Radio and Resistance During World War II
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A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Gagliarducci, Stefano; Onorato, Massimiliano Gaetano; Sobbrio, Francesco; Tabellini, Guido Working Paper War of the Waves: Radio and Resistance During World War II CESifo Working Paper, No. 6923 Provided in Cooperation with: Ifo Institute – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich Suggested Citation: Gagliarducci, Stefano; Onorato, Massimiliano Gaetano; Sobbrio, Francesco; Tabellini, Guido (2018) : War of the Waves: Radio and Resistance During World War II, CESifo Working Paper, No. 6923, Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/176942 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. 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Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu 6923 2018 February 2018 War of the Waves: Radio and Resistance During World War II Stefano Gagliarducci, Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato, Francesco Sobbrio, Guido Tabellini Impressum: CESifo Working Papers ISSN 2364‐1428 (electronic version) Publisher and distributor: Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research ‐ CESifo GmbH The international platform of Ludwigs‐Maximilians University’s Center for Economic Studies and the ifo Institute Poschingerstr. 5, 81679 Munich, Germany Telephone +49 (0)89 2180‐2740, Telefax +49 (0)89 2180‐17845, email [email protected] Editors: Clemens Fuest, Oliver Falck, Jasmin Gröschl www.cesifo‐group.org/wp An electronic version of the paper may be downloaded ∙ from the SSRN website: www.SSRN.com ∙ from the RePEc website: www.RePEc.org ∙ from the CESifo website: www.CESifo‐group.org/wp CESifo Working Paper No. 6923 Category 2: Public Choice War of the Waves: Radio and Resistance During World War II Abstract What is the role of the media in coordinating and mobilizing insurgency against a foreign military occupation? We analyze this question in the context of the Nazi-fascist occupation of Italy during WWII. We study the effect of BBC radio counter-propaganda (Radio Londra) on the intensity of internal resistance to the Nazi-fascist regime. Using variation in monthly sunspot activities affecting the sky-wave propagation of BBC broadcasting towards Italy, we show that BBC radio had a strong impact on political violence. We provide further evidence to prove that BBC radio played an important role in coordinating resistance activities, but had no lasting role in motivating the population against the fascist regime. JEL-Codes: D740, L820, N440. Keywords: media, BBC, counter-propaganda, insurgency, violence, WWII, sunspots. Stefano Gagliarducci Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato Department of Economics and Finance Department of Economics and Finance University of Rome Tor Vergata / Italy Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore [email protected] Milan / Italy [email protected] Francesco Sobbrio Guido Tabellini Department of Economics and Finance Department of Economics and IGIER LUISS “G. Carli” / Rome / Italy Bocconi University / Milan / Italy [email protected] [email protected] First Version: December 2017 This Version: February, 2018 We thank Mirko Draca, Marco Manacorda, Paolo Morandotti, Tommaso Nannicini, Maria Petrova, Giulio Seccia, Andrea Tesei, Joachim Voth and seminar participants at the Catholic University of Milan, Tor Vergata University, Università Politecnica delle Marche, University of Exeter, 15th Media Economics Workshop, 1st Political Economy of Development Conference, 2nd Economics of Media Bias Workshop, 2nd Marco Fanno Alumni Workshop, Petralia Sottana Workshop 2017, and ICEEE 2017 for many helpful suggestions. We also thank Fabrizio Murè and Fabio Principe for the development of the RadioPropagAnDA software, and Filippo Sinagra for his precious insights on cryptography during the Resistance. We are grateful to Ben Olken for providing the software necessary for ITM calculation, Ruben Enikolopov for his help with the ITM software and Martin Watkins for sharing his data on BBC transmitters. Riccardo Bianchi Vimercati, Igor Cerasa, Viola Corradini and Nicola Fontana provided an outstanding research assistance. We acknowledge the financial support of the European Research Council (Consolidator Grant No. 648833). 1 Introduction This paper studies the effects of the media during civil wars and foreign military occupations, when mobilizing and coordinating insurgency (or preventing this from happening) is a primary concern. Media can indeed play a critical role in providing information, conveying propaganda or spreading emotions. We study these issues in the context of the Nazi occupation of Italy between 1943 and 1945 and of the related civil war between fascist and partisan forces that claimed about 75,000 Italian casualties. Partisan resistance played an important role in the Italian liberation and was violently opposed by the Nazi-fascist forces. We study the effects of the BBC counter- propaganda (Radio Londra) on the intensity of the resistance movement. The BBC was deeply engaged in encouraging opposition to the German occupation throughout Europe. Its strategy was to target individuals and organizations that were already inclined towards an active resistance, besides providing information and counter-propaganda for the masses. Specifically, the BBC provided accurate and reliable information on military campaigns and on resistance activities. It also diffused counter-propaganda messages against the fascist regime. Finally, it conveyed encrypted messages to the partisan brigades, in order to direct and coordinate them. We propose a novel identification strategy that exploits exogenous time and geographic variation in the BBC signal strength across Italian municipalities, induced by sunspot ac- tivities. Unlike other local radios, BBC radio broadcasted from the UK and relied on the ionospheric propagation of high-frequency waves (short-waves and medium-waves). Time variation in signal strength within municipalities is induced exclusively by seasonal changes in daylight time, and by monthly variation in sunspot activities. Different geographic areas in Italy were differently affected, depending on the location of BBC transmitters, which did not change throughout this period. Using the Voice of America Coverage Analysis Program (VOACAP), we can simulate the strength of BBC signal across Italian municipalities for each 2 month. We then study the effects of these predicted monthly changes in BBC signal strength on indicators of insurgency against Nazi-fascist occupation in different Italian municipalities. As historical records do not provide a direct (time-varying) measure on the intensity of re- sistance, we use as an indirect proxy the number of episodes of violence perpetrated by the Nazi-fascists in response to partisan or civilian resistance (e.g., Nazi-fascists retaliations), as provided by the Atlas of Nazi-Fascist Massacres.1 Our main result is that BBC signal strength is positively associated with the intensity of resistance. A 10% increase in signal strength (corresponding to almost one standard deviation) increases the number of episodes of Nazi-fascist violence related to partisan and civilian resistance by more than 2.5 times, relative to the monthly average. This is a large effect, which is possibly explained by the role of BBC messages. As we discuss in Section2, the Italian BBC program provided counter-propaganda targeted to the Italian population overall, but it also conveyed information and encrypted messages to resistance fighters. For instance, Radio Londra was used by the Allies to deliver encrypted messages about the timing and locations of air-drops, of the allied air forces bombing, or about the ground movements of the Nazi-fascist and allied troops. A change in the BBC signal quality could determine whether or not partisan brigades would receive such key information, and therefore be able to undertake their resistance activities. Additional evidences reinforce the assumption that BBC broadcasting affected the inten- sity of partisan activities mainly through improved coordination. First, the effect on the intensity of resistance is simultaneous to the change in signal strength, and does not depend on the quality of previous transmissions. The lack of a long lasting effect suggests that the main mechanism worked through the coordination of allied and resistance activities, rather than through propaganda or persuasion. This interpretation is confirmed by the finding that the competing fascist radio EIAR