'A hideously difficult country': British propaganda to France in the early Cold War

This article examines British propaganda efforts in the early Cold War in the light of a developing relationship in which the senders' own strategies were to be modified and challenged.The article argues that initiatives to broadcast propaganda from Britain into France via the BBC operated within a broader and developing information policy context. Broadcasting from outside the country through the BBC was supplemented with attempts by British personnel stationed in France to embed positive messages directly within the contemporary French media. By 1950 however, the Britsih propaganda initiative seemed inappropriate and outmoded, taken over by the French themselves and by a British desire to prioritise countries outside Western Europe.

Voices of Occupiers/Liberators: The BBC's Radio Propaganda in Italy between 1942 and 1945

The ambiguity of the role played by British propaganda in Italy during the Second World War is clearly reflected in the phenomenon of Radio London. While Radio London raised the morale of the Italian civilians living under the Fascist regime and provided them with alternative information on the conflict, the microphones of the BBC were also used by the British government to address a country they were planning to occupy. In this article, I will analyse the occupation/liberation operations that were run at the BBC Italian Service from two separate angles. On the one hand, the analysis of the programmes broadcast between the months preceding the Allies’ landing in Sicily and the actual occupation shows how the Allies built their image as liberators and guarantors of better living conditions. On the other, the analysis of the relationships between the Foreign Office and the anti-Fascist exiles reveals that the Italian BBC broadcasters were not always allowed to freely express their political opinion or to dispose of their own lives.