced to send their last hope of half-grown children and tired old men into the front line formations. This undernourised, freezing human material needed to be cowed by whip and gun and driven to death by the machine-guns of the commissars. Against the savagery of the Bolshevik hordes, the most heroic battle in German history was being fought on the Volga from generals down to the lowest man" (Joachim Wieder's memoirs in his book Stalingrad, the speech has been paraphrased).

I think it's safe to say that with victories the Nazi propaganda would happily report fairly accurately on the situation (e.g fall Gelb) and that Stalingrad was simply a 'victory' declared too early. On the other hand, with defeats the media would grossly distort the actual situation by ignoring the reality of the situation, skipping parts which would possibly demoralise the population at home and try to focus on other things which could make things look either quiet or that they were still winning in some way. These of course are the kind of things that any media attempts to do during war-time but I believe that the Nazis took it to the next level.

[lwd]

Was any "reporting" done in WW2 'honest'...or was it part of the war propaganda of each nation?
...

I'd give that a qualified Yes. Remember that propaganda doesn't mean false it means information disseminated for political purpose. Thus accurate reporting can be very effective porpaganda. My impression is that in many cases allied reporting was honest in that there were few intentional fallacies propagated. However security concerns lead to incomplete reporting in many cases and of course claims were accepted at face value in other cases. The counter point of this would be cases like the British effort to steer the V-1s off target by very careful publication of "strikes".

[phylo_roadking]

When it came to actual "war" news I.E. on the fighting, the British at least were "less than forthcoming; we have the example of May 1940, when no real reverses were reported back in the UK until the first ods'n'sods arrived back from the French coast in the few days immediately before DYNAMO. The British very early instituted very strict reporting rules.....AND war news was passed on to correspondents by Whitehall. There was no actual embedding of reporters like today, exept for parties covering things like the King's tour of Northern France in the Phoney War - but these too were very strictly controlled/regimented.