Feindsender

Secret Gestapo reports attested to the popularity of German-language programs aired by foreign radio stations.

Death sentences were seldom based solely on radio listening but — in the cases of Helmuth Hübener and Walter Klingenbeck — rested on convictions for high treason or Wehrkraftzersetzung.

According to Sicherheitsdienst reports, a large-scale campaign in 1941, charging Nazi Blockleiter to visit the households in their area and attach warning paper tags to receiving sets, met widespread discontent.

The author of Berlin Embassy, a bilingual American who traveled widely in Germany in 1939-40, estimated that 60 percent of Germans secretly listened to foreign broadcasts at low volume.

Listening to foreign radio stations has been dubbed "the little man's resistance" because, together with being friendly to forced laborers (also a crime, and punished even more harshly), and taking detours to avoid passing a Nazi memorial where one would be forced to salute (the Viscardi Way or "Shirkers' Way" in Munich) it was very common and, later, could allow individuals to claim they had never really been a Nazi.