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Episode 8: Propaganda for Breakfast

Couple reading Aufbau
Unidentified couple seated on grass reading the Aufbau newspaper, LBI Herbert Buky Collection AR 5143. In the 1930s and 1940s, Jewish refugees knew that they could depend on sources like the Aufbau and Jewish Telegraphic Agency for reliable information about Nazi Germany. As scholar Heidi Tworek describes in this episode, readers of the mainstream outlets like the New York Times in the United States were often getting their news directly from Nazi sources.

In 1933, Joseph Goebbels said that the Nazis could never have taken power without the radio. Heidi Tworek is a professor of history at the University of British Columbia and author of News From Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900-1945. On this episode, she joins Mark to tell the incredible story of how the Nazis broadcast their propaganda not just in Germany, but around the world.

LBI Presents is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York | Berlin and Antica Productions.

Hosted by Mark Oppenheimer.

Our Executive Producers are Laura Regehr, Stuart Coxe, and Bernie Blum. Our Senior Producer is Debbie Pacheco. Our Associate Producer is Emily Morantz. Our intern is Maizie Solomon. Sound design and audio mix by Philip Wilson. Special thanks to the WNYC Archives and the New York Times.