for the researcher attempting to tackle the great challenge of representing the man. Stead’s many escapades and contradictory philosophies evoke such personal responses from his critics that what is published seems always to be a version of him and never the version. What Robinson’s biography lacks in research it makes up for in fluidity and style. Until a major ‘‘Life of . . .’’ is published, W. S. Robinson’s Muckraker will serve as a fine introduction to anyone interested in investigating the extraordinary and brilliant life of W. T. Stead.

BBC Broadcasts to Portugal in World War II: how radio was used as a weapon of war

Between the end of August and early September 1939, between 700,000 and one million civilians were evacuated from the Saarland, the Palatinate, and Baden to the centre of what was then Germany. From the Moselle and Alsace, around 600,000 civilians were evacuated to south-west France. Those measures were the result of a long development, the origins of which can be traced back the Napoleonic Wars and the Great War. The present thesis analyses the developments which led to those evacuations within the framework of civil defence policies during the interwar period in France and Germany. It explores the execution of the evacuation programme in both countries from a comparative perspective, concentrating on the Moselle and the Saarland. What results is that the totalisation of warfare, in this case as seen in the erection of fortified defence lines and the evacuation of civilians later resulting therefrom, are phenomena independent of any given political systems or national frameworks, and therefore transnational ones. Moreover, the movements of refugees are only to a certain degree controllable on either side of the border, and looting likewise occurs on both sides. Nevertheless, the Third Republic managed, in part due to the experience the country had with refugees during the First World War, to organise and look after their refugees more efficiently than Germany did. The French administration and support system for refugees was more efficiently organised, compared with their German counterparts, where ideological constraints and the duality of civilian administrations and the National Socialist party greatly hampered efficiency in the execution of the evacuation programme.

An ‘evil year in exile’? The evacuation of the Franco-German border areas in 1939 under democratic and totalitarian conditions

Le pacifisme en Allemagne et en France entre les deux guerres mondiales

Derek W. Vaillant. Across the Waves: How the United States and France Shaped the International Age of Radio.

Alors que les operations militaires entre la France et l’Allemagne n’ont pas encore pris l’ampleur qu’une declaration de guerre est connue d’engendrer, un combat d’une autre nature fait rage. La guerre a laquelle se livre les deux pays se joue en effet dans le domaine de l’ether ; a travers les ondes radiophoniques. Les deux nations utilisent ce nouveau medium de masse qu’est la radiodiffusion pour atteindre la population, l’armee ennemie et tentent d’influencer son moral par le biais de mots, de slogans et d’arguments corrosifs. Alors que la superiorite de la propagande allemande est communement acceptee dans l’historiographie des deux pays, il est peu connu – mais n’en demeure pas moins vrai – que les autorites francaises se sont lancees dans cette bataille avec autant d’energie. Les arguments de l’une et l’autre nations, bien que dissemblables, reposent sur des methodes identiques de propagande, creant ainsi, dans le domaine de la propagande exterieure, des similitudes inherentes a la periode.

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La guerre des ondes entre la France et l'Allemagne pendant la « drôle de guerre »

The enemy radio broadcasting took a great part in the propaganda war between France and Germany during the Phoney War. Its roots can be found in the Interwar Period when radio became a central medi...

Maude Williams

Papers

War is in the Air: Networks of Enemy Radio Broadcasting in France and Germany During the Phoney War (1939–1940)