Radio: Out of the Underground

In Hitler's Reich, Germans who risked listening to the verboten radio usually tuned to Deutsche Kurzwellensender Atlantik (Radio Atlantic). It came in like a ton of bricks, and knew so much about Nazidom that many listeners—German and Allied—believed that it was beamed from the German underground. Censorship forbade disclosure that Atlantic was pouring out propaganda to lower German morale, and some U.S. papers printed the propaganda as "news."

Last week, London let the cat out of the bag: Radio Atlantic was Allied-operated from outside Germany. Its anonymous newscasters and entertainers, who fluently sniped...