MN.06.04.1995 Radio Hilversum Wartime Occupation

Six months ago we took you on a tour of a special exhibition being held in the Netherlands Broadcasting Museum on the south-side of Hilversum. The great thing about the museum is that part of the collection always changes. The popular exhibition on off-shore radio which we covered last year has now made way for an equally fascinating portrait of wartime radio. It covers the period of German Nazi occupation, starting on May 10th 1940 when German troops crossed the Dutch border.The exhibition looks at the powerful influence that radio had and the way it was used by the Germans and Allied forces to persuade. As you walk through the exhibition there are headphones attached to many of the glass cabinets. They bring the past to life. Arno Weltens has designed the exhibition and he started our tour by explaining that after the bombing of Rotterdam on May 14th 1940 and the capitulation of Dutch forces hours afterwards a German infantry patrol headed for the centre of Dutch broadcasting on Wednesday the 15th. (note this programme was originally posted as May 4th in error.)