RFE First Broadcasts Directly from Munich on May 1, 1951

RFE in Munich in 1950s

May 1, 2011, will be the 60th anniversary of the first Radio Free Europe broadcast from Munich. Below we will look briefly at that historic event.

After its initial broadcast on July 4, 1950, Radio Free Europe was only broadcasting a relatively weak signal, with a total 7 ½ hours per day over short-wave transmissions to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.  

That would change when Radio Free Europe began broadcasting to Czechoslovakia, as the Voice of Free Czechoslovakia, on medium wave (am band) frequencies on May 1, 1951, from the newly constructed transmitter station, nicknamed “Carola” at Holzkirchen,  Germany (south of Munich). 

The new transmitter station had four antenna towers, which reached a height of 400 feet, and, at that time with 135,000 watts of power, was almost three times more powerful than any commercial radio transmitter in the United States. The broadcast schedule was then increased to 12 hours a day to Czechoslovakia.

Prior to this, programs were basically prepared in RFE's New York studios and flown to Germany for broadcasting. After Holzkirchen, transmitter stations were constructed in Biblis, Germany, and outside Lisbon, Portugal.

The new Radio Free Europe transmitter site was dedicated on May 1, 1951, at 10 a.m., in Munich’s Bayerische Hof Hotel. Ferdinand Peroutka, a Czech journalist who had been imprisoned in the Nazi prison camps Dachau and Buchenwald, fled Czechoslovkia in 1948 to the United States. Peroutka, who helped found the Council of Free Czechoslovkia, read the following message to those in attendance:

The Communist government in our country is the biggest attempt, which has ever been undertaken to turn things upside down to deprive words of their meaning. Jailers sing songs of freedom and officials of the secret police lecture on humanity.

The loss of freedom is officially called independence in our country, aggression is called peace action, plunder of the country 'benefits', forced exports to Russia 'building up of Czechoslovakia', enslavement of women in heavy industry is called their liberation.

We know how much effort the Communists stake on reforming your souls .., But we also know that in the evening when you return home from the daily drudgery ... between your four walls you say to yourself: ’They are telling lies. 

The first broadcast actually began at 5 a.m. and was just music. The first program, read by exile Pavel Tigrid, aired at 11 a.m. from a studio in the RFE building. Pavel Tigrid would become the Czech Republic’s first Minister of Culture, after the 1989 Velvet Revolution. He said, in part, 

Dear Listeners:

Today, a terrible enemy rises against all communist informers, agents provocateurs and stool pigeons, all inhuman guards in prisons and work-camps, all judges and members of communist jurisdiction, all propagandists of communist ideology: Radio Free Europe, who will reveal their names, one by one; all of them will be blacklisted by the democratic world and will be dumped on the rubbish heap of contempt by the Czech and Slovak people.

C.D. Jackson, publisher of Fortune magazine, as president of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), dedicated the new RFE headquarters building in a short speech at the Bayerische Hof hotel ceremony.

Local newspapers in the United States also covered  the new transmitter site dedication and first program, e.g. The Chronicle Express in Pann Van, New York began a May 17, 1951 article entitled “Freedom Bell Rings Out Over New Radio Station,” with “May 1 was a great day for the 16,000,000 men, women and children who joined the Crusade for Freedom last fall and bucked up their belief in freedom with their nickles, dimes and dollars.” Yates county in upper New York state contributed $360.33 and 4,000 persons signed the Freedom Scrolls.  

Moviegoers in the United States would later see a newsreel of the construction of the new building and a speech by C.D. Jackson to the workers who constructed the building.

After C.D. Jackson visited Munich, a report dated May 15, 1951, under his name was airmailed from Munich to “Crusaders” in the United States. The envelopes airmailed carried German postage stamps with the image of the Freedom Bell in Berlin. The C.D. Jackson report read in part:

I am convinced that in the new Munich transmitter we have in our hands a mighty weapon in the struggle for freedom. It is already hitting the Communists hard, and in the months ahead as it reaches full effectiveness it will hit them still harder. With the help of the American people, through the Crusade for Freedom, we can build similar powerful freedom stations for each of the Iron Curtain countries. The success of the Crusade for Freedom next fall will largely determine our ability to carry out these plans. I want you to know that your personal help is deeply appreciated by General Clay, General Eisenhower, Ambassador Grew and all the others associated with us in this undertaking. 

After his death in 1964, the largest meeting room at Radio Free Europe was named in his honor. A bronze plaque was placed outsdie the room with these words:

IN MEMORIAM

C.D. JACKSON, 1902 -1964

VICE-CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, A FORMER PRESIDENT

OF THE FREE EUROPE COMMITTEE AND A GUIDING

SPIRIT FROM THE EARLIEST DAYS  OF RADIO FREE EUROPE.

HIS VIGOROUS AND CREATIVE LEADERSHIP AND WHOLE

HEARTED AND CONSTANT PERSONAL COMMITTMENT TO

THE OBJECTIVES OF THE FREE EUROPE COMMITTEE CON-

TRIBUTED UNMEASURABLY TO ITS EFFECTIVE PURSUIT

OF THESE OBJECTIVES. HIS DEVOTION TO THE CAUSE

OF FREEDOM REMAINS AN INSPIRATION TO MEN OF

   GOOD WILL EVERYWHERE

American Heritage Foundation, Crusade for Freedom, RFE and CIA

The 1952 Crusade for Freedom fund drive was a financial disappointment: it raised the lowest amount of contributions in the Crusade for Freedom's ten-year history. Due to the disappointing results, Arthur Page, Chairman of the Executive Committee of National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) had preliminary discussions with Thomas D’Arcy Brophy, president of the American Heritage Foundation (AHF), with the view that the latter take over the fundraising campaign for the 1954 Crusade. 

At the NCFE Director’s Meeting on March 17, 1953, Page reported that he and Brophy had agreed, in principle, that

• The Crusade for Freedom should finish its current campaign and conclude its money-raising activities not later than June 30, 1953, and should thereafter cease all activity, it being understood that whatever steps possible would be taken to preserve the name ‘Crusade for Freedom’ in view of its established value and widespread acceptance.
• The Heritage Foundation would take over full responsibility for the next year’s money-raising campaign for NCFE, assuming the same position vis-à-vis NCFE as the Crusade for Freedom has heretofore occupied, the sole NCFE responsibility being to check the Heritage Foundation publicity to be sure it accurately reflected the facts.
• The Heritage Foundation may use the ‘Crusade for Freedom’ name during its fund-raising campaign but that right, title and interest in the name ‘Crusade for Freedom’, to the extent possible, would remain in the National Committee for a Free Europe.

On May 1, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a lettter to D’arcy Brophy in which he strongly endorses the American Heritage Foundation take over the Crusade for Freedom campaigns:

I am told that the Executive Committee, of the American Heritage Foundation is meeting on May fourteenth to consider the possibility of undertaking the important work of private citizens now being carried forward by the “Crusade for Freedom.” Because I am a former Trustee of the American Heritage Foundation and was a participant in the "Crusade for Freedom" while I was in private life, you will perhaps not take it amiss if I express an opinion. I believe that the work is of great importance. and it seems to me that the American Heritage Foundation is uniquely qualified to carry it out. It is a public service of no less importance than the tasks the Foundation has accepted in the past.

The Board of Trustees, including General Lucius D. Clay, of the American Heritage Foundation unanimously agreed to the project for one year.

During their August 1952 meeting, the Crusade Board of Directors had elected Henry Ford II to the offices of Director and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Crusade for Freedom. As Chairman of the Board of the American Heritage Foundation, he presided over the 1953–1954 Crusade for Freedom campaign conference October 20-21, 1953 in Washington, D.C. 

391 persons met at the Pentagon building and Mayflower Hotel, including individuals representing national organizations (including 29 labor), companies and corporations. Twenty-nine Crusade state chairmen also attended. 

The meeting at the Pentagon on October 20, 1953, was for heads of national organizations; the one on October 21, 1953, was for corporate executives. The "Freedom Tank" was delivered to the Washington meetings. A Paramount Pictures newsreel, released October 23, 1951, covered the events at one point showed some of those who attended the meeting looking intently at the "Freedom Tank."

There was a dinner for all attendees at the Mayflower Hotel on October 21, 1953, during which three purposes of the upcoming public Crusade campaign, scheduled for February 1954, were announced:

• Enlist the participation of large number of Americans,
• Secure millions of signatures,
• Create a favorable climate for the fund raising drive.

The fund-raising goal of the 1953–1954 campaign was announced as $10,000,000 and signatures of 25,000,000 Americans. As a “kick-off” conference for the upcoming Crusade, workshops were held for Crusade state chairmen and other national and organizational leaders to “better prepare themselves for making known to the American public the threat of international communism, and what is being done to combat it.” Henry Ford II announced to the conference attendees:

You will hear in detail about the Crusade and the effort it is having through Radio Free Europe on the captive peoples under Communism behind the Iron Curtain ... you will hear from top people in the Government that this Crusade is indispensible to the security of the United States at a time when the threat to our way of life is real, ominous and growing.

Allen Dulles

One of the “top people in the Government” to whom Ford referred was Allen Dulles, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Prior to the October meetings, Allen Dulles wrote a Confidential memorandum to Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson on October 17, 1953, which gave a background report of the NCFE and Radio Free Europe, including the continuing cover story of its true sponsorship:

The National Committee for a Free Europe is a private citizens organization, which employs the skills of exiles in this country and abroad to lend hope and encouragement, and in some instances actual physical assistance, to their fellow countrymen behind the Iron Curtain.

We here consider Radio Free Europe to be about the hardest hitting and most effective weapon we have for reaching people in the satellite areas directly. Most defectors agree with us.

Charles E. Wilson

Dulles told Wilson, who also was due to speak at the meeting, that he was “asked by D’Arcy Brophy to relay to you his suggestion that you stress in your preliminary remarks the importance of private citizen participation in the present struggle against the totalitarian system.” As a postscript to his memorandum, Dulles told Wilson that,

CIA’s interest in the Crusade and Radio Free Europe is entirely covert and should not be mentioned. My appearance at the two briefings is solely as Director of Central Intelligence to give a factual picture of conditions behind the Iron Curtain.

Dulles told the assembled group:

It must be one of the objectives of the free world to find a peaceful way of  bringing the Soviet Union back to its historic boundaries. I think that one of the important ways of doing it is showing the Soviet Union that it can never tame and can never subdue the millions of people in this area (the Iron Curtain countries) ... What we must try to do is to find every means of showing the Soviet Union that that will growingly be more of a liability to the Soviet Union than an asset.

We estimate that Radio Free Europe is a powerful weapon, one of the most powerful in keeping the hope of freedom alive. We believe that it is powerful in very large measure because it is viewed in those countries not as an instrument of government propaganda, but as something supported by millions of American people, with whom the contacts with those people have always been close.

We consider it one of our strongest and most important weapons we have in peacefully winning the cold war.

D'Arcy Brophy

The final speaker at the first day’s conference was Thomas D’Arcy Brophy. After giving the reasons why the Heritage Foundation decided to take on the Crusade for Freedom, he concluded his remarks by thanking the Advertising Council for being “the most important partner” of the American Heritage Foundation. Brophy looked forward to “publicity support ‘unparallel in the history of such activities in this country.’ Brophy finished his remarks by quoting President Eisenhower, “I urge every American to support this independent American enterprise dedicated to strengthening the will to Freedom.”

On October 21, 1953, D’Arcy Brophy sent a letter to “Fellow Americans,” in which he outlined the goals of the 1954, Crusade campaign and concluded the letter with, “Make up your mind to give. Make up your mind to inspire your family, your friends, your associates to give with you.“