Cross-Border Soul Hunting: The German-Polish Radio Duel to Politicize Locals in the Upper Silesian Industrial Border Area, 1925–39

This paper is a transnational study of the German-Polish territorial conflict over the Upper Silesian borderland as it was waged between the German radio stations in Breslau (Wroc³aw) and Gleiwitz (Gliwice) on the one side, and the Polish Radio Katowice (Kattowitz) on the other. Established in the mid-1920s, the radio signal strengthening tower in Gleiwitz and the radio station in Katowice were aimed to counter each other’s aired revanchist propaganda. Whereas the importance of this radio feud has been recognized by recent scholars of this region, the actual “radio war” has not been studied with focus on the content of the broadcasted radio programs. This paper will mark the first attempt to do so. My focus is on how the radio stations of each nation strove to use their programs to nationalize/politicize the population on the other side of the border to their advantage, including the ultimate social and political consequences of these efforts.           

My argument is that radio played an important part in shaping popular images of the (regionally foreign) “other” and also in standardizing regionally-specific folklore along national lines. In this sense, it also played an important role in forging popular sentiments that favored the Nazi attack on Poland in 1939, even among locals who otherwise opposed this regime. Among the programs I examine include those broadcasting politicized versions of folklore, of comedies, official festivals and rallies, and also of “regional knowledge.”