In the March edition of Smithsonian magazine, the article entitled, “Voice of Deception” highlights the work of a secret Allied mission during World War II to flood Germany with propaganda. Although Nazi Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, actively distributed the party lines of antisemitism and German superiority through every media outlet, the Allies learned the power of public opinion also and began broadcasting into Germany under the guise of an approved Nazi outlet.
The intent of these broadcasts was to discourage both German soldiers and citizens by slightly exaggerating Nazi losses and Allied gains. As every communicator knows, however, there has to be more than just information and so the masterminds behind this endeavor utilized entertainment to bait their hook. Talented musicians opened the ears for their precisely aimed messages to raise doubts in the minds of German listeners.
One such entertainer was a young half-Jewish woman who enticed her audience with her seductive on-air kisses. Agnes Bernauer had spent her early years in Berlin before growing Nazi hostility convinced her family to flee the country. As a German native, however, she spoke the language flawlessly and with the perfect accent to attract many listeners to the fictitious “Vicky with Three Kisses.”
Supposedly originating from an occupied French location, the broadcasts poured out of a secret compound in England where Allied personnel worked around the clock to color the truth with just enough deception to demoralize their audience across the Channel.
This ingenious plan, meticulously executed, is another example of the determined innovation of those in the Allied camp to defeat Hitler and his threat to western civilization. These broadcasts, combined with targeted bombings, timed offensives, imaginative inventions, and raw courage, eventually won the war and protected the globe from the servitude, holocaust, and atrocities planned by the Third Reich.
As I read the article, I again thanked God for His intervention in WWII, but I was also reminded of the dangers of media. We all have our favorite sources of information that we trust to tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But the truth is that pure unbiased truth is nearly impossible to acquire. All of us have our own predispositions that we may try very hard to suppress, but which still color our reporting, nonetheless.
It seems that if the truth outweighed the lies, all would be well, but we know that it takes less than a drop of cholera in thousands of gallons of pure water to kill many people. Untruth is even more dangerous as it poisons not the body but the mind. We all act on what we believe and if we believe lies, we will behave in ways that will cause division and hatred and ultimately result in human suffering and death. To paraphrase a common saying, “Ideas have consequences, lies have victims.” Jesus assures us that Satan is the father of all lies, even small subtle ones that poison the water of our media.
Over the last few years, we’ve learned that many of our phone apps are listening to us and feeding us what we want to hear, true or not. Other algorithms have filtered out various viewpoints based on the developers’ biases. Large news outlets have to periodically retract stories after evidence of their untruth is discovered. Sadly, those corrections are usually minimal compared to the sensationalism of the original releases.
What’s a body to do? Those who are seriously searching for truth will find it only in Jesus who declared, “I am the truth.” While He may not give us the latest on current events or politics, He does provide eternal perspective with which to process what we do hear. We must take all sources with a grain of Jesus’ salt, realizing that He can preserve truth in a contaminated world. If we desire truth, we must look to Him and to His Word. Blessings, George