In the first year of World War Two, Germany’s leading domestic radio station – Deutschlandsender – was obsessed with Britain, portraying life there as hellish.
It informed listeners that Londoners felt ‘the urge to raise their courage by resorting to drink’. ‘Never,’ an announcer said, ‘were so many drunken people seen in London as now.’
If that wasn’t bad enough, a reporter noted that horses were being slaughtered to ‘replenish England’s rapidly dwindling meat stocks’. On another occasion, the evening news divulged a shortage of butter had forced King George to start spreading margarine on his toast.
