Sefton Delmer, Radio Warrior

     Sefton Delmer was a UK journalist and  a master of radio propaganda in WW II, a man who set up apparently-clandestine German radio stations to undermine their morale and spread misinformation.  His earliest success was a shortwave fake that attacked Hitler and his henchmen for not being Nazi enough; a prominent British politician, on hearing of it, said, "If this is the sort of thing that is needed to win the war, why, I'd rather lose it."

     Later efforts rose to absolute mind-bending sleight-of-hand; when German broadcast stations shut down during Allied bombing,  Delmer would have the UK's 600 kiloWatt "Aspidistra" transmitter (probably the most powerful in the world at the time) put on air on the same frequency and a skilled crew would expertly mimic the German programming, subtly inserting bits of misleading, demoralizing news.

     He wrote a two-volume autobiography, Trail Sinister and Black Boomerang.  You can't find the first one for much under $40 and prices for the second, covering his WW II radio work, appear to start at $100.  The Sefton Delmer Archive has them as online PDFs, but they're difficult to navigate.  And that's a pity; he was a fascinating man, and I think there's much to be learned from him applicable to our present day mish-mash of news, opinion -- and deliberate misinformation.

     Semi-related, I am considering changing my "What Would Gutenberg Do" tag, or adding a new one: "What Would Tyndale Do?" Or possibly what Michael Servetus, the unknown original of many an Internet debater, would do.  Neither was a man willing to shut up, and while that can be annoying, it's a good counter to the general human tendency to fall in line, march in step and not make waves, no matter where the mass of men is headed.  They each died of it, but their memory lives on.