Believable Lies

The true story of the clandestine British organisation briefed to wage psychological warfare to beat the Nazis

At the beginning of the Second World War, a team of unlikely and ill-assorted characters assembled in their secret country headquarters. They had left their civilian roles as politicians, journalists, novelists and spies, advertisers, artists and even forgers, to work for a covert government organisation preparing to broadcast British propaganda into occupied territory. These men and women would become the Political Warfare Executive.

Many of them were misfits with a questionable relationship to the truth, who were prepared to consider unconventional methods to achieve their goals: weakening enemy morale and sowing confusion. In the ‘hush-hush’ village of Aspley Guise near Woburn Abbey (8 miles from the codebreakers at Bletchley Park), they set up a series of undercover radio stations which would broadcast fake shows to Europe.

This book will reveal how the once top secret wartime efforts of the PWE - from pornographic leaflet drops to rumour campaigns, underground publications and fake French and German radio shows - contributed to the frontline of psychological warfare to break Nazi morale.