Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "History Hustle" channel.

  1. Germans listening to foreign broadcasters? In those days, the standard configuration for domestic radios in the western world was 4 signal valves, plus a rectifier valve to convert AC house current to the DC required by the signal valves. 4 signal valves gives you enough sensitivity to pick up any station strong enough to overcome noise (one extra valve for short wave bands). Radios with only 3 signal valves were quite noticeably lacking and were restricted to local station reception or stations of high power. But 1930's Germany did not have a high standard of income or living overall, and the standard domestic radio was the volks receiver (same concept as the volks wagen - a car made as simple and cheap as possible), which had only 2 signal valves. Thus the ordinary German peasant mostly could pick up only approved local German stations or stations in adjacent German controlled countries. Well-to-do Germans could of course afford 4+1 valve radios of good quality, but as the war progressed, special approval would have been required to buy them or buy parts to keep them going.
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  2.  @HistoryHustle  : In your research, look up "All American Five" radio (4 signal valves plus rectifier). There's nothing especially American about it, radios from Britain and other countries being much the same, but that's what Americans called it, and information about it is readily available. In Australia, the radio industry called it "ABC-Five", meaning 5 valves and as simple as A-B-C. Then lookup the Volksempfanger - the contemporary German radio, typical models VE301 or DKE-38. Even if you know nothing of electronics, you should quickly get a sense that the German radios were crude and strictly local reception only. To cover the better off classes who had good radios bought before the War, the Nazis made it illegal to tune into the BBC shortwave service, but that probably encouraged as many as it discouraged. You are in good company. I find that it is very common for historians to make major mistakes from not checking technology available at the time in question. For instance I have seen lots of books etc that say the Japanese were especially nasty to prisoners of war as they refused antibiotics to the sick and /or injured. The fact was, they had no antibiotics to give. The only antibiotic back then was penicillin, discovered in England and developed to production in an emergency crash programme in the USA for the war effort.
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