Planet Vintage presents

The Radio War1939–1945

Not a pile of MP3s. A dateline. Every surviving recording we can legally carry, placed on the day it was transmitted and set beside what every other broadcaster said about the same hour — London, New York, Ottawa, Berlin, Rome and Tokyo.

1,983

Broadcasts

Broadcasters

Datelines

Axis recordings

The dateline

Sixteen days the century turned on

Each dateline gathers everything that survives from the days around it, in order, across every network that carried it.

The collections

Or come at it sideways

Allied Voices

The war as the Allied networks told it, from Broadcasting House to Studio Nine.

1922 recordings

Axis Voices

Berlin, Rome and Tokyo in their own words — kept as evidence, not as entertainment.

61 recordings

Enemy Broadcasts

English-language propaganda aimed straight at Allied troops and their families.

51 recordings

Radio From Occupied Europe

Transmitters in captured countries, and the voices that used them.

5 recordings

Resistance Radio

Ici Londres, the messages personnels, and radio as a weapon of the underground.

16 recordings

Propaganda

Both sides, working the microphone: morale, rumour and the manufactured truth.

70 recordings

The Pacific War

Pearl Harbor to the deck of the Missouri.

106 recordings

D-Day

6 June 1944 across every network that carried it.

272 recordings

VE Day

The end in Europe, from the surrender at Reims to the crowds in the street.

70 recordings

VJ Day

August 1945: the bomb, the broadcast, and the war's last day.

114 recordings

War Correspondents

Murrow, Shirer, Sevareid, Halton — reporters inventing the job as they went.

245 recordings

Home Front

Rationing, salvage, war bonds and the domestic machinery of total war.

58 recordings

Speeches

The addresses that people stopped what they were doing to hear.

212 recordings

Music & Entertainment

What the war sounded like when it was trying to keep everyone's spirits up.

246 recordings

Children's Broadcasts

Evacuation, refugee children and radio made for the youngest listeners.

13 recordings

Governments in Exile

London-based governments broadcasting home to occupied nations.

18 recordings

Allied voices

The networks that reported it

Each broadcaster keeps its own page, with every surviving recording in date order.

Vintage

American Networks — Pool Feeds & Stations

PG658 EpisodesWeekly

Pool coverage, local station bulletins and the broadcasts nobody thought to label.

Vintage

CBS World News

PG348 EpisodesWeekly

Murrow's men: the network that invented the round-up and reported the century as it happened.

Vintage

BBC Home Service

PG319 EpisodesTwice weekly

Broadcasting House at war — bulletins, ministerial addresses and the sound of London under attack.

Vintage

NBC News

PG207 EpisodesFortnightly

NBC Red and Blue: bulletins, war analysis and the network's overseas correspondents.

Vintage

D-Day: The Complete NBC Broadcast Day

PG106 EpisodesWeekly

6 June 1944, hour by hour, exactly as NBC put it out — from 2.50am until sign-off.

Vintage

CBC Wartime Service

PG66 EpisodesFortnightly

Matthew Halton and the CBC Overseas Unit, reporting Canada's war from Ortona to the Scheldt.

Vintage

Mutual Broadcasting System

PG63 EpisodesSeasonal

The fourth network's war: fast bulletins and commentary for the American home front.

Vintage

The National Archives Collection

PG43 EpisodesSeasonal

Sound recordings held by the U.S. National Archives — speeches, monitored enemy broadcasts and captured discs.

Vintage

AFRS Wartime Miscellany

PG40 EpisodesSeasonal

Odds and ends off the Armed Forces Radio Service transcription discs.

Vintage

D-Day: The Complete Broadcast Day

PG24 EpisodesSeasonal

The whole of 6 June 1944 across the American networks, in sequence.

Vintage

ABSIE — American Broadcasting Station in Europe

PG19 EpisodesSeasonal

The American voice beamed into occupied Europe, with Glenn Miller playing for the Wehrmacht.

Vintage

ABC Australia at War

PG16 EpisodesWeekly

The scarce surviving Australian wartime broadcast material.

Vintage

BBC European Services

PG9 EpisodesFortnightly

Ici Londres and the German Service — the BBC broadcasting into occupied Europe and into Germany itself.

Vintage

Radiodiffusion Nationale — France 1939-40

PG4 EpisodesWeekly

French state radio in the last months before the fall — Reynaud, Pierlot, and a nation going under.

Axis voices

Kept as evidence

Berlin, Rome, Tokyo and occupied Paris. Presented as primary historical material, not entertainment.

Vintage

Germany Calling

PG33 EpisodesTwice weekly

Lord Haw-Haw, 'Paul Revere' and the clandestine stations aimed at Britain and America.

Vintage

Radio Tokyo

PG12 EpisodesTwice weekly

Tojo's declaration, Station DEBUNK and The Zero Hour with 'Orphan Ann'.

Vintage

Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft

PG7 EpisodesSeasonal

German state radio: the fall of Paris, the sinking of the Hood, Hitler on Stalingrad.

Vintage

EIAR — Italian State Radio

PG6 EpisodesTwice weekly

Mussolini declares war, and EIAR announces his fall three years later.

Vintage

Radio-Paris & Vichy

PG3 EpisodesFortnightly

Collaboration on the air: Petain, Laval and Philippe Henriot broadcasting from an occupied country.

Provenance

Every recording here is streamed from the Internet Archive’s WWII audio archive, which draws on sound recordings held by the U.S. National Archives and on off-air transcription discs preserved by collectors. Air dates, broadcasters and descriptions are the archive’s own metadata — we have not invented, dramatised or reconstructed anything, and no artwork here is generated. Axis broadcasts are included because the historical record requires them; they carry the propaganda of a regime that murdered millions, and they are labelled as such.