“LISTEN, GERMANY: THOMAS MANN’S ANTI-FASCIST RADIO ADDRESS”
A conversation on Thomas Mann’s BBC radio addresses delivered during his exile in the United States with Jeffrey High and Elaine Chen, moderated by Joes Segal.
As part of our ongoing programs honoring Thomas Mann’s 150th anniversary, literary scholars Jeffrey High and Elaine Chen, editors of the forthcoming book Thomas Mann’s Antifascist Radio Addresses, 1940–1945 (Camden House), will engage in a conversation about Thomas Mann’s BBC radio speeches, which he delivered from exile in the United States to listeners in Germany, Switzerland and occupied Netherlands and Czechoslovakia during the war. From 1940 until 1945, Thomas Mann pleaded to thousands of listeners to resist the Nazi regime and thus became the most important German voice in exile. His conviction that the “social renewal of democracy” is condition and warrant for its victory seems more relevant than ever.
Upon Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Nobel-laureate Thomas Mann chose exile, eventually moving to the United States in 1938. An early critic of National Socialism, he gave over 150 public lectures with titles such as “The Coming Victory of Democracy.” From 1940 to 1945, he authored and narrated a series of anti-Nazi radio addresses that were broadcast to Germany by the BBC; German listeners risked severe punishment. Mann’s radio addresses constitute his most sustained contribution to the Allied war effort. In them, he comments on the progress of the war, contrasts fascism with democracy, measures Hitler against Roosevelt, and counters German propaganda with international consensus, lies with facts. After initially encouraging the Germans to resist the Nazi regime, Mann prepares them for the consequences of defeat, but also instills hope in them for future reconciliation with the community of nations.
Today, when democracy is again endangered in much of the world, Mann’s antifascist radio addresses have once again acquired urgency. A new volume by Jeffrey High and Elaine Chen presents English translations of all of Mann’s 58 radio addresses for the first time, with a foreword by Mann’s grandson Frido Mann, an introduction by leading Mann scholar Hans Rudolf Vaget, careful annotations, and a selection of photographs.
This conversation in the living room of the Thomas Mann House, where Mann wrote a significant amount of his radio speeches, explores the historic circumstances surrounding this collaboration with the BBC, as well as the impact and consequences of Mann’s speeches and what we can learn from them today.
Learn more about the 150th anniversary of Thomas Mann here.
JEFFREY L. HIGH is Professor in German Studies, Comparative Literature, and Honors at California State University, Long Beach and Guest Professor at the German Summer School of the Pacific at Portland State University.
ELAINE CHEN is a PhD candidate in the Departments of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, MA.
ALEXANDER N. MORRISON received his BA in Social Science in 2023 and his MA in German Studies in 2025 from Portland State University; he is working as Fulbright English Language Assistant in Austria in 2025-2026.
N. K. MARTIN received their B.A. in German Studies from Portland State University and entered the doctoral program in German Studies at Stanford University in 2025.
CHARLOTTE BAYER is a BA candidate in German Studies and Honors at Portland State University and has studied German and American Studies at the Universität Tübingen.
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