Crocker Snow Reports From Germany; Story of RIAS

Greetings from West Germany. This is Crocker Snow speaking from the studios of Radio Deutsche Welle Cologne, the city with the world-famous Gothic cathedral. It's a well-known fact that the infamous Berlin Wall has all but cut off the populations of East and West Berlin from one another. Since its erection in August, 1961, travel between the two populations has been strictly controlled--only from West to East, and then only in case of serious family illness or during one of the very few holiday visiting periods. All kinds of adjectives have been used to describe the Wall. And explanations: cruel, inhuman, barbarous. The proof of the failure of the communist system comes from the West. 'Necessary' is often the Eastern reply. The impetus for the recent economic gains of East Germany. But regardless of the adjectives and the explanations, there is no question that the wall has been the

supreme symbol of the past intransigence and the head-in-the-sand kind of posture of the Iron-Curtain countries towards the Western world. Now beginning its sixth year of life, the Wall (die Mauer), is just as rigid and inflexible as the regime which built it. This may come as a surprise in the midst of all the current talk of a general East-West détente, but it seems clear that no liberalizing trend has yet developed very far with the East Germans. Proof of this comes from two recent events here. In early July, the communists sandbagged the long-discussed speakers' exchange between the communist SED party of East Germany and the Social Democrats of West Germany. This has been well publicized and analyzed. Something not so well known, which has happened since that time, was the relocation and rebuilding of a very small section of the Wall. The East Germans moved the wall forward about

20 yards to the edge of the Reichstag building on the very border dividing the Allied sector from the Russian. All very legal, and all very symbolic, too. For this is the building where the West German parliament sits during their rare meetings in Berlin. By moving the wall in such a way, the East Germans have made it just a little bit tougher and a little bit more inconvenient to enter the Reichstag building. And so it seems that the Berlin Wall, unlike the Walls of Jericho, isn't about to come crumbling down. For the moment, political and diplomatic initiative in trying to circumvent the Wall and bring the two Germanys a bit closer together seems futile. Apparently, the East Germans are simply not ready for it. For the time being, then, it is back to the old methods of trying to simply keep in contact as much as possible with people in the Eastern zone.

This has been going on since the division of the country and it continues today. The prime method of doing this is electronically by various radio and television broadcasts, originating in West Berlin and West Germany, beamed to the East. The different West German TV stations, for example, combine efforts for a 4-hour show every morning especially for the people of East Germany. Various German radio stations do the same. One of the most unusual of these electronic efforts is an American-financed radio station broadcasting from West Berlin, known as RIAS. RIAS is a part of the United States Information Agency. It is little more than 20 years old, but it has a record of real success in its endeavor to stay in contact with the people of East Germany. Today, the story of RIAS as told by the General Manager, Robert Lochner. "[Lochner]: RIAS is the US Information Agency's German-language

station located in West Berlin but having as its sole task broadcasting to the audience in East Germany. RIAS stands for 'Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor, which happens to work out both in German and in English. It also means "radio in the American sector," which betrays its origin, namely, when at the end of the War the Russians would not let the Western Allies share control of the existing Berlin radio station. The U.S., after about 6 months of fruitless negotiations with the Soviets, decided that it was intolerable to have communist-controlled Radio Berlin as the only radio voice of this city, and therefore, starting with a very small 2 kW portable transmitter, built up RIAS over the years to its present strength where, in combination of several very powerful medium-wave FM and shortwave transmitters, we are probably one of the most powerful stations in the world."

"[Reporter]: Now you, um, advertise yourselves, so to speak, as being the bridge between the free world and the Soviet zone. Could you explain this statement in a little more detail?" "[Lochner]: We are not the official voice of the U.S. government, uh, as you probably know. Every language service of the Voice of America starts off, 'This is the voice of America.' Now, that immediately implies that they are official organs of the U.S. government. While RIAS it as much part of the U.S. Information Agency as are all the language sections of Voice of America, though we do not form part of VOA, there is a subtle difference here. And this slogan, 'The free voice of the free world,' already shows that we are not to the same extent an official spokesman, but are, like a good newspaper, say the New York Times, trying to give our listeners everything that is not fit to print, in this case, but fit to be

broadcast, and to permit them to draw their own conclusions. Now, our bridge function arises, um, you might say, primarily from the Wall, because if you look at the possibilities of, uh, that are open to East Germans to find out what's going on in the free world, there are obviously only a handful of party functionaries and the politically not-very-important group of retired persons who are allowed to travel West. All the rest can travel to some communist countries, but never to the free world. Therefore, their main link--apart from such personal links as visits from their relatives in West Germany, who of course are allowed to go to East Germany, or personal letters--their main source of information, their main link with the free world, is radio and TV. And, um, TV cannot be seen in the whole of the East zone of Germany and, furthermore, is much

more an instrument of entertainment than of information." "[Reporter]: What are the highlights of the history of RIAS?" "[Lochner]: One of the highlights was, of course, the blockade because of the limited power for most of the year of the blockade. The different sectors of Berlin had power for only two hours during each 24-hour period. Uh, we sent out mobile vans all over the city, which broadcast in the streets because most people, as I explained, could only hear radio during the 2 hours of, eh, each 24-hour period that they had power. So that was certainly one of the highlights and, uh, explains perhaps the tremendous attachment, particularly of the older people, to RI--uh, to RIAS. RIAS is sort of the station that saw them through the blockade. Another highlight was the June 17th, 1953 uprising in East Germany. A lot

of people, particularly, of course, the communists, claimed that we started it and incited people to revolt. It is true that we allowed, uh, th--that we broadcast the news of the uprising in East Berlin--obviously, as a free radio station, we had to, but we didn't whip it up--and, while it is probably true that people elsewhere in the--the, uh, East zone of Germany found out about the uprising in East Berlin through RIAS, and that therefore indirectly and involuntarily we helped to spread the spark of revolt, uh, we did not, for instance, permit the delegation of, uh, East Berlin Masons, who came to RIAS and wanted to appeal over RIAS to the workers in the East zone to rise up against their hated communist masters, we did not permit that because that would have been going beyond the legitimate functions of a radio station and we would have become a direct instrument of incitement to revolt."

The voice is that of Robert Lochner, the General Manager of RIAS, a U.S.I.S. German-language radio station broadcasting into East Berlin and East Germany. Mr. Lochner has good qualifications for his job. He spent 14 years as a child in Berlin while his father was manager of the city's Associated Press Office. His fluency in German has led him to interpret for such people as John McCoy, James Conant, General Lucius Clay, and Dean Acheson. He translated at the Four Power Conference of 1954 and for President John F. Kennedy during his famous 'ich bin ein Berliner' speaking tour in the summer of 1963. Mr. Lochner has been in charge of a staff of some 475 at RIAS for the past 5 years. The success of the station in living up to its motto, 'a free voice of the free world,' is

evident from a dubious distinction it holds over other Western stations broadcasting to the East. "[Lochner]: We are, in fact, almost the only station still, ?John?, as you know the Soviets stopped jamming the Voice of America in Russian and other minority languages of the Soviet Union the day President Kennedy was in Berlin and have not resumed it since. And, in their way, all the satellites have stopped jamming except, uh, a few of the Radio Free Europe language services and the Radio Liberty languages, uh, of the Soviet Union are still jammed, but none of the West German stations, for instance, are jammed by the Ulbricht regime, nor is our sister station across town, the German station in Berlin, Sender Freies Berlin. We are heavily jammed on medium wave, but because of the relatively small size of the East zone of Germany, the unique position of RIAS, which, unlike any

other free-world radio station broadcasting to Iron-Curtain audiences, sits smack in the middle of its audience, and because of the power of our transmitters, uh, we cannot be blotted out completely. There are a few, uh, mountainous regions along the Czech border where it is hard to receive RIAS, but in the rest of the East zone you can hear us. Of course, your enjoyment of a concert is marred through the jammer, but the news does get through. And, uh, in the FM field we are not jammed at all. FM has never been jammed, it would be extremely costly to jam, it is technically complicated--you risk jamming your own stations and TV stations--so that's never been jammed. And since we have 2 FM transmitters in Berlin and 1 in Hof, in Bavaria, uh, which just about meet--we cover about 2/3rds of East Germany--and about 90 percent of the sets

in East Germany have FM, so you can say that roughly 2/3rds of our audience of an estimated 6 million a day can receive us without jamming on FM. Shortwave is jammed, too, but, uh, that reaches only a minor portion of our audience, anyhow." "[Reporter]: You feel that 90 percent of the radios in the Eastern zone can receive FM." "[Lochner]: Mmm-hmm." "[Reporter]: How do you account for this great majority as compared to, say, America?" "[Lochner]: Oh, well, a very simple reason. Germany as a whole, as a defeated nation, lost most of its good medium wavelength after the war because in, uh, dense Europe, medium wavelengths are at a premium, so the victorious nations East and West took away most of their good medium wave length--" "[Reporter]: This is in the Copenhagen conferences?" "[Lochner]: That's right. And under the Copenhagen wavelength agreement, Germany was down to, I would say, uh, roughly 1/2 of the medium wave length it had before. So, the East zone of Germany, as was true in

West Germany, had to change over to FM because of this situation. And so they very quickly, as did West Germany, built up a network of FM stations. And luckily, under the Stockholm wavelength allocation plan for FM, their and our wavelengths are so intermingled that they cannot build a set which would cut off RIAS and permit the people only to listen to their own stations. A situation, by the way, which they do manage in the field of TV, where they can eliminate the West-Berlin channel, for instance. We have this from, uh, letters in East-German papers. I remember, uh, one provincial paper printed two letters. One person complained that he'd just bought a new TV set and much to his disgust found, on coming home, that he couldn't get West Berlin on it. The other one complained, indignantly, that he had sent his set in for repairs and when it got back he couldn't--he lived along the zone--the boundary--he couldn't get one of the West-German stations,

I forget whether it was Munich or Frankfurt. Now, of course, the communist paper printed those letters only in order to castigate the letter-writers in an editorial for even wanting to watch the enemy stations, but this is the kind of proof we have that it can be done in the field of TV but cannot be done in the field of radio, so. As far as FM is concerned, they can't do a damn thing about it." "[Reporter]: And as far as RIAS as a whole is concerned, then, I take it--first, the power of your transmitter and second, the FM-band pretty well means that you can cover the areas that you want to, despite the fact that you're, so to speak, dignified by being the only station jammed." "[Lochner]: Right, and, uh, another interesting development is that the, uh, Ulbricht regime has apparently pretty well given up trying to prevent people from listening Particularly after the Wall, there was a period when they thought--now they had everybody in prison, so to speak--that they could intimidate people.

They had campaigns in schools and in factories, having everybody sign pledges that they would no longer listen to enemy stations, such as RIAS, but this died down within a few months and, uh, bow you have the impression from letters, from reports of these old folks, uh, the pensioners who are now allowed once a year to travel to West Berlin or West Germany. Many of them report that, say, in a small town on a hot summer night, they walk along the main street and out of all the open windows they'll hear, say, one of our most popular quiz programs, so people simply don't seem to make any effort anymore to conceal their listening as was true under the Nazis when you had this picture of a small set under a pillow, and so on. Uh, it's also interesting that the communists have not made the same mistake as the Nazis of imposing heavy penalties--in the Nazi case, of course, finally the death penalty--on listening as such. Apparently they learn from the Nazi experience that the forbidden fruit tastes even better and that you

can't prevent people from listening in their own 4 walls, anyhow. What th--what is punishable in the East zone of Germany is what they call 'spreading malicious rumors.' In other words, if you're caught telling somebody else what you heard on RIAS, then you might get into trouble, but the act of listening as such is not punishable." You are listening to an interview with Robert Lochner, the General Manager of the United States Information Service radio station in West Berlin known as RIAS. The station broadcasts a great variety of programs into East Germany, including even drama and music. But, of course, education, political and otherwise, is a key objective. Under the headline 'Educational Programming,' a RIAS pamphlet reads, 'The Soviet zone school system is designed for thorough indoctrination of the youth in communist ideology. Working closely with the Berlin Senator for Education and coordinating its program with Radio Free Berlin, RIAS

generally keeps pace with the curricula, corrects distortions, supplies missing facts, and offers the viewpoint of the modern free world.' What does this mean in practical terms? "[Lochner]: We have a school-on-the-air program twice a day for 3 quarter-hour periods, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, where we try to offer programs that fill in such gaps, that cover, uh, topics such as political science where, of course, the school instruction is particularly distorted, and that's where we have close liaison with the--with City Hall, with the, uh, Senator for Education, to try to work out the best professional programs. By the way, many of our school-on-the-air tapes are played in West-Berlin schools, too, but this is just sort of a bonus, that's not our intention. Our intention is to reach, um, children on the other side and of course they have a shift system so that some go to

school in the morning, some in the afternoon, and we try to reach them during a time that they are not in school. But as it is true of Germany as a whole, it's surprising that apparently more adults, particularly women, listen to this school-on-the-air program, which is on quite a high level, we don't talk down to the children at all, so that, uh, we reach a sizable audience, um, among our adult listeners, too. And some of the programs are so good that we also carry them at peak evening time. One of the best programs, I think, which RIAS has, is a school-class discussion with top politicians. We've had every member of the cabinet. We've had, uh, Chancellor Erhard. We've had President Lübke. And we also branch out into the fields of arts. We've had famous conductors, um, heads of the Opera, and so on. But but the most important ones are the talks with the political leaders, and we have found that

these, uh, senior high school students, uh, by and large, ask far more intelligent and much sharper questions than these politicians get at, say, an ordinary press conference, because these classes prepare themselves for weeks beforehand. And these are on such a high level that we, uh, generally broadcast those in the evening as well." "[Reporter]: But this educational effort is not--is not one, then, that is characterized by picking a particular loophole in the communist education and trying to fill it. You're trying to educate on--in broad terms." "[Lochner]: Yes, although as I said, for instance, in, uh, one of our musical courses we offer music which the East-zone stations will not offer. Particularly, uh, modern American composers, for instance. And, uh, as I said, field of political science, we stress economics, sociology, because those are hardly treated at all in the East German, uh, school curricula because, obviously, um, they have their Marxist

version of these, uh, disciplines. But generally, let me say, we do not engage in a slugging match with the communists or with the East German radio. There are cases where we do have to nail down a particular distortion or lie. But we find that this is counterproductive. It makes us look as if we are engaging in the counter propaganda, whereas our real intention is to treat our audience like adults, supply them with the facts, let them draw their own conclusions, and not try to spoon feed them the reverse of what they get from their own radio stations. "[Reporter]: One would assume that RIAS broadcasting to the Eastern zone and being financed by the U.S.I.S. would perhaps be nothing but information, but you mention music programs--" "[Lochner]: Oh, yes, we have--" "[Reporter]: --so I gather you do more than--things of cultural interest." "[Lochner]: We have a full-fledged radio program suited to German taste. That is, in terms of the program structure, we are hardly different from any

West German station. That is, about half the program is music, half word. Music, as you might expect anywhere in Germany, far more serious music than you would find on the American radio station. But we do have our own dance orchestra, for instance, the Werner Müller Band, which has traveled to Japan and, uh, several other countries. We have our own choir group, we have our own political cabaret. This is particularly effective because the communists, of course, all over the world are particularly short on a sense of humor. Uh, of the word programs, we have, um, of course, 24 hour-news shows a day, political commentaries, roundtable discussions, backgrounders, and then the whole gamut of cultural programs: women's show, youth show, children's show, the 2 school-on-the-air programs, university-on-the-air, literary readings, whole theater plays--this is the type of thing we do for our East-zone audience, we will carry a condensed version of stage plays in

West Berlin or West Germany, actually recorded on the stage, and where the visual is absolutely necessary, a narrator will bridge the dialogue with an explanation." "[Reporter]: I see." "[Lochner]: So this is the kind of thing no other station does, this is how we try to let our East German audience participate, at least orally, in some of the cultural events in West Berlin. Similarly we broadcast practically all the, uh, concerts of the famous Berlin Philharmonic. And of course, in terms of what we judged to be of interest to the East zone, we also have programs that you wouldn't run on a West German station. You don't need to tell any West German audience, for instance, uh, how much a worker can buy for his weekly pay envelope. We do this kind of thing to provide information for these Germans so they can draw their own conclusions. Another very important function is what you might call cross-reporting

of developments in the communist world. The East German radio and newspapers try to keep from their audience the so-called liberalization trend in other satellites. They are most reluctant to touch the ever-worsening fight between Moscow and Peking. So we do a lot of straight reporting out of communist newspapers and radio reports from those countries of what's going on within the communist world." "[Reporter]: I'm--I'm interested, you mentioned that you have your own political cabaret. Now, are there any clamps, any taboo subjects for these people, or do they deal with their--with the West German government in much the same way that the ?Kamünchen? Cabaret in Dusseldorf does, for example, in a very biting manner?" "[Lochner]: Absolutely. Because if we attacked only the shortcomings of the communist system, it would obviously be, again, just propaganda. Our audience in East Germany is a very sophisticated one. The older ones have had 12 years of the

Nazis and 20 years of communism. They know damn well what propaganda is. So we are very careful not to give them the feeling that we are one sided. So any political cabaret will have just as many skits and attacks on West, uh, German shortcomings as it will on communist ones. Uh, the same holds true, by the way, for our commentaries. Far from calling everything 'white' that goes on in the West, we naturally deal, as any responsible, independent radio station would do, with all the shortcomings in our own camp. And that is, of course, what gives our attacks on the communists credibility, because the listener realizes we are not one-sidedly attacking the Ulbricht regime, but are dispensing our criticism fairly in both directions." "[Reporter]: Right. Now, I understand from this information booklet and other--other things, that RIAS has been fairly regularly abused and denounced in the Soviet press, both with political cartoons and other things. You also mention that you're now the--perhaps the only

station that's regularly jammed, so do you think this is an indication in itself of your success and--or do you have any other solid indications of your--" "[Lochner]: Well, we probably are safe in assuming that that is the most obvious evidence of effectiveness, because if people didn't listen in the East zone, the communists needn't bother with these constant attacks on us. And, I confess, there have been periods where, for 2, 3 weeks we haven't been attacked, and that's when we start worrying because if they really treated us with silence, that would be an indication that we were no longer effective. But this has only been, uh, for very short, uh, periods. By and large, there isn't a week that we can't point to say 5, 6 major attacks on the East German radio or several unfavorable references in Ulbricht speeches and newspaper articles, so I think that is a safe assumption that we are very definitely hurting the communist, uh, regime, otherwise they needn't engage in such vituperative

attacks on us, um--" "[Reporter]: And how 'bout--how 'bout--your, uh, do you get listener mail from Eastern zone?" "[Lochner]: Yes. Uh, the other most, uh, persuasive evidence of our effectiveness is, I think, the size of our mail. We regularly get between 7- and 800 letters a month from our East Berlin and East German audience, and this figure has remained surprisingly stable over the years. There was only a short period right after the Wall when it dropped down to 3-, 400 letters a month. Probably people were too scared to write at that time or simply to shocked. But, uh, it soon climbed back and, uh, about, uh, 1/3rd of these letters are highly political letters--naturally, people don't sign their name or they sign phony names to their letters--and we use those letters on the air. We have a regular show every Wednesday night where we say 'the zone speaks to the zone.' In other words, we provide them with a platform for

criticism, not only, again, of their own regime, but also of, uh, Western inactivity, say, after the Wall. You can imagine the first 2 weeks after the Wall. The mail was overwhelmingly anti-Western in the sense of bitter complains--'Why did you permit this?' Naturally, we broadcast those. But mainly people do deal with the shortcomings of the Ulbricht regime, and we provide them with a platform they cannot have under the communist system where, of course, they can't get up in a public assembly or write letters to the editor and so on." That was Robert Lochner, the General Manager of RIAS, a United States Information Service German-language radio station, which broadcasts to East Germany from West Berlin. This is Crocker Snow speaking from the studios of Radio Deutsch about what cologne West Germany.