'Glaoch ón Tríú Reich' / 'Call from the Third Reich' (21/11/12)

'Glaoch ón Tríú Reich'/ 'Call from the Third Reich' tells the fascinating story of the Nazi propaganda radio broadcasts in Irish during World War 2.

A documentary broadcast on TG4 tells the amazing story of two German men that travelled to Donegal in the 1920s and 1930s, learned to speak Irish fluently and returned to Germany to broadcast Nazi propaganda in Irish during World War two!

'Glaoch ón Tríú Reich' tells the unbelievable story of the Nazi propaganda radio broadcasts in Irish during the Second World War.
The story is told from the perspective of a former student of the man who masterminded the broadcasts, Dr. Hans Hartmann.

Dr.Ardnt Wigger retraces the steps of his former teacher and supervisor Hans Hartmann, who alongside his teacher Ludwig Mühlhausen broadcast Nazi propaganda in Irish from 1939-1945 on the Irish language station Irland Redaktion, based in Berlin.

While exploring the amazing, and sometimes uncomfortable, personal stories of the pair, Dr Wigger travels to Connemara, Dublin, Donegal and Berlin to find out the extent of Hartmann's involvement in the German war effort and to investigate why the Special Branch were tailing him while he was in Ireland.

He also journeys to Donegal to delve deeper into the work of Hartmann's mentor Professor Ludwig Mühlhausen. He hears stories from the locals about the mysterious German spy in the sleepy townland of Teelin in the 1930s and finds out that detailed information about this part of South Donegal later appeared in a Nazi invasion handbook.

To hear Irish on the radio in 1939 was a remarkable thing in itself, but to hear Nazi propaganda as Gaeilge was nothing short of astonishing!

The radio service began broadcasting in December 1939, initially on Sunday evenings after the Lord Haw-Haw broadcast, but it was soon on every night of the week, three times a night and it continued until May 1945.