Our friend Bill Meara at SolderSmoke just shared a link to an excellent Hackaday article highlighting Britain’s “secret listeners”—the skilled amateur radio operators who intercepted enemy transmissions during WWII. These unsung heroes quietly monitored Axis communications, contributing to vital wartime intelligence.
This piece offers a compelling look into how amateur radio skills were used for national defense and how listening—often overlooked—played a key role in the war effort.
Read more at SolderSmoke: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2025/06/britains-secret-listeners.html
We actually featured the 1979 BBC documentary, “The Secret Listeners” eleven years ago (!!!) here on the SWLing Post. It’s a brilliant video:
I’m looking for a similar venue to have my mother in law Agnes Joan Verdi’s made into a documentary or film. The book “Waves of Hope” has been highlighted on this site. Agnes as a radio listener who tuned into Radio Berlin each day to listen to names of POWs announced. She would then write to their families to let them know their loved ones were still alive!
If anyone has any connections, or knows a film maker, please let me know!
Here is a link to the British propaganda broadcast station during WW2 that had the Germans, especially the submariners thinking they were listening to programs from Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Kurzwellensender_Atlantik
This link provides information about the “Atlantic Sender” station run by the British during WW2.
https://history.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/08/aspidistra-the-wartime-breakthrough-youve-never-heard-of/