The record is loaded onto an aeroplane, flown to New York, transmitted there by telephone – via an undersea cable – to London, pressed onto a second record and finally broadcast on long wave. A technical odyssey across two continents and an ocean so that a voice can reach Germany. Where it is to be heard, this is a ‘broadcasting crime’ punishable by imprisonment or even death. Those who nevertheless tune their Volksempfänger to the BBC hear the sonorous voice of a man who had to leave his country and is now trying to save from afar what can be saved: an idea of Germany that no longer has anything in common with the reality of the Third Reich.
On the 150th anniversary of his birth, it is time to rediscover the 59 short radio addresses he broadcast to Nazi Germany via the BBC between 1940 and 1945. Deutschlandfunk radio dedicated a ‘Long Night’ to them, with commentators from Alice Hasters to Navid Kermani listening to the old recordings. What they hear is more than a historical document. It raises the question of whether literature can prevail against violence – and what price such an attempt comes at.
The apolitical becomes political
It is not self-evident that Thomas Mann, of all people, became the voice of the ‘other Germany’. In his ‘Reflections of an Unpolitical Man’ from 1918, he had invoked the separation of spirit and politics, despising the ‘civilisation literati’ who put their art at the service of political purposes. But the Weimar Republic forced him to revise his views. The assassination of Walther Rathenau in 1922, the rise of the National Socialists, and finally his emigration in 1933 – each step led the writer deeper into the field he had once shunned.
When the BBC asked him in 1940, he hesitated. Propaganda? He, the stylist? At first, he sent his texts by telegram to London, where a BBC announcer read them aloud. But that wasn't enough for him. From March 1941 onwards, he insisted on speaking himself – despite the cumbersome procedure involving three stations. He recognised the opportunity: ‘to write in German again and to know that what he wrote could have an impact in its original form’. The speeches commented on Stalingrad and Coventry, the Holocaust and Hitler's wars. They were part of Britain's psychological warfare – and at the same time a ‘moral service to the conscience’, as Mann called it. A contradiction? Perhaps. But one he had to live with.
Those in charge at the BBC sometimes found Mann's tone too harsh. They pursued a ‘strategy of truth’ and did not want to counter Nazi propaganda lies with polemics. Terms such as ‘bloody philistines’, ‘traitorous rabble’ or ‘bloody scoundrels’ were banned by the editor in charge. Thomas Mann did not care. And they let him get away with it.
‘To the one who speaks to you again today’
November 1941: ‘To the one who speaks to you again today, it has been granted to do something for the intellectual reputation of Germany in the course of his now long life. I am grateful for this, but I have no right to boast about it, for it was providence and not my intention.’
These sentences – self-deprecating, modest, but thoroughly aware of his authority – are typical of Mann's rhetoric. He does not speak condescendingly, but neither does he speak on equal terms. He speaks as someone who has lost the right to refer to his achievements, and does so precisely for that reason. Alice Hasters finds a ‘painful clarity’ in this. She says that ‘in this real harshness, one must also respond with harsh language.’ Former Federal President Christian Wulff emphasises that Mann understood early on that any hierarchisation of peoples leads to barbarism. What was provocative in the 1940s reads like a matter of course today – and yet it is not.
But not everyone agrees with Mann's tone. Feridun Zaimoglu misses ‘eloquence and wit’. For him, there is too much ‘bashing of Hitler’ and too little direct address to the people. Zaimoglu asks an important question: Can authoritarian seducers be disarmed with irony? Or is a moral cudgel needed? Mann mostly chose the second option – and paid a price for it. The impact of his speeches remained limited. Those who heard them were mostly already convinced. Those who needed convincing did not hear them.
Coventry and the Machinists of Death
‘This is the first anniversary of the destruction of Coventry by Göring's air force – one of the most horrific acts with which Hitler's Germany taught the world what total war means.’ Mann speaks these words with a mixture of anger and sadness. He recalls the Spanish Civil War as a ‘preliminary exercise’ and castigates the ‘National Socialist-educated race with their empty, dehumanised faces’. The vocabulary is harsh, sometimes verging on the propaganda it combats. But Mann knows what he is doing. He is mourning, says Mely Kiyak. Mourning for Europe, for Germany, for civilisation itself.
Michel Friedman hears something else: the ‘clear insight into the inexpiable nature of what a Germany trained in bestiality by shameful teachers has done to humanity’. Friedman insists that Mann names the guilt and demands repentance. ‘Repentance and remorse are the first things that are needed. And only one kind of hatred is necessary: hatred for the villains who have made the German name an abomination before God and the whole world.’ This sentence – ‘only one kind of hatred is necessary’ – is disturbing and necessary at the same time. It shows how narrow the line is between moral clarity and moral self-righteousness.
The singular authority
Navid Kermani perhaps finds the most apt words to describe the phenomenon that is Thomas Mann: ‘He has gained incredible, indeed unique significance. This position of an intellectual has not been possible since.’ What Kermani means is not only literary greatness, but something historical: in a moment of extreme tension, Mann became a moral authority because he forced literature and politics, aesthetics and ethics together. After him, there were committed writers – Grass, Böll, Enzensberger – but no one who could speak with similar authority. The era of the great intellectuals, it seems, is over. Or it has fragmented into many voices that together no longer carry the weight of a single one.
Kermani's tribute reveals something else: Mann's speeches also speak to people with transcultural biographies because they deal with fundamental questions of humanity. This makes them universal – and at the same time specifically German, because they revolve incessantly around the question of what Germany was, is and could be.
The ‘Long Night’ brings together a multitude of voices and comments on Mann's speeches. Raul Krauthausen and Arne Friedrich emphasise the topicality of the appeal against totalitarianism and for solidarity. Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller confesses: ‘I love Thomas Mann’ – for her, his clear defence of democracy is still instructive today.
The diversity of reactions shows that the BBC speeches are not merely historical documents. They pose questions for us: How do we talk about war and peace, guilt and responsibility? What language do we need to expose hatred without becoming hateful ourselves? How much moral rigour is necessary, and where does the time call for empathy and wit?
The echo today
The BBC speeches are a paradox. They were intended to have an immediate impact – yet at the time they had little effect. Today, eighty years later, they have a stronger impact than ever before. This is not only due to the quality of the texts, but also to the times we live in. When populism and authoritarianism are on the rise again, when disinformation becomes a weapon and democracies appear fragile, Mann's words sound not historical, but prescient.
Mann's voice across the Atlantic was an attempt to pit the power of literature against the power of violence. It was an unequal struggle, and Mann knew it. But he fought it anyway. ‘Deutsche Hörer!’ – this call still applies, across all borders. Not as an accusation, but as a reminder that it is possible to speak out when silence becomes unbearable. This is no guarantee of success. But it is the only way to preserve dignity.
S. Fischer Verlag has published a new edition of the radio addresses entitled Deutsche Hörer!, with a foreword and afterword by Mely Kiyak.
A project in collaboration with Sonja Valentin and Hans Dieter Heimendahl, Deutschlandradio Kultur.