Freedom Radio – 1940 | 83 mins | Drama, War, Propaganda | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Dr Karl Roder, a Viennese throat specialist, believes in freedom of thought, action and expression and is thus hostile to Nazism. His wife Irena, however, is flattered by the attentions of the Fuhrer and accepts a political post in Berlin. The two of them become estranged. Karl meets Hans, a young wireless engineer, whose fiancée has been raped by a Gestapo officer. Hans builds a transmitter so that Karl can broadcast the truth on a secret radio station to the German people. The Freedom Radio is born, and with it an underground group of anti-Nazis who regard Karl as their leader.

Meanwhile, Irena continues to believe in the Fuhrer and his pronouncements on peace, but when Karl denounces Hitler on the Freedom Radio for preparing for war with Poland, she is disillusioned. They are reconciled and Irena helps him to run the radio station while continuing her political work. Her brother, Otto, is an ardent Nazi. He begins to suspect his sister of being a spy and through his intervention the Gestapo discovers the Freedom Radio Station. Karl and Irena die together. But that night Hans rigs up a transmitter in another part of Berlin. While the Nazis announce that the radio has been silenced, a new anti-Hitler broadcast is being made. The station lives on.

Excerpt© ‘Puffin Asquith’ by R.J. Minney.