Other early leadership included Lindley Fraser, formerly professor of philosophy at Aberdeen, as well as Richard Crossman and Patrick Gordon Walker who would move on to become leading figures in the Labour Party.
The broadcast ceased operations in 1999 due to financial reasons, and because listener-polls showed that 90 per cent of listeners would be able to follow the English BBC World Service.
Starting with a speech given by Neville Chamberlain on 27 September 1938 in the days prior to the conference on the Munich Agreement, the BBC, at the request of the government, began broadcasting regular programmes in German.
[citation needed] Significant punishment was doled out for listening; those deemed Rundfunkverbrecher [radio traitors] by 1941 would get up to 8 years of Zuchthaus and even, as in the case of 17-year-old Helmuth Hübener, the death penalty when they worked to disseminate the news.
), Sigmund Freud[citation needed], Peter Illing,[5] Ernst Schoen [de],[6] Bruno Adler, Annemarie Hase, Robert Lucas, Walter Rilla[2]: 42 and many other exiles.
[citation needed] Other German-language stations broadcasting to East Germany included Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, the Radio in the American Sector, which was run by the Germans but controlled by the US, and Sender Freies Berlin.
[12]: 575–579 During the war Hugh Greene, the first Head of the BBC German Service,[2]: 28 had already developed plans for an English language course: Lernt Englisch im Londoner Rundfunk!
The courses in this language learning program have been adopted by almost all ARD broadcasters over the years, also in Austria and Switzerland and also published in book form.
Building on the success of its wartime broadcasts to Nazi Germany, the German Service gradually introduced political commentary, religious lectures, and comedy features into its “Eastern Zone Program.” The most popular of which were The Two Comrades (1949–1963), Letters without Signature (1949–1974) and The Surprised Newspaper Reader (1950–1972).
[12]: 572 Robert Lucas, a Jewish-Austrian émigré who had previously written the humorous letters of Adolf Hirnschal during the war, now authored a series named ‘'The Surprised Newspaper Reader'’ (‘Der verwunderte Zeitungsleser’).
This series offered a humorous review of East Zone press content, coupled with ironic commentary that exposed the contradictions within GDR state-controlled journalism.
The idea was: listeners wrote to the BBC in London, where the program's German-speaking presenter, Austin Harrison, selected a number of letters for the broadcast.
boxes and eventually implemented a system of fake addresses, often associated with properties reduced to rubble in the Allied bombings to prompt the postal service to redirect letters to the BBC office.
[12]: 576–579 The program's reliance on letters from East German listeners posed significant risks, exposing them to potential reprisals as government surveillance grew more efficient.