City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Morriss, Agnieszka (2016). The BBC Polish Service during World War II. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City, University of London) This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/15839/ Link to published version: Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] The BBC Polish Service during World War II Agnieszka Morriss Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Supervisors: Professor Suzanne Franks, Dr James Rodgers City University Department of Journalism April 2016 . THE FOLLOWING ITEMS HAVE BEEN REDACTED FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS: p.95 Fig 4.1 p.111 Fig 5.1 p.122 Figs 5.3 & 5.4 Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Suzanne Franks and Dr James Rodgers, for their guidance, patience, feedback, encouragement and, most of all, for helping me to complete this thesis. Finding some of the wartime records has been a great challenge. Therefore, I would like to express my special gratitude to the staff of the various archives without whose knowledge and assistance this thesis would truly not have been possible. In particular, I would like to thank Katie Ankers from the BBC Written Archives, Dr Andrzej Suchcitz and Mgr Jadwiga Kowalska from the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, the staff of the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust in London and the Polskie Radio Archive in Poland. Most of all, I would like to thank Andrew Macdonald for allowing me to access his father’s files, as well as his wife for the most welcoming atmosphere during my stay in their house in France. I am also most grateful for feedback and advice from Professor Michael Fleming, Dr Halik Kochanski, Dr Alban Webb, Dr Zbigniew Grabowski, Professor Grzegorz Mazur, Dr Marek Stella-Sawicki, Professor Andrew Roberts and especially Zbigniew Siemaszko, whose scholarly expertise and personal recollection of wartime events greatly contributed to this research, as did his explanation of wartime radio frequencies and wavelengths in a way that it actually sounded interesting. I would like to also thank Teresa Myskow and Waleria Sawicka for their time and agreeing to be interviewed and sharing their stories. For assistance and guidelines, I would also like to thank Michalina Byra from the Polish National Library in Warsaw and Tadeusz Filipkowski from the World Association of the Polish Home Army Soldiers. Finally, I want to thank my family and friends, for your encouragement, support and pretending that you were as excited about my research as I was. In particular, my dearest friend, Professor Viv Edwards, for her patience, help with editing and proof reading and convincing me, in spite of a good deal of resistance, that some Polish expressions really do not make any sense in English. 2 Abstract Despite considerable interest in the BBC European Service and the role of transnational broadcasting during the Second World War, surprisingly little attention has hitherto been paid to the BBC Polish language broadcasts. As the first full length academic study of the wartime BBC Polish Service, this thesis aims to provide an in-depth examination of previously unanalysed primary sources, both Polish and British, in order to establish the extent to which Polish Service broadcasts during World War II were considered as a significant and reliable source of information. The study is primarily based on the BBC Written Archives records, in particular, the scripts of the BBC Polish language bulletins, the European News Directives and Minutes of Meetings as well as the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) directives for the Polish Service from the National Archives at Kew. These directives are central in answering the principal research question, namely the extent to which the Polish Service was required to follow official British government policy. To this end, the analysis is supported by Polish government-in-exile documents and the Polish Underground reports stored at the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum and the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust in London. These archives represent a valuable resource for studies of wartime broadcasting, censorship and propaganda. Together the various archives (in conjunction with other privately held documents) offer historians a rich source of material from which the organisation and functioning of the BBC Polish Service over this period can be constructed. Given the volume of material related to World War II, the scope of the study is concentrated upon Whitehall and BBC policy with regards to the Polish Service coverage of the Polish- Soviet affairs from the period when diplomatic relations between Poland and the USSR were re- established in 1941 to the withdrawal of recognition of the Polish government-in-exile by the Allies in 1945. The analysis demonstrates that, although the Polish Service attempted to be objective, impartial and neutral, this was achieved by selectiveness rather than by presenting both Polish and Soviet sides of the argument in territorial and political disputes. In particular, after the secret agreement between the Big Three was signed at Tehran in 1943, attempts were made by British officials to use the Polish Service as a platform to convince the Polish Underground and, by extension, the Polish population, to agree to Stalin’s demands. In general, any subjects which could be perceived by Stalin as offensive were labelled as ‘sensitive’ and expunged from the broadcasts. The evidence in this thesis therefore suggests that the overall output of the Polish service was at times subject to wider constraints determined by allied foreign policy goals and in particular the relationship between Britain and the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazi Germany. 3 4 Table of contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. 2 Abstract .................................................................................................................... 3 Table of contents ...................................................................................................... 5 List of tables ........................................................................................................... 10 List of figures .......................................................................................................... 10 Preface ................................................................................................................... 11 Aims ....................................................................................................................... 11 Research questions .................................................................................................. 12 Organisation of the thesis ........................................................................................ 12 1. Propaganda through the airwaves ........................................................................ 14 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 14 The role of transnational broadcasting ..................................................................... 14 Scholarly contributions to the study of the BBC European Service during World War II ................................................................................................................................... 16 Current state of knowledge of the BBC Polish Service during World War II ................ 20 Theory of Propaganda ............................................................................................. 23 British Propaganda during the Second World War .................................................... 28 The BBC relationship with the Government .............................................................. 32 The principles of wartime broadcasting .................................................................... 35 The BBC European Service as a weapon of war ......................................................... 37 The power struggle between the European Service and the Political Warfare Executive ...................................................................................................................... 41 The Polish Section of the BBC ................................................................................... 42 Polish Service Editors ............................................................................................... 46 The BBC and the Polish Government in Exile ............................................................ 47 Listening Conditions in Occupied Poland .................................................................. 50 Coverage of the