Deceit, Lies, Propaganda & Journalism in the World Wars by Mark Weber, Director of the Institute for Historical Review  

This information-packed broadcast dissects lies and deceit from the two world wars. Fantastic stories about German atrocities in World War I were promoted to mobilize public opinion in the US, Britain and France, and the public was kept in ignorance about the scope and horror of the fighting. One of the wars most lurid and widely-circulated atrocity tales was the story that the Germans were boiling the bodies of dead soldiers to extract glycerin for munitions. In World War II, Allied spinmeisters portrayed the disastrous British evacuation of Dunkirk as a great success. It was only years later that the legend of the miracle of Dunkirk was deflated. Another durable Allied propaganda myth was the story of merciless German bombing of the English city of Coventry. Churchill was eager to escalate the killing to enrage American public opinion, and thereby encourage US entry into the war on Britain’s side. For that reason, it was the British, not the Germans, who first began indiscriminate bombing of civilians. As historian Phillip Knightley points out, German news reports about the war were generally more accurate and reliable than those of the Allies