Sefton Delmer

Photo: Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Denis Sefton Delmer, known to his friends as “Tom,” was a journalist turned propagandist for the British government during the Second World War. Delmer, the son of Australian parents living in Germany, was born in 1904. His father was placed in the Ruhleben internment camp at the start of the First World War, reportedly on suspicion of being a spy. The Delmer family was deported to England in 1917 in a prisoner exchange between the British and German governments. After leaving Oxford, Delmer worked as a freelance journalist until he was hired by the Daily Express to become head of its new Berlin Bureau. While in Germany, he became one of the first British journalists to interview Adolf Hitler. Delmer also covered the Spanish Civil War, the invasion of Poland, and the German western offensive in 1940. After returning to England, Delmer worked for a time as an announcer for the German service of the BBC. In 1940, he was recruited by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) to organize propaganda broadcasts to Nazi Germany as part of a psychological warfare campaign. An internal 1952 memo by J.C. Robertson, head of MI5’s division for counterespionage, describes Delmer as “a worldly, shrewd, suave individual with considerable charm.” According to Robertson, “it is not difficult to understand the success he has achieved as a journalist.” Delmer returned to the Daily Express after the war. I’m confident that Peter Pomerantsev’s upcoming book about Delmer, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, will shed more light on Delmer’s work as both a journalist and a spy when it’s published in March 2024.