Abstract
Broadcast monitoring in the Second World War provided intelligence services and propagandists with important information. This article explores how Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda ministry utilised Nazi-Germany’s principal monitoring service, the Sonderdienst Seehaus. Based on previously neglected archival documents, it shows that the ministry, as an open-source intelligence consumer, tightly directed international broadcast monitoring. The ministry feared that monitoring summaries would fuel defeatism. It therefore strove to shape reports before they were written and strictly limited their circulation. Officials also believed that targeted broadcast monitoring would reliably yield information that could support Nazi propaganda, even when facing disastrous news from the battlefields.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Intelligence and National Security |
| Early online date | 25 May 2026 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 25 May 2026 |
Keywords
- propaganda
- radio monitoring
- Second world war
- open-source intelligence
- Nazi-Germany
- Joseph Goebbels
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