Radio-Paris was the first commercial radio station in Paris, France, and was taken over by the government in 1933. Beginning in July 1940, the German occupiers seized Radio-Paris and used it as their primary propaganda tool throughout the war.
Since the majority of French families owned a radio, the German occupiers considered broadcasting propaganda messages a priority. They took over the facilities and equipment of Radio Paris in order to capitalize on the prestige of what had been the nation’s leading radio station before the war.
The new Radio-Paris is, in fact, a German radio station, run by Germans, but it broadcasts in French. It set up shop in the former studios of the Poste Parisien on the Champs-Élysées. Since Radio Paris has a very high-powered transmitter, its broadcasts reach all of Europe and North Africa.
With substantial financial resources at its disposal, this German-run French-language radio station recruited numerous collaborationist and anti-Semitic journalists. The external Resistance organized and struck back with the famous jingle “Radio-Paris-ment-Radio-Paris-ment-Radio-Paris is East German,” set to the tune of “La Cucaracha” (a Latin American revolutionary song), which was broadcast on the BBC’s French-language programs in London.
The station’s premises were liberated on the evening of August 15, 1944, by a commando unit made up of police officers from the Résistance Police movement and station employees, after more than four years of Occupation.
Reference:
Romon, François, 2017, Radio Surveillance in the French Resistance: 1940–1945. Nouveau Monde Ed.
