The Germans soon learned a basic principle of war radio. They learned not to permit radio to run ahead of their military capacities. At first, when their spokesmen promised attainment of a given goal by a given time, and the army failed to live up to the schedule, the British radio picked up the unfulfilled promise and dangled it before the world as proof that the Germans were weakening. The Germans thereupon effected Army-radio liaison so that the radio people could promise only those things which the army was reasonably sure of delivering. (When Allied propaganda analysis woke up to this fact, it added one more source of corroboratory intelligence to be checked. (See page 126.))
The British had their hands full getting news out in the languages of the occupied countries. It was immensely difficult for them to follow the politics of the underground. German counterespionage, under the deadly _Sicherheitsdienst_, made it difficult to keep track of opinion in the occupied countries. Work against Naziism depended on the temper of the people; propaganda against collaborators had to distinguish between outright evil collaborators and those public officials who stayed on out of a sense of mistaken or necessary duty. The British did not necessarily announce themselves at any time as anti-Communist, and collaborated for short-range purposes with Communists all over the Continent. Mr. Churchill himself shifted his North Balkan political support from Mikhailovich to Broz-Tito. But it was vitally necessary to know just how and when to change support from one group to the other. Since the undergrounds had very few radio transmitters, and none of these was reliable during most of the war, the British faced the task of providing radio facilities for all of the occupied countries. The consequence was to make their radio warfare highly sensitive to politics; they had to address the right people with the right language at the right time, on penalty of failure.
[Illustration: _Figure 17: Anti-Radio Leaflet._ Sometimes ground-distributed leaflets were used in an attempt to counteract enemy radio propaganda. This leaflet, circulated in France by the Nazis, uses the form of an Allied leaflet and accuses the Armed SS of wanting such things as a decent Europe, and end to atrocious killings every twenty-five years, and a worthy life. Allied broadcasters are identified as Jews.]