The pre-war Reichssender stations, under the control of Joseph Goebbels' Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda as Großdeutscher Rundfunk, were either destroyed by the Wehrmacht or closed by the Allied occupation forces upon Germany's surrender in May 1945.

The first broadcast included recordings of the "State Anthem of the Soviet Union," "The Star-Spangled Banner," "God Save the King," and "La Marseillaise" followed by greetings from Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In the next few days the station focused on playing classical music by German and Russian composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky alongside news.

The station was controlled by the Ulbricht Group politicians Hans Mahle, Matthaus Klein, Wolfgang Leonhard, and Markus Wolf.

[2] Both networks were put under the control of the Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung ("Central Administration for People's Education") and a Generalintendant (general manager) in 1946 and also provided air time for regional Landessender in the five states of the Soviet occupation zone.

The diplomatic prestige gained through recognition by the Western signatories was more important to the GDR leadership than continuing jamming, which furthermore had already been proven inefficient.

[9] Listening to or watching Western broadcasts in itself was legally tolerated, but communicating received content to others[10] or inviting others to common reception[11] could lead to penal sanctions for an offense called "incitement endangering the state" (staatsgefährdende Hetze).

After the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth), the official youth movement in the GDR, started the campaign "Blitz kontra NATO-Sender" ("Lightning against NATO's transmitters") to encourage young people to remove or turn away aerials pointing at Ochsenkopf Transmitter in Bavaria, West Germany.

Special regional broadcasts included Ferienwelle during summer holiday season from Rostock and Messewelle twice a year during trade fair from Leipzig.