Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace: Regulating International Radio Propaganda in Europe, 1921–1939

Abstract This article provides a major reassessment of interwar ‘wireless internationalism’, arguing that in the light of recent work on the wider history of internationalism, attempts to harness radio broadcasting to promote peace and mutual understanding among nations take on fresh significance. It uses previously neglected archival sources to explore how initiatives designed to amplify the benign, pacific effects of ‘wireless’ culminated in the League of Nations 1936 Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace. Like other wireless internationalist initiatives, this agreement has often been dismissed as inherently unrealistic. However, the earlier practical achievements of wireless internationalism should not be ignored. Until 1933, Europe’s broadcasting organisations worked together in a system of self-regulation that they themselves constructed under the auspices of the International Broadcasting Union. The League contributed to this system and also established its own wireless broadcasting station, Radio Nations, to promote its activities. It was only the rapid pace of geopolitical, technical, and organisational change after 1933 that rendered this system of self-regulation unworkable. The 1936 convention, built on earlier ideas about the nature of international broadcasting, was one of the casualties of this sudden transformation. Examining wireless internationalism in this new light can revise our understanding of interwar debates on freedom of expression and the regulation of international communication in an era of intensifying propaganda and ‘false news’.

way that, from the earliest days of broadcasting, signals naturally and inevitably crossed man-made social, cultural, and political borders.Born at the very moment that twentieth-century internationalist sentiment reached its peak, radio seemed an ideal means to heal the rifts caused by the First World War, and to promote peace and understanding on a truly democratic basis. 2 However, the very same innate characteristics of radio broadcasting meant that it could also pose a threat to the established international order.In 1936, Arnold Raestad, the former Norwegian minister for foreign affairs, warned that Political broadcasting has enormous potentialities as a means of fomenting international discord.Broadcasts have no material substance, and therefore cannot be stopped at frontiers; they can be directed towards any point in space; the political effects may be extensive and immediate; but they are not easy to foresee, or to control or canalise at need.
Raestad was speaking at an international conference convened by the League of Nations, where delegates agreed new measures to restrict aggressive propaganda broadcasts and to promote more pacific uses of wireless.He likened the proposed convention to others 'that induce Governments to renounce the use of certain means of destruction which, though indubitably effective, cannot be limited in their action to the real objective, and may therefore cause sufferings and upheavals out of all proportion to the real advantage to be gained' . 3Broadcasting was like poison gas, and its use needed to be regulated and controlled.
The 'wireless internationalist' thinking that produced the 1936 League convention was informed by an understanding of both the potential benefits and the possible harms associated with radio broadcasting.For many decades, neither these ideas nor the wider interwar internationalism of which they were a part attracted much attention from scholars.An older generation of 'realists' tended to dismiss interwar internationalism as hopelessly impractical, and the work of the League of Nations and the 'metaphysicians of Geneva' as essentially pointless. 4More recently, however, there has been a renewed interest in both the ideas and the practical achievements of the internationalists.Following the 'global turn' in history writing, and a shift towards international and transnational perspectives, scholars have re-examined many of the debates and initiatives linked to the League and other interwar internationalist organisations.They have illuminated contemporary beliefs and aspirations concerning the interwar international order, drawn out important continuities with the periods before 1914 and after 1945, and allowed us better to understand the wider social and cultural history of internationalism.Rather than judge the internationalists with the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of the descent into the 'dark valley' of the 1930s, they have helped us appreciate the motives and successes of interwar internationalism as well as its limitations, blind-spots, and failures. 5he 1936 League of Nations Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace is overdue for a similar reassessment, as is the wider wireless internationalist movement of which it was a product.Many enduring assumptions about the nature of internationalism in these years were encapsulated in E. H. Carr's pioneering 'realist' 1939 study of interwar international relations, which was generally dismissive of the League and the internationalists.Specifically, when it came to radio, Carr argued that the democracies had tied themselves in knots trying to reconcile their dedication to the liberal principle of free expression with the need to generate and regulate broadcast propaganda.Their attempts to square this circle were, Carr argued, futile: in the sphere of opinion, as in the economic sphere, the nineteenth-century principles of laissez-faire no longer hold good, even for democracies.Just as democratic governments have been compelled to control and organize economic life in their territories in order to compete with totalitarian states, so they find themselves at a disadvantage in dealing with these states if they are not in a position to control and organize opinion.
Britain, Carr thought, had been quicker to adapt to new realities than had some of the other democracies, and he applauded the work undertaken in the later 1930s by the British Council, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and the UK's embryonic Ministry of Information.Carr nevertheless characterised their efforts as a belated and inadequate response to fascist propaganda. 6here is much to be said for these arguments, and subsequent scholarship has similarly characterised the 1936 convention as doomed to failure in the face of the fascist propaganda onslaught.Historians have tended to see the convention as having strictly limited significance, interesting only in terms of the general principles that lay behind it and the precedent it set for post-war initiatives.Philip M. Taylor was probably trying to be charitable when he concluded that the convention's importance 'lay more in the spirit of its intent than in its effect' . 7The legal scholar Michael G. Kearney likewise argued that the significance of the convention lay in the principle that it established rather than any concrete outcomes: it was the first international treaty to oblige signatory states 'to restrict expression which constituted a threat to international peace and security' . 8Similarly focusing on precedent, Suzanne Lommers argued that the significance of the convention lay in establishing the foundations for UNESCO's post-war work on broadcasting. 9Most recently, David Goodman has used the convention as a case study to explore interwar attitudes to restricting on-air freedom of expression in democratic societies, arguing that it represented 'an ambitious early attempt to shape a civil international public sphere' . 10ll this work has shed light on how thinking about restrictions on broadcast propaganda related to liberal ideas about freedom of expression, and how developments in the interwar years fed into later debates and policies.However, it has not properly explained why so many contemporaries thought that an international wireless statute could achieve useful results.Neither has it challenged the assumption that wireless internationalism was doomed from the outset by its essentially impractical nature.The analysis that follows offers a new perspective, drawing on insights generated by recent research on the history of international broadcasting during the 1920s and 1930s.It is based on fresh primary evidence, much of it previously neglected by historians, drawn from multiple archives in different countries (including the League of Nations Archive), and from printed sources including contemporary magazines for wireless enthusiasts.This evidence shows that key wireless internationalist initiatives, championed by the League and by the broadcasters' own international organisation, the International Broadcasting Union (IBU), did produce some significant successes.This was possible because, in the 1920s, European broadcasters seldom deployed international services to reach listeners in other countries direct.Instead, they worked collaboratively with one another, exchanging programmes and resolving disputes among themselves.In this context, the idea of restricting aggressive propaganda broadcasting through voluntary self-regulation seemed practicable.However, in the 1930s, as an increasing number of European broadcasters developed close ties with their respective governments and began to develop new services aimed directly at foreign listeners, the situation changed dramatically.As late as 1933, it still seemed possible that Europe's broadcasters could work together and regulate wireless propaganda themselves.However, that year, the pace of change accelerated rapidly, and in 1934 the IBU effectively withdrew from attempts to regulate propaganda broadcasting.The League of Nations stepped into the breach but proved similarly incapable of dealing with the new problems raised by international broadcasting.Wireless internationalism did not fail because it was inherently impractical, but rather because the premises upon which it was based were rapidly overtaken by technological, organisational, and geopolitical change.
Unsurprisingly, the wireless internationalist initiatives of the interwar years were overwhelmingly Eurocentric in nature.This reflected the wider biases and preoccupations of the League and of liberal internationalism more generally.It was also a function of the limited development of broadcasting in the Global South, at a time when radio receiving and transmitting equipment was relatively costly to purchase and maintain, and often difficult to power.Certainly, contemporaries were aware of the potential of radio as a tool of imperial influence and colonial 'development' and education.Some European powers made significant attempts to develop imperial and colonial broadcasting services, although non-white audiences generally remained tiny before 1939.Perhaps most importantly, during the later 1930s several European states devoted considerable resources to broadcasting in Arabic.Wireless was deployed to court illiterate listeners in cafés and other public spaces in the Middle East, a key zone of geopolitical contest.yet it was not until the 1950s that the Global South became fully integrated into the renewed radio conflicts occasioned by decolonisation and the Cold War. 11The history of interwar wireless internationalism, like that of the interwar internationalist movement more generally, demonstrates the prevalence of the wider imperial and Eurocentric assumptions and power-relations of the period.

Self-regulation
Radio was, from the outset, an intrinsically transnational medium of mass communication.Even transmissions aimed at specific local or national audiences inevitably crossed borders, inadvertently reaching distant listeners in other countries.In the wealthier parts of Europe, as wireless developed rapidly during the 1920s, stations and listeners proliferated, and the power and potential reach of broadcasting stations increased.International technical regulation was urgently required, most obviously to prevent 'interference' between transmitters operating on similar wavelengths in different countries, a problem that threatened to render their signals unintelligible.Broadcasters and policymakers also began to consider whether international regulation of programme content was possible, or desirable, and whether programmes might be exchanged among broadcasters on an organised basis as a further means to bring order to international broadcasting. 12ecause radio was initially used as a means of point-to-point communication ('wireless telegraphy') it fell within the scope of existing international postal and telegraphic agreements.These restricted the availability of wavelengths on which broadcasting stations could operate, imposing a rudimentary set of regulations to protect the other civil and military uses of radio communication.However, these agreements made no provision for the sharing of the available wavelengths among Europe's broadcasters, yet alone for regulating broadcast content.The broadcasters themselves stepped into this gap, developing a framework for international self-regulation.Initial meetings among Europe's key broadcasting organisations in Geneva and London led, in April 1925, to the formation of the Union Internationale de Radiophonie or International Broadcasting Union.The IBU set up its head office in Geneva, in proximity to international postal and telegraphic regulatory authorities and the League.The IBU's Council initially comprised representatives of broadcasting organisations from nine European countries: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Austria, the UK, Holland, Norway, and Switzerland. 13The focus on Northern and Central Europe was largely a function of the unequal pace of broadcasting development across the continent: these were the places where broadcasting had developed most rapidly in the early 1920s.Subsequently, the IBU's membership increased as broadcasting services were established in other countries.By 1935, it had 33 members, drawn from a 'European' broadcasting zone stretching from the Irish Free State and Portugal in the west to Estonia and Romania in the east, and from Norway and Finland in the north to Algeria and Egypt in the south.This was a 'Europe' defined according to technical criteria, encompassing those countries and places which possessed transmitters capable of interfering with one another.Broadcasters from further afield, including the US, Cuba, Japan, the Dutch East Indies, and Australia, were admitted as associate members: 13 had joined by 1935.No broadcasting organisation from the USSR became a member, even though the Soviet Union operated transmitters capable of reaching across Europe. 14s it expanded the IBU came to be dominated by large, semi-state or state-controlled national broadcasting organisations.From the mid-1920s onwards many European governments exerted increasing control over broadcasting, licensing private companies to operate, buying into or strictly regulating those companies, and sometimes taking broadcasting under the direct control of the state.By early 1928, this process was already well underway, as governments recognised the power that broadcasting gave them (and, potentially, others) to communicate with their citizens.Writing privately that year, Adrianus Pelt of the League of Nation's Information Section argued that European broadcasting would soon be entirely in state hands. 15The British government was in the vanguard in this respect, establishing and confirming the position of the BBC as a publicly owned non-profit corporation with a monopoly of all broadcasting in the UK.The BBC played a key role in the IBU, and provided its first president, the BBC controller vice-Admiral Charles Carpendale (he held both positions simultaneously until his retirement in 1935).The IBU's secretary-general was Arthur R. Burrows, formerly of the British Marconi Company and the BBC's first director of programmes.Another key influence over the early IBU was Germany's Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, which was initially organised on a devolved regional basis, but increasingly came under centralised and eventually direct state control.Heinrich Giesecke, the director of the RRG, served as one of the IBU's vice-presidents.In France the government continued to allow private interests to play a significant role in the broadcasting sector, but a tendency towards greater state involvement hovered in the background.Robert Tabouis, head of the Compagnie Française de Radiophonie, served as one of the IBU's other vice-presidents. 16uch of the IBU's work involved discussion of technical issues that required cross-border coordination: most importantly, agreeing international wavelength allocations to prevent interference.The IBU produced the early European wavelength plans and created a monitoring station in Brussels to check compliance.In 1929 it worked closely with the Prague conference of European Post, Telegraph, and Telephone (PTT) administrations to agree a new plan that would accommodate the requirements of the Washington International Radiotelegraph Convention of 1927. 17This work gave broadcasters and policymakers confidence that they could work together on an international stage to bring order to Europe's airwaves, while simultaneously safeguarding their own interests.
Much of the drive to engage in international cooperation came from pragmatic, everyday requirements.It also reflected the desire of broadcasters to source high-quality programmes from other countries, and a genuine commitment to broader ideas of internationalism.Initiatives designed to promote peace and mutual understanding took two basic forms.The first was negative, involving attempts to restrict aggressive cross-border wireless propaganda.The second was positive, encompassing the broadcasting of material that would actively foster international understanding and goodwill.
In terms of negative restrictions, at its very first meeting the IBU formally mandated members to abstain from any propaganda beyond their frontiers of a nature to give rise to political difficulties in other countries.Whenever possible, they should eliminate from their programmes any matter relating to the internal affairs of other countries.
However, this declaration was too general, potentially ruling out many useful and innocuous types of programming relating to the life and culture of other nations.In March 1926 the IBU thus issued a revised declaration: national broadcasts shall, in the political, denominational, economic, intellectual and artistic fields, contain nothing of a nature to prejudice the spirit of good international understanding, which is indisputably necessary for the international development of broadcasting.This broad statement of good intentions did not impose restrictions on the types of programmes that could be broadcast.It also removed the earlier distinction between programmes aimed at domestic and foreign audiences.Transmissions inevitably crossed frontiers in an unpredictable fashion, so if broadcasting was to do no harm a careful watch had to be kept over the content of all programmes, not just those intended for foreign listeners.Initially, the new declaration seemed to be welcomed and adhered to by IBU members.Few violations were reported, and minor disagreements were successfully settled through informal discussions among the broadcasters themselves. 18n terms of positive attempts to deploy broadcasting actively to further the cause of international peace, IBU members agreed to work together to promote international 'cultural collaboration' . 19Reflecting their key role as national, and indeed often explicitly nation-building, authorities, broadcasters generally construed this as requiring the sharing of prestige performances of 'national' classical and folk music.The resulting programme exchanges were increasingly technically ambitious.From 1926 to 1931 the IBU arranged 'National Nights': individual member broadcasters each made their own programmes, to be broadcast on an agreed date, that would celebrate the cultural achievements of a specified European nation.As communications infrastructure improved (with the building of a new European landline system) the National Nights were eventually replaced by monthly 'European Concerts' .A single broadcaster produced a programme, which was then relayed to other members via landlines for live, simultaneous broadcast.The first was provided by Germany on 30 September 1931, when the Berlin station orchestra played a selection of compositions by Handel, Beethoven, and Max Reger. 20The European Concerts were explicitly intended to reflect and disseminate the best of the national cultures of the broadcasters that produced them: 'The principal national artistes and the best symphony orchestras take part.The Union favours programmes in which a good proportion of characteristic national music is included' . 21This was seen as entirely consistent with internationalist goals.From 1936, the IBU also used music to link Europe with other continents, establishing an annual 'World Concert' of 'typically national music' . 22he IBU also attempted to use music to present listeners with an aural representation of internationalism.Perhaps the most notable example was an October 1935 'youth Sings over the Frontiers' programme, organised by the IBU and produced by Germany's RRG (by then effectively part of the Nazi state).During the programme, youth choirs 'in thirty-one countries situated in five continents sang to each other, and to the world at large, the songs they love' .This was an amazing technical feat, but some broadcasters had reservations: contributions were of variable quality, and the number of countries involved meant that the programme dragged on for several hours. 23Programmes designed to promote peace and international understanding had to be artistically and technically proficient.Otherwise, listeners might switch off or broadcasters opt out.
The IBU's focus on music limited the scope of early programme exchange arrangements.While the IBU claimed that music was 'the only international "language" available to the broadcaster which is able to convey to the listener some sort of message' , it acknowledged that music could not 'express the innermost thoughts of one people to another' . 24To explore and help resolve current problems in national and international affairs, broadcasters needed to harness the power of the spoken word.yet the IBU continued to refrain from arranging exchanges of news and talks among its members.This was partly a matter of resources: providing multilingual programming was a complex and expensive business.It was also a political decision, arising from a desire to avoid engagement with potentially controversial international affairs.Spoken-word broadcasts ran the risk of generating disagreements and outright hostility among IBU members, their listeners, and their political masters, in ways that broadcasting music seldom did.

Radio and the League
The League of Nations offered an alternative arena in which measures to promote peace through broadcasting could be discussed and, perhaps, more ambitious schemes be developed.The League's involvement in the world of broadcasting was given an early fillip by its wider work on publicity and propaganda.At Geneva, officials emphasised the importance of promoting the League and its activities through the press, and of securing the free flow of information about international affairs that was believed to be required in a new world order of 'open diplomacy' .The secret dealings and agreements of pre-1914 Europe had, it was argued, played a significant role in the outbreak of the First World War.Publicising the workings of international diplomacy thus became a key means of promoting peace. 25Moreover, lacking any means of enforcing its resolutions, the League would, as Woodrow Wilson put it in 1919, ultimately rely on 'the moral force of the public opinion of the world' to achieve its goals. 26Crucially, this world public opinion was not something that already existed in any clear, measurable form.The League and its supporters would have to help create it.
The League's Information Section was thus established to work with journalists, an example of the wider interwar growth of 'public relations' .As well as its practical, day-to-day liaison work, the Information Section sought to build up the capacity of the press to act as a clear and accurate voice of world opinion.Between 1927 and 1933 it convened a series of international conferences of journalists to discuss common professional concerns.It encouraged discussion of the perceived problem of 'false news' -rumours, sometimes purposely disseminated, that might generate international antagonism and conflict -and the role that the press might play in combating inaccurate and malevolent reports. 27This work provided a backdrop to the League's broadcasting initiatives.
The League's involvement in the wireless world also reflected the belief that telegraphic communication might be harnessed to promote peace.This became obvious in the wake of border clashes between two member states, Bulgaria and Greece, in October 1925.A telegram from the acting president of the League's Council helped persuade both sides to stand down. 28ubsequently, a League commission appointed to investigate the origins of the conflict emphasised that prompt intervention had been crucial in averting a serious military confrontation.In future crises, time would be of the essence: The saving of a few minutes may prevent a catastrophe… In order to hasten intervention by the League of Nations, it might be considered whether special facilities for communications and transit could not be granted to Governments and to the Secretariat in case of a threat of war.In particular, the use of wireless telegraphy and priority messages might be considered. 29t of this emerged the idea that the League might operate a wireless telegraphy station of its own, allowing it to communicate rapidly with member states without fear of censorship or disruption by national governments in times of crisis or war.Advocates of the scheme argued that the League station should operate on short-wave, to allow long-distance communication with countries beyond Europe, and that expenditure on the station could be partly offset by accepting private telegraphic traffic on a commercial basis. 30owever, the UK and the British dominions mounted significant opposition to this proposal, arguing that such a station would be unmanageably complex and expensive to operate, exposing the League to criticism at a time when the scale of its expenditure was already being questioned.They also claimed that short wave was not the right technology to use.Short-wave transmitters worked best over long distances, so could do little to improve communication between the League and European member states.Neither would a League short-wave station be an effective means of communicating with countries outside Europe, where few suitable receiving stations had been built.The UK government thus argued that if a League station was required, then the risk and expense should be minimised by subcontracting the service out to a private company.The League would only need to take direct control of the station in times of crisis. 31Privately, the British government was concerned that the proposed station represented a combined French and German attempt to reduce British control over global telegraphic communications, and to feed business to French and German wireless equipment manufacturers at the expense of Britain's Marconi Company. 32he Swiss federal government agreed with the alternative British proposals, albeit for reasons of its own: a station operated by a private company would not violate the country's neutrality in the way that a League-owned and -operated station might. 33Eventually, after a lengthy delay, on 24 September 1929 the League Assembly authorised the establishment of a short-wave wireless telegraphy station to be managed in ordinary times by a private company, the Société Radio-Suisse, and taken under direct League control during periods of international crisis. 34Contracts for equipment for the station were split among the major European radio manufacturers. 35s work on the new wireless telegraph station commenced, the League and its supporters also started to consider how broadcasting might play a role in publicising the League's activities.Presidential addresses and speeches from the Assembly were relayed to broadcasters in Europe and the US from as early as 1926, using facilities provided by Swiss and other national broadcasting authorities, and often with the IBU playing a coordinating role.Experiments with relaying speeches to Australia, and with broadcasting talks by members of the League Secretariat in their native languages, were also undertaken. 36By the end of the decade the BBC's vernon Bartlett was providing running commentaries on Assembly meetings from a special booth set up in the Assembly Hall: by 1931 he had been joined by William Hard of the US National Broadcasting Company (NBC). 37he League's wireless station was formally inaugurated on 2 February 1932, the day the World Disarmament Conference opened in Geneva. 38Contact was initially established with wireless telegraph receiving stations in New york, Shanghai, and Nagoya.Later, links were set up with Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.Although not designed for broadcasting work, the station was quickly adapted to provide stations in the US and Japan with sound relays of speeches from the League for rebroadcasting.Moreover, adopting the name 'Radio Nations' , the station also began its own modest service of short-wave broadcasts for direct listeners around the world, providing a brief weekly bulletin about League affairs (prepared by the Information Section) in French, English, and Spanish, along with occasional feeds of speeches delivered by prominent individuals connected with the League. 39hat year, the philosopher and writer W. Olaf Stapledon argued that international broadcasting should be run on a truly international basis.When a national broadcasting organisation provided a talk for listeners in another country, he claimed, it inevitably produced a form of propaganda.What was needed instead was a supply of genuinely 'international talks… deliberately directed from each people to the rest of the world, with the idea of stating in a manner intelligible to listeners just what is being thought and desired by various elements within that people' .This might help create an international public opinion, based on a thorough mutual understanding of peoples.We want to see the international listening public so strong, and the tradition of 'freedom of broadcasting' so sacred that any rogue Government which dares to interfere with it would automatically stand condemned. 40is echoed the ideas about world public opinion propounded by Wilson and others at the birth of the League.The IBU had shied away from taking on such a role, refraining from arranging relays of spoken-word material among its members for fear of the political controversies this might cause.Now, it seemed possible that Radio Nations might gradually expand its operations to fill that gap.

Moral disarmament
Stapledon's ideas were clearly a reaction to trends that had, by 1932, begun to transform the nature of international broadcasting in Europe.During the 1920s, most transmissions that crossed international borders had done so unintentionally.When broadcasters did explicitly target foreign listeners they generally used programme exchanges, working with other broadcasters who would relay their material.Such exchanges were often organised by the IBU.National broadcasters thus retained significant powers to curate and constrain what international broadcasts 'their' publics could pick up.However, this began to change with the emergence of new broadcast services aimed at direct listeners in other countries.
As early as 1928, nationalist propaganda broadcast from Budapest, aimed at Hungarian minorities in Czechoslovakia and Romania, had prompted international protests and attracted the attention of League officials. 41In 1929 the USSR began to broadcast services in multiple languages direct to listeners across Europe, most notably from the Comintern-controlled station Radio Moscow.Although it soon became clear that these broadcasts could only reliably be picked up by those with access to expensive receiving equipment, and that much of the content of the broadcasts was relatively innocuous, some European governments feared a communist propaganda onslaught.Soviet broadcasters were not IBU members, meaning that the Union had little power to intervene.The issue was thus taken up by another international organisation, the Interparliamentary Commercial Conference (ICC), which in September 1929 resolved that an international broadcasting statute should be devised, in collaboration with the IBU and the League, to impose restrictions on wireless propaganda. 42he status quo was also disturbed by a new generation of powerful 'border stations' that sprang up along some of Europe's internal frontiers.These were designed purposely to transmit programmes to listeners in neighbouring countries.Their development reflected growing diplomatic tensions among European states, centred on the minority groups separated from their 'home' nations by the continent's post-versailles borders.German border stations, for example, reached out from Freiburg and Stuttgart targeting German-speakers in French Alsace.In 1930 the French station Radio Strasbourg was opened in response, scheduling broadcasts in German for listeners in Germany as well as in Alsace.The RRG retaliated by increasing the operating power of its Stuttgart transmitter.Repeated rounds of tit-for-tat transmitter upgrades in this radio arms race continued until the outbreak of war in 1939. 43rontier stations also proliferated across Central and Eastern Europe.They played an inflammatory role in a region that had become a complex mosaic of nationalities spread across multiple states following the break-up of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires.The German station at Breslau (modern Wroclaw), established in 1924, could easily be picked up by German-speakers in Poland, and in 1930 the official Polish broadcaster Polskie Radio opened its own powerful border station at Raszyn. 44In the spring of 1931 the two stations broadcast mutually antagonistic programmes commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Upper Silesian plebiscite.For the moment, the framework for consultation and mutual discussion established by the IBU proved equal to this challenge.On 31 March 1931, the German and Polish broadcasters signed an agreement, based on the IBU resolution of 6 July 1926, undertaking to do everything in their power to ensure that matter -whether political, religious, economic, intellectual or artistic -broadcast from their stations shall not compromise in any way the spirit of co-operation and good understanding which is necessary if broadcasting is to fulfil its mission of drawing the nations together.
Each reserved the right to broadcast 'positive propaganda' about its own nation, while promising to avoid anything that would 'offend the national sentiment of listeners' across the border. 45owerful cross-border commercial broadcasting stations were also becoming a significant presence on Europe's airwaves.Transmitting from the tiny state of Luxembourg and backed by French commercial interests, Radio Luxembourg pioneered a new wireless business model.It sought to attract advertisers and make a profit by targeting audiences in France, Germany, and Britain.It 'pirated' a long-wave frequency, ignoring international wavelength allocation agreements.IBU members strongly resisted this incursion into 'their' national territories and audiences. 46However, neither the opposition of the IBU, nor protests from the British government to the Luxembourg authorities, stopped the station from operating.This was an early demonstration of the limits of international self-regulation.Direct appeals to broadcasters or states for adhesion to established international broadcasting agreements were not necessarily an effective means of stopping unwanted international broadcasts, even among democratic states.
All this provided a powerful incentive for the League to concern itself with the issue of regulating broadcast content.As Pelt of the Information Section recognised, the fact that Europe's broadcasters were increasingly coming under state control meant that the League was obliged to consider the new forms of international cooperation and conflict that could arise among member states as a result. 47During the later 1920s IBU and League officials discussed the possibility of drawing up an international broadcasting statute to restrict aggressive propaganda broadcasting, as had been suggested by the ICC, and of creating an international body that could enforce compliance. 48he idea of 'moral disarmament' provided an additional prompt for action.Some League members and supporters argued that in the worsening international climate, restrictions on the possession of the actual weapons of war were not enough to ensure peace in Europe.Moral disarmament, 'a great effort to banish prejudices and misunderstandings from the minds of men' , was crucial if war was to be avoided. 49A Moral Disarmament Commission was thus set up as part of the 1932 World Disarmament Conference.The Polish government suggested it should consider the damaging effects of broadcast propaganda, using the Polish-German agreement of the previous year as a model for an international broadcasting statute. 50he draft agreement drawn up by the Moral Disarmament Commission sought to oblige member states actively to 'prevent the broadcasting of tendentious news or utterances capable of embittering international relations or affronting the legitimate sentiments of other peoples' .It also mandated them to 'promote the broadcasting of lectures, lessons and literary works calculated to promote good international understanding and, in particular, to spread knowledge of the work of the League' .However, the British and American delegates, along with some others, expressed strong opposition to this approach.Instead of binding obligations that would place a significant burden on broadcasters and regulators, they advocated a more general, voluntary declaration in favour of wireless internationalism. 51The UK government, somewhat disingenuously, argued that it did not possess the means to enforce any binding statute, as the BBC was 'not under the control of the Government' . 52This response partly reflected the wishes of the BBC, which worried about being obliged to broadcast programme material that might prove unappealing to listeners, or to refrain from broadcasting content that it thought important to carry.It was also the product of a more general, albeit limited, British commitment to the principle of freedom of expression.
In the face of such objections the Moral Disarmament Commission made little progress on this issue.Instead, at the request of the Assembly, further exploratory work was carried out by the Paris-based International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation (IIIC). 53Set up in 1926, this body acted as the executive arm of the International Committee on Intellectual Co-operation (ICIC), which had been established by the League in Geneva in 1922 to advise on matters concerning the international interchange of knowledge.The two bodies were, together, a classic manifestation of cultural internationalism. 54he IIIC had already conducted research on educational broadcasting in Europe.It supplemented this by gathering submissions from broadcasting authorities and officials in several European countries.In its preliminary report it recommended that a committee of experts be convened, in cooperation with the IBU, to set out the basic principles that should underpin an international broadcasting statute. 55The IBU had already argued for the importance of conducting such a study, while emphasising that broadcasters had to be fully consulted. 56Europe's broadcasters remained confident that, through continued self-regulation, they could restrict international broadcast propaganda without handing significant regulatory authority to others.
The IIIC duly convened a meeting of broadcasting experts in February 1933. 57Unsurprisingly, IBU members and perspectives dominated.Burrows, secretary-general of the IBU, gave evidence, as did IBU vice-president Heinrich Giesecke (director of the RRG) and IBU Council members L. Sourek (chairman of the Broadcasting Association of Czechoslovakia) and Arnold Raestad (former Norwegian minister for foreign affairs and a delegate to the League Assembly).The BBC, which supported the IBU's position on the form that an international broadcasting statute should take, was represented by Major C. F. Atkinson, BBC foreign and overseas director.Others present included Mario Roques (a professor at the Sorbonne, member of several French broadcasting bodies, and director of the Paris Correspondence Bureau of the International Labour Office) and Commander Gino Montefinale (the head of the Radio Division of the Italian Ministry of Communications), but IBU voices prevailed.
Most of the experts were keen to avoid any international regulations that would dictate the content of their domestic broadcast services.They argued that broadcasting organisations should be given the maximum possible freedom in devising their programmes, and that any international agreement should be concerned only with the most egregious cases of aggressive propaganda.Europe's broadcasters, they maintained, were already successfully working together to promote cordial international relations, to avoid material that might be offensive to listeners in other countries, and to settle their differences among themselves. 58Several of the experts argued that a statute that required states to intervene actively in the daily work of broadcasters would prove counterproductive.According to Atkinson, if broadcasting was fully to promote 'closer understanding of the peoples of other countries' , then it could not shy away from tackling 'controversial matters' .Broadcasters had to educate their audiences and expose them to multiple viewpoints, rather than offer bland declarations of international goodwill.Heavy-handed state intervention would, as Burrows put it, render broadcasting 'an insipid and backboneless thing' .Wireless 'must help in the search for truth and must defend the truth, even though the defence may involve at times the radiation of remarks that may not be pleasant to everyone' . 59Even Montefinale, who endorsed direct state control of broadcasting as practised in fascist Italy, agreed that there was no need for wide-ranging international regulation of broadcasting: existing agreements brokered by the ITU and IBU provided a satisfactory basis for regulation. 60owever, crucially, the experts did not envisage a future in which broadcasters would each provide their own international services to compete for the attention of Europe's listeners.Rather, they argued that the clock should be put back to the late 1920s, a time when broadcasters had not generally targeted direct listeners in foreign countries.Atkinson and Burrows both recommended that frontier stations and commercial international broadcasters like Radio Luxembourg be shut down.Broadcasters could then return primarily to serving listeners in their 'national jurisdiction' (conveniently, this formulation would allow them to continue to provide short-wave imperial broadcasting services for colonial audiences, the BBC having established its own Empire Service the previous year). 61Within Europe, international broadcasting would thus largely mean the exchange of programmes designed to promote international understanding and goodwill, including musical and cultural programmes and official announcements. 62his approach had already been adopted by the Fourth International Radio Telegraphic Conference, held at Madrid in September 1932, when ITU, national PTT, and IBU representatives had met to discuss revisions to the Washington Radiotelegraph Convention.At Madrid it was agreed that the power of broadcasting transmitters should be limited to ensure that they only served audiences within their own national boundaries.This was presented primarily as a solution to the technical problem of interference, but it also implied an end to cross-border broadcast services. 63Following the meeting of the committee of experts, in May 1933 the IBU passed a resolution of its own prohibiting members from engaging in the 'systematic diffusion of programmes or communications specially intended for listeners in another country and which have been the subject of a protest by the broadcasting organisation or organisations of such country' . 64IBU members would, it was hoped, respect each other's positions as gatekeepers to the national audience.
The IIIC duly recommended that 'a broadcasting non-aggression pact' should concern itself only with 'cases of exceptional gravity' that constituted a direct threat to national and international peace, or that intentionally provoked hostility between states or civil unrest among minority national groups.It would be up to signatory states to decide how best to put the statute into effect in their own territories, although the IIIC recommended that this should not involve penal sanctions on individuals or direct day-to-day intervention by the state in the work of broadcasting organisations.The IIIC also recommended that the statute include a general exhortation for broadcasters to take 'positive action' and broadcast material 'on the civilisation and ideals of other countries' that would 'contribute to the creation of a spirit of mutual understanding between peoples and favour the spread of ideas and forces favourable to good international relations' .Again, it emphasised that this work should not be obligatory: broadcasters were not to be compelled to take part in particular projects but should be left to decide for themselves which programmes best suited the needs of their national audiences. 65he IIIC's recommendations were a restatement of the position adopted by the IBU since 1926, prioritising the requirements of Europe's large broadcasting organisations.However, they were almost immediately rendered obsolete by the development of new international broadcasting services, which accelerated markedly from 1933 onwards as a function of wider political changes across Europe.As one commentator put it that September, In the earlier, simpler, and happier days of broadcasting its outstanding characteristic was that it was a harbinger of peace, an unrivalled medium of bringing the peoples together … It is becoming sadly and increasingly obvious that broadcasting is a convenient means of intensive, and even offensive, nationalist propaganda … This kind of propaganda seems to be increasing in intensity and ingenuity, and might, if not checked, help to precipitate a disaster. 66

Radio wars
In Germany, the Nazi electoral victories of early 1933 paved the way for the transformation of broadcasting.The RRG was subordinated to Joseph Goebbels' new Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda: employees who would not toe the line were sacked, resigned, or took their own lives.Giesecke was sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp.Resources were poured into Germany's domestic and international broadcasting infrastructure to transform wireless into one of the Nazi state's most powerful propaganda tools. 67n 5 July 1933, the RRG began broadcasting a series of talks from its Munich station, inciting civil disobedience in Austria.On 18 July Admiral Carpendale, IBU president and BBC controller, contacted the UK Foreign Office 'much exercised at the persistent use of the broadcasting station at Munich for propaganda directed against the Austrian Government' .Although the RRG was breaching IBU agreements, the Union was powerless to enforce compliance and Carpendale's letters of protest to the RRG had gone unanswered.Previously, the RRG had been the BBC's closest collaborator in Europe.Now, contact between the two organisations was abruptly cut off. 68The Foreign Office agreed that 'this aggression by radio' posed a serious threat to peace in Europe and viewed it as 'a convenient peg on which to hang a warning to the German Government of "Hands Off Austria"' .It approached the Italian and French governments, suggesting they together raise the matter with the German government under the terms of the Four Power Pact. 69However, the Italian government immediately made its own approach, seemingly to avoid the need to stand formally alongside the British and French.While the Italians claimed to have received assurances from Germany that the propaganda offensive would cease, aggressive broadcasts from Munich continued. 70he Foreign Office also suggested that the League should accelerate efforts to draw up an international broadcasting statute, and that earlier UK opposition to mandatory international broadcasting restrictions should be dropped.Now, 'right in the centre of Europe there has appeared a Government that clearly intends to use broadcasting for furthering its aggressive nationalist designs' .If this went unchallenged, the inevitable result would be the wholesale 'jamming' of German broadcasts by surrounding states (using transmitters broadcasting noise on similar wavelengths to disrupt listening to German broadcasts) and 'complete chaos in the European ether' . 71Although the British government had previously claimed that it did not have the power to impose mandatory regulations on the BBC, the Foreign Office and the General Post Office (which regulated broadcasting in the UK) now agreed that in practice the terms of the broadcaster's operating licence gave the government all the tools it needed to enforce an international statute. 72By the middle of 1933, even British officials were beginning to turn against the sort of self-regulation proposed by the IIIC and the IBU, and instead to favour mandatory restrictions.Freedom of expression was not their priority.
A further portent of the coming transformation of the European broadcasting landscape was the inauguration in September 1933 of a regular service of news and other programmes in Albanian, and soon also in a host of other languages, from the Italian station Radio Bari.By the end of the year, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, and Romania had similarly begun broadcasting in foreign languages for foreign listeners. 73Governments were also becoming increasingly concerned by the potential effects of foreign broadcasts on their own citizenry.By December 1933 the Czechoslovak government had banned public listening to foreign stations. 74In 1934, as part of a wider attempt by Mussolini's regime to generate increased influence in the Middle East, Radio Bari began to broadcast news in Arabic, accompanied by a musical programme (this material was also carried on short wave from Rome).The service initially focused on pro-Italian cultural propaganda but would later take on an aggressively anti-British and anti-French tone. 75n 25 July 1934 Austrian Nazis attempted to stage a coup against the 'Austrofascist' government of Engelbert Dollfuss.RRG broadcasts from Munich seemed to have encouraged the rising, and one of the key targets for the putschists was the vienna headquarters of the Austrian broadcaster Ravag, which they temporarily occupied.Nazi broadcast propaganda subsequently also targeted listeners in the Saarland, in advance of the 1935 plebiscite to determine whether the region should be returned to German control.RRG broadcasts from Stuttgart were designed to sway voters in the plebiscite, while the French state retaliated with its own plebiscite propaganda broadcast from Radio Strasbourg. 76Disingenuously, the RRG complained to the IBU about the French broadcasts, while simultaneously strengthening its own propaganda efforts. 77n June 1934 Burrows dismissed allegations that the IBU had become irrelevant.voluntary cooperation through the Union's 'happy family' , he argued, remained the best way to secure practical cooperation. 78This seemed wildly optimistic.When the IBU had met the previous year to discuss a revised European wavelength allocation plan, an increasingly antagonistic atmosphere had been apparent, and negotiations had not run smoothly.'Every country is now fully aware of the influence of broadcasting, and every country wants the best waves and the strongest stations for itself' . 79The days when Europe's broadcasters could work together and build a system of voluntary and consensual self-regulation were numbered.
In 1934 Ravag lodged a protest with the IBU against the RRG, accusing Germany of seeking to foment civil unrest in Austria.The RRG responded that it was merely seeking to educate its own listeners in Germany about events across the border.It refused to accede to Ravag's requests that it provide scripts of its broadcasts for advance scrutiny.Subsequently, the RRG and some other IBU members opposed the formulation of a collective Union response to the IIIC's draft international broadcasting statute.Eventually, as conflict within the IBU intensified, the Union announced that it would withdraw from all discussions concerning the regulation of international broadcast propaganda. 80This marked a fundamental change in the IBU's role and a major step away from the idea of international self-regulation.
In some ways the League was drawn into the resulting vacuum, but its ability to find effective solutions was reduced by Germany's withdrawal from the organisation in October 1933, and by the swingeing funding cuts imposed on the League's Information Section that year.The latter move was part of a conscious attempt by some member states to prevent the Information Section undertaking active 'propaganda' designed to promote international arbitration and peace.In the eyes of its critics, the Section had overstepped its legitimate remit and was pursuing its own agenda in international affairs, rather than merely publicising the League. 81Its wings were henceforth clipped.
The idea that Radio Nations might provide a genuinely international broadcasting service also encountered major obstacles during this period, despite initial cause for optimism.Broadcasts from the station continued to publicise the League's activities, and there were some indications that, during moments of international crisis such as the 1934 Chaco dispute, it could play a valuable role in allowing representatives of different nations to present their own conflicting perspectives direct to listeners around the world. 82Additional resources were made available, notably when the Dutch Carnegie Foundation awarded the 1935 Wateler Peace Prize to the League to develop the station, and plans were made to extend news broadcasting.A radio studio was included in the designs for the new Palace of the League of Nations, along with five rooms for broadcasting reporters overlooking the Assembly Hall to allow live commentaries. 83With the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935, Radio Nations passed onto a semi-emergency footing.On 7 October the League's secretary-general authorised the temporary takeover of the station from its private operators, and it began sending out lengthy official announcements to member governments in multiple languages by wireless telegraphy, setting out the League's position on the invasion.However, the League did not use this as an opportunity to increase the scale of the station's modest broadcast services. 84Other than its weekly news bulletins, the broadcasting activities of Radio Nations continued to revolve around periodic talks and speeches by League officials and coverage of League Assembly meetings. 85Moreover, there is little evidence to suggest that the Information Section thought systematically about who constituted the potential audience for Radio Nations, or ever sought to survey who was actually listening or what they thought about the station's programmes.Surviving listener correspondence came largely from US short-wave wireless enthusiasts, known as 'DXers': they may have been interested more in the technical challenge of picking up signals from Switzerland, than in the content of the programmes that were broadcast. 86In short, Radio Nations can hardly be regarded as a formidable attempt actively to harness broadcasting in the cause of peace.

The 1936 convention and its aftermath
Meanwhile, as Arnold Raestad and a committee of lawyers drafted the League's international broadcasting statute, they continued to operate according to the now-obsolete recommendations of the 1933 committee of experts.They sought to introduce only very general restrictions, avoiding significant obligations or anything that would necessitate regular state involvement in the affairs of broadcasting authorities. 87Because they invited written feedback from League member states on two successive drafts, circulated in February 1934 and April 1935, more than three years passed between the meeting of the committee of experts and the signing of the final convention in Geneva. 88This delay made the divergence between the statute and the realities of international broadcasting in Europe even more obvious.
Official responses to the drafts tended to return to first principles.Some governments pressed for an even less ambitious general declaration, whereas others argued for a greater emphasis on mandatory obligations.However, the drafting committee refused to diverge from the recommendations of the 1933 committee of experts and declined to implement most of the suggested changes.The UK Foreign Office doubted whether the convention could achieve anything useful: 'Does anybody really suppose that in times of crisis the various national broadcasting associations will give out, at any rate in the majority of countries, anything but the propaganda desired by their respective gov[ernmen]ts?' 89 The Government of India similarly concluded that the convention could only be 'a reminder to those Nations, which adhere to it, of their moral responsibilities towards their neighbours' .In peacetime this might be useful, but when crises arose 'particularly under the stimulus of propaganda initiated by other hostile nations no agreement will prevent a Nation from using all available weapons including that of broadcasting' . 90he Conference for the Adoption of a Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace eventually opened on 17 September 1936 in the newly built Palace of Nations in Geneva, with Raestad in the chair.Delegates attended from twenty-four countries in Europe, eight in Latin America, and from Turkey, Egypt, India, New Zealand, and the USSR.Observers from Estonia, Latvia, Siam, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the IBU were in attendance, as was an unofficial representative from the USA's Federal Communications Commission.Germany, the country most closely associated with aggressive broadcast propaganda, was notably absent.
Opening the conference, Raestad emphasised that the drafting committee had 'sacrificed all but the most elemental and fundamental points' so that as many countries as possible would feel able to sign up. 91Over the days that followed, many of the delegates attempted to raise the basic issues that had been pointed out in written responses to earlier drafts but ignored by the committee.Again, the proposed amendments were largely rejected.Raestad stuck to the position that the convention needed to be as general as possible.Only amendments dealing with minor ambiguities in wording were accepted.A surprise amendment proposed by the Austrian government, seeking to extend the convention to prohibit 'anti-religious' broadcasts, was rebuffed, as were a British attempt to insert an explicit reference to the need to restrict foreign-language broadcasting and a Romanian amendment aimed at deterring the construction of frontier stations. 92The Spanish delegate, noting the damage done by foreign broadcast propaganda as his country had descended into civil war, pushed for the establishment of an international agency to enforce the convention. 93Again, however, this was rejected as violating the statute's basic principle of avoiding mandatory restrictions. 94Several delegations insisted that their reservations be noted in the final convention.The Italians pulled out before the final session of the conference, protesting against the League's stance on the invasion of Abyssinia, and the Hungarian delegation refused to sign the agreement. 95Neither the Spanish nor the Soviet governments ultimately ratified it. 96n its final form, the 1936 convention followed the lines set out by the 1933 committee of experts.Signatories agreed 'to prohibit and, if occasion arises, to stop without delay the broadcasting within their respective territories of any transmission which to the detriment of good international understanding is of such a character as to incite the population of any territory to acts incompatible with the internal order or the security of a territory' of other signatory states, and to stop broadcasts that constituted or were likely to lead to an incitement to war.Emphasis was placed on preventing or correcting the broadcasting of damaging statements 'the incorrectness of which is or ought to be known to the persons responsible for the broadcast' .States also agreed to share information that might 'facilitate the broadcasting … of items calculated to promote a better knowledge of the civilisation and the conditions of life of his own country as well as of the essential features of the development of his relations with other peoples and of his contribution to the organisation of peace' .It was left up to member states to decide how to enforce the convention in their own territories.Disputes were to be resolved through normal diplomatic channels, or if necessary settled with the aid of the ICIC or any other dispute resolution agreements in force between the parties.Failing that, they were to be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice or an arbitral tribunal. 97nsurprisingly, the convention proved to be a dead letter.Only seven countries formally ratified it before the outbreak of war (the UK, Brazil, Denmark, France, India, Luxembourg, and New Zealand), although the League reckoned that ten governments had 'definitely acceded' by June 1938. 98Between the signing of the convention and the German invasion of Poland in 1939, governments and broadcasters continued to pay lip service to the general principles outlined in the agreement.yet aggressive broadcast propaganda continued to increase, and many countries saw retaliation in kind as the only practical response.
In 1934 the IBU had withdrawn from attempts to regulate international broadcast propaganda.After 1936, the League of Nations effectively did the same.Both organisations instead refocused their efforts on positive initiatives to use broadcasting to promote mutual understanding and peace.The IBU continued to arrange relays of musical programmes, while leaving it to member broadcasters to exchange among themselves spoken-word commentaries on current and international affairs, on a bi-lateral basis. 99The League meanwhile continued slowly to develop Radio Nations, although the station never became an important source of regular programming for rebroadcasters or direct listeners.Only when the Assembly was in session did the station provide a daily service, and only on short-wave and for a relatively brief period each evening. 100In June 1938 the Information Section confessed that it had experienced 'considerable difficulties' in developing Radio Nations as a means of publicising the League's activities.As sceptics had pointed out when the scheme was on the drawing board, a short-wave wireless telegraph station was not the most effective means of communicating with countries either in Europe or beyond.Moreover, the station had not been designed for broadcasting work, and when it had been hastily repurposed to take on this additional role, sufficient resources had never been made available. 101As faith in the League's effectiveness had evaporated, and as many broadcasters had begun to provide engaging and critical foreign coverage of their own, interest in Information Section bulletins and public speeches broadcast from the Assembly dwindled. 102etween 1937 and 1939 the IBU and the League also investigated practical measures that might improve broadcast coverage of international affairs and thus promote mutual understanding and peace.Both organisations sought to facilitate the work of international radio correspondents, who were being deployed by many European broadcasters, in increasing numbers, to cover events in foreign counties.Governments could help by facilitating customs clearance of radio equipment, and broadcasters could provide facilities for the visiting radio journalists.However, even these initiatives were not uncontroversial: some broadcasters and states argued that they had the right to censor foreign radio correspondents who wished to relay material from their country. 103At an IBU meeting held in Berlin in March 1937, the Italian and German delegates blocked any discussion of the removal of controls on visiting radio journalists: they 'were anxious that the subject should not even be discussed again' . 104he IIIC also sought to promote international agreements among broadcasters on sharing information and recordings, and on the use of broadcasting to inform listeners about the work of the League and general developments in international relations, the sciences, and the arts and letters. 105Again, however, this work provoked opposition from some member states, and the League was obliged to deny that it had any intention of devising a propaganda policy of its own: 'there is no question of transforming the Information Section into an international Ministry of Propaganda' . 106fter 1937, the initiative passed from international organisations to national governments.Cultural agreements between states continued to offer a means of promoting mutual understanding: in 1938 the German and Italian governments signed a bi-lateral agreement that provided, among other things, for exchanges of both musical and spoken-word radio programmes. 107ational governments also sought to counteract hostile broadcast propaganda by jamming foreign stations (a practice that only really became widespread following the outbreak of war) and by imposing penalties on those who listened to them. 108he 1936 convention had stipulated that disputes between governments over international broadcasts should if possible be settled through normal diplomatic channels.For the British government, bilateral negotiations with the fascist states seemed to be the best way to make progress, part of the broader policy of appeasement.Italian broadcasts in Arabic from Bari and Rome were the main threat to British overseas interests, designed to intensify civil disorder in the Palestine Mandate and to strengthen hostility to the British presence across the Middle East.On 16 April 1938 an Anglo-Italian Agreement was signed which included a 'Declaration regarding Propaganda': both countries agreed to refrain from targeting one another with aggressive propaganda. 109This did lead to a temporary moderation in the tone of Italian broadcast propaganda in Arabic, although the respite proved short-lived. 110n its desire to conciliate Germany, the UK government meanwhile went to some lengths to ensure that BBC broadcasts, and articles appearing in the British press, did not prove a source of irritation to Hitler's government.Behind the scenes, guidelines on broadcasting about Nazi Germany were issued to the BBC during 1938 and 1939, including a warning 'to keep off Jews' , downplaying reports of Nazi antisemitic policies and atrocities.As early as February 1938 the Foreign Office pressed the BBC to be 'as discreet as possible both in their news bulletins and in their talks when they refer to German and Italian affairs' . 111The Foreign Office offered only muted criticism of Nazi propaganda broadcasts to the Sudetenland in the summer and autumn of 1938.These broadcasts spread false reports of a 'reign of terror' by the Czechoslovak state in the region, designed to whip up Sudeten German hostility to the government. 112t the same time, the British state began to develop its own resources for broadcasting propaganda.As Sir Robert vansittart of the Foreign Office put it, 'At a time when Europe, indeed the world, is flooded with the government-controlled propaganda broadcast by certain foreign countries, the broadcasting of British news and views in foreign languages is urgently necessary.' 113 Once British attempts to introduce international restrictions on foreign-language broadcasting through the 1936 convention had failed, the Foreign Office changed tack and entered into discussions with the BBC about establishing British foreign-language services, initially in Arabic for the Middle East and Spanish and Portuguese for Latin America.These would communicate British viewpoints on regional and international affairs, serving British foreign-policy interests in two significant regions of geopolitical competition.In establishing the new services, which began operating in early 1938, close and effective collaboration was achieved between the BBC and the British government.While the BBC was keen not to be seen to be engaging in propaganda work, it accepted guidance from the Foreign Office and other government departments about what to include in, and what to exclude from, its Arabic Service.'Bad news' from Palestine was kept to a minimum: only 'important' executions of Palestinian rebels were reported. 114uring the September Crisis of 1938, the BBC also began broadcasting to European listeners in German, Italian, and French, again in close consultation with the Foreign Office.Other BBC foreign-language services were introduced over the following year, and with the outbreak of war a further, dramatic, expansion of British international broadcasting took place.The French government similarly expanded its services to European listeners, and both countries used the services of Radio Luxembourg (nominally an independent commercial concern, but with increasingly significant ties to the French state) to reach listeners in Germany and elsewhere.The Nazi state meanwhile continued to plough resources into the expansion of international broadcasting, introducing services in a range of European languages and in Afrikaans (for South Africa) and Arabic.Emblematically, the German pretext for the invasion of Poland was a supposed Polish attack on the German border station at Gleiwitz. 115adio war became open war.Soon after, Radio Nations went off-air, and in January 1940 the Swiss government denounced its broadcasting agreement with the League. 116

Conclusions
During the interwar years, wireless internationalists encountered significant obstacles in their attempts to harness radio as a means of promoting international understanding and peace.Reconciling the divergent agendas of Europe's different broadcasting organisations was no easy task.Neither was that of overcoming linguistic barriers, or of working out how to regulate spoken-word programmes that might cause offence when they crossed borders.Nevertheless, it would be wrong to dismiss the plans of wireless internationalists as intrinsically impractical.Wireless internationalism was championed by many supremely practical broadcasting officials and civil servants, and they can be credited with several concrete achievements.Initially, many of them hoped that aggressive propaganda broadcasting could be restricted, and positive programme exchange arrangements expanded, through the voluntary cooperation of Europe's broadcasters.Until 1933, at least, this seemed like a realistic expectation and a practical way forward.
It was rapid technical, organisational, and geopolitical change that rendered these assumptions obsolete.From the late 1920s onwards, broadcasting across Europe was reshaped as states, both democratic and non-democratic, progressively exerted increasing influence over large national broadcasting organisations.Many hoped this would discipline a potentially disruptive new medium, simplify the task of regulation, and focus resources to provide high-quality programming.However, it left Europe's broadcasting organisations vulnerable to state capture.They became a key means by which governments sought to influence publics, at home and abroad.
Even in democratic countries, broadcasters found it difficult to resist involvement in state-led propaganda initiatives.
As a result, self-regulation of international broadcasting ceased to be effective.In 1934, in the face of major disagreements and disputes among its member broadcasters, the IBU removed itself from attempts to regulate international broadcast content.The League to some extent sought to fill the gap, but by continuing to work with outdated assumptions it ultimately produced an international statute based on false premises.The 1936 convention was obsolete long before it was signed.The initiative subsequently passed to national governments, as international broadcasting became an unambiguous tool of state propaganda, and as states sought to make bilateral agreements to moderate its worst effects.Like other internationalist projects which 'relied on states to realign their national interests or which required continuous public moral support to constrain states' actions' , the outcome was not encouraging. 117s Goodman has shown, analysis of public discourses surrounding the 1936 convention can illuminate interwar attitudes to restricting freedom of expression and help us understand the origins of contemporary thinking about hate speech.yet, as this article has demonstrated, even the British government, while paying lip service to the idea of on-air freedom of expression, was far from committed to the proposition that broadcasting should create an open international marketplace for ideas.Indeed, at key points, the UK Foreign Office and GPO argued for mandatory international broadcasting regulations that would oblige broadcasters to carry certain items and exclude others from their services.This should not come as a surprise.It would be anachronistic to claim that the BBC of the 1930s was 'independent' of the British state in any meaningful way.Ministers and civil servants exerted significant direct power and indirect influence over the nation's publicly owned monopoly broadcaster.Neither in domestic nor international services could opinions be freely expressed at the microphone.
As Kearney and others have argued, one of the key legacies of the 1936 convention was the establishment of the principle that aggressive international broadcasts that sought to promote war with, or civil disturbances within, another country were unacceptable.In considering the wireless internationalist initiatives of the interwar years, policymakers had to think seriously about the nature and legitimacy of international propaganda.They discussed what sanctions should be applied to broadcasters who broke international agreements, and what punishments should be meted out to the individuals involved.In the 1930s, those who called for individuals to be held accountable for their work in producing international broadcast propaganda were generally in a minority, and penal sanctions were rejected.War changed all this.After the Allied victory, prominent individual collaborators who had broadcast for the Axis occupiers, or who had produced propaganda in enemy countries aimed at their respective homelands, were imprisoned or executed for treason, including John Amery, William 'Lord Haw Haw' Joyce, Max Blokzijl, and Iva 'Tokyo Rose' Toguri.The vichy broadcaster Philippe Henriot was assassinated by the French resistance. 118Ideas about broadcasting in the cause of peace were thus repurposed to deadly effect, to punish those who had helped make wireless a weapon of war.