London radio

" Here London! The French speak to the French… "

In 1940, BBC opens its waves with the first resistant ones which fled the German Occupation. Radio London was born and will become the daily appointment of the French during four years. Breaking with the style emphatic of the radio Frenchwoman, of young chroniclers (Jacques Duchesne, Jean Oberlé, Pierre Bumblebee, Maurice Schumann and Pierre Dac) insufflate a new tone on the antenna and invent the radio of proximity with personal messages, sketches, songs, jokes and publicities diverted. Then open a frightening war against Radio Paris or Radio Vichy, demagogic and openly Antisémites. Proof of its success: the Germans make it prohibit, confiscate the stations and punish the listeners heavily. Because Radio London became a genuine weapon of war. It is the voice of the free France of the Général de Gaulle which, as of the June 18th, invited its compatriots to resist: by encouraging the French to rise against the occupant, he intends to counter the intox radios collaborationists. In 1944, the triumph of the Allies sounds the end of the epopee Radio London.

Coded messages

Everyone already heard these famous coded messages, often amusing, outgoing of any context. But behind these sentences or cluster of words generally hide a driving watchword to serious decisions. These personal messages were certainly used to prepare operations of resistance, but also to thank for the agents or to test their sincerity or quite simply to give the illusion to the enemy that something prepared. Drowned under a continuous flood of messages, the German intelligence services were occupied and were likely to pass to sides important messages. Indeed, the Nazis did not have an infinite number of stations radios nor of a sufficient number of operators…

We owe these messages with some Georges Bégué, officer French of SOE (a British intelligence service). This officer was uncovered in 1942. Nearly 2000 agents of the SOE were sent on mission on the continent, often by air but also by the sea. Many was uncovered and carried out.

The first Strophe of the poem Chanson of autumn of Paul Verlaine was used by Radio London little before the unloading of Normandy to inform the resistant ones that this one would take place in the following hours.

the long sobs

Of the violins

Of the autumn

Wound my heart

Of a languor

Monotone.

This poem was heard a few days before the Opération OVERLORD. If French and the resistance networks in particular, were with the listening of these coded messages, it should be known that the Nazis and the mode of Vichy also supervised these messages. It is necessary to also underline the existence of systems of jamming on behalf of the Occupants. Indeed, they managed only seldom to decipher and include/understand the nature of the messages. When they reached that point, the operation financed in these messages had already taken place; they thus decided to fight against these messages by another means.

At the beginning of June, the Free French Army and the Allies flooded the network with a multitude of messages. June 1st, one counted more than 200 messages, the people with the listening of these messages understood quickly that an operation prepared. For the little story, the systems of jamming never managed to cover the sound code borrowed from the 5th symphony of Beethoven. In Morse, this measurement represents the letter " V" for victory…

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