Franz Hildebrandt on the BBC: Wartime Broadcasting to Nazi Germany

Abstract

Franz Hildebrandt, a German pastor of Jewish descent, fled Nazi persecution in 1937, making his way to England, where he served as a minister in Cambridge. During the Second World War Hildebrandt worked with the British Broadcasting Corporation as one of a cadre of pastors, mostly refugees of Jewish descent, to preach German-language sermons over the airwaves. This article analyses Hildebrandt's sermons, delivered between 1942 and 1945, to an audience that risked prosecution and even death simply for listening. Within the constraints of a Christian worship service, Hildebrandt offered incisive criticisms of the Nazi regime from a distinctly religious perspective.