Cold War on the Airwaves: The Radio Propaganda War against East Germany by Nicholas J. Schlosser (review)

Between 1946 and 1989, American authorities used the frequency power of Radio in the American Sector (RIAS), located in West Berlin, to reach East German listeners and "undermine the legitimacy of the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc" (1). Nicholas Schlosser's book, Cold War on the Airwaves: The Radio Propaganda War Against East Germany, is a noteworthy study of RIAS's role in this campaign, exploring how this "child of the Cold War" (167) became a "political actor" (170) that ultimately influenced East German "political culture" (5).

Schlosser begins in 1946, when American occupation authorities created RIAS, and examines news programming from 1947 to 1961, although his scope extends beyond reunification. He pays close attention to commentaries and broadcasts aired during the 1953 uprising and the Berlin Wall's construction and argues throughout that Cold War propaganda was often a dialogue: RIAS and its East German counterparts frequently developed programming in reaction to and in anticipation of one another. Schlosser also provides an institutional history of the station, detailing RIAS's connection with American occupation authorities and information agencies, documenting the working relationship between American station managers and the predominately German staff, and describing the station's growing financial reliance on the Federal Republic of Germany as the US government reduced its support.

The book's larger goal is to consider RIAS's ability to "influenc[e] the political worldviews and language of the German Democratic Republic's government as well as its citizens" (2). This is an ambitious goal. Although Schlosser uses a rich and varied source base—including radio transcripts, listener surveys and letters, interviews with East Germans who crossed into West Berlin prior to August 1961, and Stasi reports—these sources do not allow him to make definitive statements about RIAS's impact on its audience, particularly where dissent is concerned. Views expressed by émigrés or disgruntled East Germans, he concedes, were not necessarily typical of those who tuned in to RIAS: many who wrote to the station asked general questions about the US instead of responding to particular news broadcasts (170).

Schlosser's analysis of the 1953 uprising reveals the complexities of determining just how much RIAS broadcasts influenced the worldviews and language of East German listeners. The protest began on June 16, when East Berlin workers downed tools, and became a national event the following day as strikes and protests broke out in numerous East German cities. Schlosser provides a careful timetable of events and RIAS broadcasts, noting that protestors who participated in the June 17 demonstrations carried banners bearing the same slogans that striking workers in East Berlin had used the prior day. RIAS, his timetable reveals, had reported on these slogans during its broadcast the previous afternoon. The author contends that these signs "are just one example of how the RIAS helped to transform the protests from a local issue to one that affected the entire German Democratic Republic" (103). He also argues that RIAS broadcasts provided journalists and commentators with "the chance to shape how listeners understood the events around them" (76). Schlosser suggests a strong connection between RIAS broadcasts and the events of 1953, but his sources stop short of providing definitive proof of this relationship. Missing, in particular, are the words of the men and women who participated in these demonstrations as well as consideration of other mechanisms by which protestors might have heard about events in Berlin. Instead, he turns to publications and memoirs produced by RIAS commentators and station managers, sources that speak more to the station's perceived or even aspirational impact rather than attest to its actual impact. Schlosser also draws on Stasi reports that, after evaluating the radio broadcasts of several stations during the uprising, identified RIAS as "the principle provocateur [sic]" (100). These, too, are tricky sources: Stasi agents likely had multiple reasons for blaming or even...