SECRET
P.C. PAPER No. 14.
USE OF RECORDS OP HAW-HAW
(a) Minute from Professor Hilton to D.G. dated 13th March
(b)Comments by Mr. Wellington dated 14th March.
TO: The Director-General.
FROM: Professor Hilton.
In preparing my Talk to the neutral journalists I was wondering how to put across the Haw-Haw quotations from which the arguments would mostly spring, and there came to me the idea of using the technique which was so successful in the case of Sinclair's first broadcast in the series, “The Voice of the Nazi”.
You will remember, if you heard it, that Sinclair illustrated his remarks with extracts from Hitler's speeches delivered in Hitler's own recorded voice. The transition was dramatically most exciting and the method extraordinarily effective.
Following that precedent the suggestion I make is that we should take out of store selected passages from Haw-Haw's broadcasts in English. The passages should be the ones in which he charges us with being an effete plutocracy and in which he speaks of us item by item as steeped in poverty and social injustice. These passages should be put in separate snatches on a gramophone record and droned out every few minutes as actual examples of the nonsense talked by Haw-Haw and as texts on which to tell the story of our social achievements.
But the project immediately develops into something much wider than a mere single address to journalists. If the extracts could be put on an ordinary 10 inch gramophone record it could be reproduced in large numbers and so made available for widespread use. If pains were taken to compose a first-class lecture, the text of it could be printed in the form of “Speakers’ Notes” and it could be sent out, with the record, for delivery by anyone to audiences in club rooms and village halls all over the land.
If you heard the first Sinclair broadcast you will know the effect of these interspersed extracts from Hitler's speeches. It was quite startling. Snatches of Haw-Haw's broadcasts in that tiresome nasal drone would have pretty much the same effect when heard as a cock-shy for some local speaker in the village hall. I think if the whole thing were well composed the demolition of Haw-Haw would be fool-proof.
It would not matter how mediocre the speaker were. He would have nothing to do but read from the text, interspersed by the gramophone snatches of Haw- Haw. It would be the old hired lantern lecture in a new guise. A few roarings and screamings by Hitler himself would improve the flavour and add to the fun.
I do not suggest, of course, that the spoken discourse should be simply in answer to Haw-Haw. There must be no hint of defending ourselves from the attacks or explaining them away. That would not do at all. The text must not be a defence but an attack. Haw-Haw must be made into a canting humbug whose nonsense only serves to show what social triumphs we
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- 2 -have to our credit, and to what a state Hitler has reduced the Germans. The point would be made again and again that whereas we may speak freely in praise or criticism of our social system and so ensure its continuous improvement the German dare not open his mouth except to swallow what is shoved down his throat. We may listen to Haw-Haw but if a German were caught listening once to an English broadcast he'd go to gaol. Twice, he'd go to the block.
I have put this to Mr. Wellington and he is making enquiries as to whether usable records of Haw-Haw's utterances on these subjects are available. If not, I suggest that the B.B.C. monitoring service should start now and put on the cylinder or the tape anything that seems suitable for this purpose.
If we cannot get snatches of Haw-Haw himself, I would be willing to use the English actor who best mimics him - using Haw-Haw texts.
Every few months new extracts could be accumulated and a new lecture prepared. Indeed, quite a series of lectures on the same model could be prepared forthwith on various themes - e.g. the causation of the war- if this first one should prove a great success.
Does the idea commend itself to you?
JOHN HILTON.
March 13th, 1940.
P.S.
The scheme has this further advantage. Any carpers and cavillers against our social system in the audience would find themselves automatically ranged with Haw-Haw. It would be a bold and clever communist who would find a way out of that dilemma.
WFR
To: Director General
From: Mr. Wellington.
1. For the. last five or six weeks the B.B.C. has recorded the 9.15 p.m. broadcast from Hamburg. It is all but certain, therefore, that particular themes can be illustrated from material already recorded.
2. Professor Hilton's scheme, therefore, is feasible. I am less certain that it is altogether wise and likely to be effective. Sinclair uses recordings to illustrate his own theme - Professor Hilton wants to use them as comic relief or to illustrate the opposite theme from his own. I doubt whether the device will be as effective in this context.
3. I doubt, moreover whether the device can be used without appearing to answer the German case or to defend ourselves against it. Professor Hilton does not intend to do this, I know, but mere juxtaposition of lecture and recording will be enough to point the fact that Professor Hilton has chosen his themes with German propaganda in mind - particularly if he is speaking to an audience of tough and sceptical journalists.
4. The “hired lantern lecture” for simpler audiences seems to me to be more dangerous still. Will the lecture not appear to them to be quite simply an answer to Haw Haw? Will they not go on to ask the answer to other Haw Haw allegations - answers which the “mediocre speaker” will not be able to give? Will the records not remind them that they think “there's something to be said for” what Haw Haw says?
5. My comments, in sum, are
(a) that records of some Hamburg broadcasts exist,
(b) that it is worth considering whether statements of our case should spring from quotations of enemy propaganda or not,
(c) that the lecture may in fact turn into a disquisition on Haw Haw and that it is undesirable to give any more publicity to Haw Haw, unless we are going to derive real benefit from so doing.
