Lilly Marleen returns to propaganda duty
MAYEN/KABUL (Own report) German Psychological Warfare units are intensifying their world-wide propaganda output and broadening the military radio network. The Central Directing Staff is in Mayen in the Eifel (Land Rheinland-Pfalz). There are ,,Operational Editorial Staffs"in Kosovo, Bosnia Herzogovina and Afghanistan. The occupation radio station ,,Voice of Freedom"promotes Western values ( ,,Civil Society") and is supported by ,,Deutsche Welle"a state broadcasting foreign service with a long history. Continuity of personnel and structure show similarities to the Nazi period.
The military radio centre in Mayen ( ,,Bataillon Operative Information 950") runs varied overall programming which is received by satellite in the occupied countries. Programmes are recorded by the ,,Operational Editorial Staff"and then broadcast by local transmitters. The propaganda station at Kabul transmits its VHF output in the Dari and Pushtu languages.
Continuity
The far-flung propaganda work of the battalion is founded on decades of Psychological Warfare activities in Germany and countries to the East. They became known as the pioneer units of ,,Psychological Warfare", later called ,,Psychological Defence". They were involved with systematic disinformation, surveillance and informing which had a continuity with the Nazi period. Subsequently the ,,Psycho Operation"had to be reorganised to remain as secret as possible and to be able to continue its work under another name. 1)
Espionage abroad
The military specialists with their secret task of propaganda operate with related departments of the German state. ,,Deutsche Welle"radio station, a co-operating partner of the propaganda troop, has organised contacts with journalists whose close connections to German foreign espionage (Bundesnachrichtendienst/BND) are incontested. Contacts between the Psycho Battalion and the supposedly private ,,International Media Assistance"(IMH/Hennef near Cologne) are proved.
Traditions
In the murky world of secret or concealed work to influence opinion by radio and other media, German traditions from the Nazi era are being developed further. The propaganda Battalion in Mayen has borrowed the signature tune of the fomer Nazi transmitter in occupied Belgrade. In a German TV programme it was said proudly about the tradition: ,,And every evening at precisely 21.56 hours local time the engineers of Mayen transmit 'Lilly Marleen' into the ether, as the tradition has been since the days of the Second World War." 2)
1) See also earlier articles Bundeswehr prepares for psychological warand German Global War
2) Liebesgrüße aus Kabul. Kulturzeit, 15/11/2002, 3sat (Mainz)