Sefton Delmer was a writer who created “Black
Propaganda” on behalf of the British government, and used “fake news” to fight the Nazi
regime. Through postcards, court documents, and pirate
radio programs, Delmer and the rest of the secret service infiltrated the minds of the
German people, using elements of violence, sex, and death in their stories to subtlety
break down the morale of the Nazis. So, who was Sefton Delmer? And why was he most likely the only man on
Earth who could have become the true master of Black Propaganda? Early Life and Career
Denis Sefton Delmer was born in 1904 in Berlin, Germany. As a child, everyone called him “Tom”,
but as an adult, everyone remembered him by his parent’s conjoined last names, and he
was known as “Sefton Delmer”. His father, Frederick Sefton Delmer, taught
English at Berlin University. His parents were both from Australia, and
they had Jewish heritage. They registered his birth at the British Consulate,
so that he could be a dual citizen. He only spoke German before the age of 5,
which is parents chose to do on purpose, hoping he would blend in better. He grew up to become bilingual in both English
and German, but his parents still raised him to understand his Australian ancestry at home. At the start of World War I, his Father Frederick
was removed from his position as a professor at the university, because he was a so-called
“enemy alien”, and he was forced to live at the Ruhleben Internment Camp. Growing up in Germany, the other children
in school labeled him as an enemy, and he was isolated from his peers and bullied for
being different, even though they were exactly the same. In 1917, Frederick was released from the camp
through a prisoner exchange program between the British and the Germans, but instead of
going back to Australia, the whole family was deported to England. So, Sefton Delmer was able to transfer to
a school in London. Since German was his first language, he couldn’t
help but speak with an accent. As far as his English classmates were concerned,
he was considered the “enemy” once again, and he was also isolated from the other children
in school. Even though this must have been difficult,
this life of being stuck in-between two worlds is precisely why he was able to understand
both cultures so completely. Since he was ostracized for the sound of his
voice, or the words he used, it only made him pay attention to those details more, and
it would all come in handy later on in his adult life. World War I ended in 1918, when Sefton Delmer
was 14 years old. Despite the fact that he had endured so much
bullying in his younger years, he still embraced the fact that he was bilingual. He went on to study Oxford University, where
he studied German, possibly to follow in his father’s footsteps of securing a job as
a professor. However, he never did start a teaching career. He was able to fully embrace the other passion
in his life, writing. And this was just the beginning of his destiny. Life Before the War
After graduating from Oxford University, Sefton Delmer got a job for a magazine called The
Daily Express. Since he was bilingual, he became very valuable
to the magazine in translating the news coming out of Germany, in order to make the British
public aware. He was able to become friendly with the Nazi
officer Ernst Rohm, who introduced him to Adolf Hitler in 1932. At this time, Hitler had actually lost his
first election, and he would not become Chancellor of Germany until 1933. Sefton Delmer was able to travel with Hitler
on his private plane, and listen to all of his plans for what he wanted for Germany. He became the first British journalist to
ever secure an interview with Adolf Hitler, and he traveled to Berlin to report the day
when he took office in 1933. This may seem like a monumental event that
should have set him off right then and there, but at the time, no one would ever predict
that Hitler would become an evil dictator. He was promising to bring Germany out of the
financial hardships it had endured after World War I. and he was even given the title of
“Man of the Year” in Time Magazine. So, as far as The Daily Express was concerned,
there were far more important things to focus on. That same year, The Daily Express sent him
to France to work out of their offices in Paris. At that time, Paris was the place to be for
some of the most creative people in history. Some of the most famous writers of that time
were all living and working there in the late 1920’s to early 1930’s, and many of them
were actually friends with one another, as well. These writers were apart of the so-called
“lost generation”, and they indulged heavily in drugs, sex, and jazz. While in Paris, Sefton Delmer met and fell
in love with a woman named Isabel Nicholas. She was a very successful artist, designer,
and model. She was quite beautiful, and she became the
muse for several famous painters and sculptors, including Pablo Picasso. In a lot of ways, they were a perfect match
for one another, and in 1935, the two were married. A couple years later, Sefton Delmer became
a correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939. General Francisco Franco was trying to take
over the Spanish government on behalf of Fascism, and both Nazi Germany and Italy were sending
money and ammunition to Franco’s army. Sefton Delmer became good friends with Ernest
Hemingway, who was there writing the script and did the voiceover for a documentary called
The Spanish Earth. Another writer, Martha Gellhorn, was also
there for Collier’s Magazine. She was one of the only female war correspondents. She was also willing to put her life in danger
to get the scoop on a story. She would later get married to Hemingway,
making her his third wife. A large group of these writers, photographers,
and filmmakers lived together in the Hotel Florida in Madrid, and they were often singing
and drinking in the hotel lobby and bar. They all believed that by covering the events
of the Spanish Civil War, they could shed light on the fact that Adolf Hitler was already
pushing his Fascist regime on the rest of the world, and that the Nazis were dangerous. But these writers would have no idea that
soon enough, their own countries would be at war as well, and there was nothing they
could do to stop it. Black Propaganda
On the brink of World War II, secret agents and spies were commonplace throughout Europe. Her Majesty’s Secret Service was paying
close attention to anyone they believed could be a Nazi sympathizer, including Sefton Delmer. It was like he was living through his elementary
school experience again, because the Germans believed that he was an agent for MI6, and
they no longer allowed him to interview Adolf Hitler or any other high-ranking member of
the Nazi party. It was only after he returned to London and
started working for the German branch of the BBC that the British government knew they
could actually trust him. Sefton Delmer once described one of Adolf
Hitler’s speeches as coming from his “lying, stinking teeth”. While that’s not exactly the most professional
thing a journalist can say on the air, it actually worked out really well for him, because
in 1940, he was recruited by the Political Warfare Executive branch, or the PWE’s for
short. A that time, the British secret service was
very concerned about a pirate radio program called “Worker’s Challenge” was broadcasting
from inside of the UK, but it was actually a German propaganda show run by talented actors
who spoke fluent English. They were posing as an anti-war program, and
they spread fake news to bring down the morale of the British troops. The British government asked Delmer to make
his own version of a radio show that was “Black Propaganda”. The goal was to give out roughly 80% real
facts, but try to slip in 20% fake news that was meant to subvert the Germans. He wholeheartedly agreed to do the job, and
his wife, Isabel, was excited to help in whatever way she could, as well. In 1941, the government gave him a requisitioned
country house in Bedfordshire, where he worked together with a team on creating propaganda. Isabel illustrated fake postcards of German
soldiers with French prostitutes. This was meant to make French men angry and
jealous, and inherently dislike the Nazis. At that time, Isabel’s illustrations were
sexy and suggestive, but far from being pornorgraphic. Sefton Delmer started a radio broadcast, and
he wrote scripts under the alias of “Der Chef”. He hired a German immigrant and actor named
Paul Saunders to be the voice of the character. He spoke with a perfect Berlin accent, and
they had a strong enough radio tower to make it seem as if the show was being broadcast
from Germany. Der Chef claimed to be a loyal Nazi, and that
he was simply giving insider information to inform his fellow comrades. He used coarse language, and spoke out against
the enemies of the Third Reich. Since Delmer grew up in Germany, he knew how
to write like these words were truly coming from a German person, and no one would have
ever known that the show was actually produced by the English. Sefton Delmer had a great sense of humor,
and he knew how to capture an audience’s attention. Much of the fake news he wrote included sexual
stories, which was enough to keep the audience listening on a regular basis. For example, he once wrote that the British
were trying to get German prisoners of war to give up their secrets by tying them up
and “torturing” them with strippers. Der Chef urged them to be strong, and not
give in to temptation. Saunders would have to tell these stories
as if he was outraged at the English, saying, “Don’t give in to these perversions! Say nothing!” Then, once he had their attention, he would
go on to tell fake news that was secretly meant to demoralize the enemy. Sefton Delmer was also apart of the government’s
“Underground Propaganda Committee”. It was their job to collect rumors that were
already spreading in German communities, and used those as the basis of their fake news. By using this strategy, they were simply confirming
what people were already whispering about, so it was far easier to the audience to believe
that it was true. Along with the “Der Chef” show, Sefton
Delmer wrote and produced a second radio program called “Atlantic Sender”, which was meant
to seduce German soldiers. They played jazz music, which had been forbidden
to German citizens. A female actress named ç, who they called
“Vicky”, read the scripts in her sultry voice. Together with another writer and spy, Ian
Fleming, Delmer put together stories that were basically erotic fan fiction of various
fantasy scenarios between German men and English women. These stories worked exactly as he had hoped
they would. A former German officer named Horst Bredo
said that he would listen to “Atlantic Sender” with the rest of the men who were stationed
in a U-Boat. Once he saw the photographs of how truly beautiful
the actress was, he asked for a copy of photos, and joked, “If there were TV’s on board
the U-Boat, and we saw these pictures, a lot of them would say, ‘The war is finished. Let’s go home and be with English girls.’” Of course, not everyone was a fan of these
sexy stories. A politician named Sir Stafford Cripps got
ahold of an English translation of the Der Chef broadcast. The particular script he read was a dirty
story about an orgie, and Cripps was disgusted by how crude they were. He wrote, “If this is how we win the war,
I’d rather lose it.” Despite receiving this criticism, the show
was able to continue. The Black Propaganda team had really figured
out what made men tick, and their subversive messages manipulating me through their sexual
desires and fantasies was actually working. Years later, after the war was won, Delmer’s
co-writer, Ian Fleming, had a lightbulb moment. If the German soldiers would go crazy fantasizing
over these characters, so would the rest of the men in the world. He continue to write these sexy stories, only
this time, the main character was a British spy, whose adventures were based on his own
experiences during the war. He wrote pulp fiction novels about his alter-ego,
James Bond. Delmer’s wife, Isabel, would later say that
they were both having the time of their lives creating this propaganda. She thought it was hilarious that the government
was essentially paying her to draw pornography for a living. They recruited some of the most talented artists
in the country to join the team, and Sefton Delmer had his own sense of humor for initiating
new recruits. A 22-year old artist named Marion Whitehorn
was asked to join the secret organization. There were several British generals there
the day of her briefing. They were all wearing their uniforms, without
even a hint of a smile on their faces. Delmer said that if she told anyone about
the secret mission they were about to give her, she would be sent to jail, and suffer
10 years of hard labor. She nervously agreed, and he slid a postcard
of Adolf Hitler across the table. The postcard was titled with the German phrase;
“What we have, we hold”. Her first assignment was to tamper the postcard
to make it look as though Hitler was holding his own penis in his hand. Decades later, Marion Whitehorn told this
story during an interview for a documentary. She said, looking back, she could have laughed,
but the atmosphere of the room was so serious, she simply agreed to do the duty for her country. As she left the room to get started, Sefton
Delmer called out, “But not too big, Marion!” Meanwhile, in Germany, the Nazi Minister of
Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, had an entirely different strategy all together. Instead of using subtle and creative writing,
he was loud, and confidently stated bold lies about how the Jews were to blame for Germany’s
hardships. For a population of people who were desperate,
they clung on to the idea that they could blame the Jews for the economic problems of
Germany. As time went on, it became clear to Sefton
Delmer and his team that writing subtle jokes and sexy stories were not going to be enough
to win the war. So, they had to get darker. Delmer’s team was able to find the exact
typeface used in official German documents. This way, they created fake court records,
and “leaked” them to the public. All of these fictional court cases were made
to have the S.S. Officers guilty of rape and murder. He wrote excruciating details of the story,
only to have them acquitted of all charges by the end. This was obviously meant to outrage anyone
who read the documents, and it made the Nazi government look like complete monsters. He wrote these to try to convince German people
that they were fighting for an evil, corrupt government. In 1943, he decided that he wanted to stop
the “Der Chef” broadcast, but he knew that his character would never actually stop
his radio broadcast, unless he was forced to. So he wrote and staged a scene where Nazi
soldiers came through the door to his studio, and shot him while he was live on air. He hoped that if Nazi soldiers were out there
listening, they would realize that there was no such thing as freedom of the press in a
Fascist government. Psychological Warfare
The longer the war went on, the higher the stakes became. They felt that it was necessary to mess with
the the minds of German men in the darkest ways. A lot of the information that was given to
the Black Propaganda writers came directly from highly skilled British Intelligence agents
who were interrogating captured Nazi soldiers. Whenever a Nazi soldier refused to say anything
about his top-secret information, they would try to get him to relax and talk about his
personal life, instead. Without realizing it, these soldiers were
giving up information about the bases where they were staying, the bars where German soldiers
drank, and so on. So, since those names and details given out
about these men on the radio were accurate, they believed there must be a spy among them
who was giving away all of their information. This made the Germans distrust one another,
and it was difficult for them to form a close bond with their comrades. They would read out the names of streets that
had been apparently bombed in Berlin and Hamburg, even if they hadn’t. They purposely figured out where German U-Bombers
lived, so that they could read out the specific addresses of all of the men who were on the
boats. This would make the soldiers fall into a state
of depression and anxiety, and completely ruin their morale. Many of those German soldiers would go through
the rest of the war feeling like they had nothing to fight for. The British also dropped photographs of dead
women and children over German bases, which made them wonder if their own wives and children
were among the dead. Many of these men would be in the shock of
their lives to go home to find out that their family was actually still alive. The Germans chose to do the same sort of propaganda,
only with the strategy to make the Allied soldiers want to end the war and go home. They played on men’s jealousies, with a
sultry female voice playing over the radio, asking if they knew what their wives and girlfriends
were doing without them. By the time Americans joined the war, German
planes were dropping leaflets of fake “Life” magazines featuring photographs of nude women
on one side, and “Death” with a skull wearing a helmet on the other. There was also one leaflet that said “Gentlemen
prefer blondes, but blondes don’t like cripples”- with a picture of an American veteran amputee. All of these dark campaigns lead to Sefton
Delmer’s most heartless project yet, called “The Dead Letters”. British Intelligence was able to intercept
letters written to German soldiers who had actually died. Many of them were from concerned mothers,
saying that they had not heard from their sons in a while, and hoped they were safe. If British Intelligence managed to intercept
those letters, Delmer would write back to these families, claiming that these men were
in hiding, and would be home soon. At first, this sounds like he actually being
kind to these German families. But after reading enough of these letters
over the radio, German soldiers who heard the broadcasts would hear the names of the
men they saw dying in front of their eyes. They knew that someone was lying, and they
believed that the Dead Letters were coming from the German government. During these dark times, Sefton Delmer’s
wife, Isabel, could not take it any longer. She resented Delmer for how cruel he was being
to his fellow human beings. War or not, this propaganda wasn’t funny
anymore. She couldn’t handle having any part in it. They ended up getting a divorce. The war had left its scars, and Isabel would
go through two more marriages before the end of her life. After World War II was over, Sefton Delmer
returned to his job at the Daily Express. He published a novel called Black Boomerang
in 1962, but beyond that, he lived out a quiet retirement. Sworn to secrecy, he never fully revealed
the details of his time creating Black Propaganda, until the 1970’s, when enough time had passed,
and he was allowed to finally talk about his experiences in his autobiography, The Counterfeit
Spy. Today, few people remember Sefton Delmer,
or how he was a voice of opposition for the German people, who were used to hearing the
loud lies of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. While we will never know just how many people
heard his broadcasts, we do know that his work was one of the many elements that helped
the Allies win the war.
he’s black propaganding, of course.