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Central Intelligence Agency

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Hungarian revolt

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United States Information Agency

The 1950s in America

Radio Free Europe

by Martin J. Manning

Identification U.S. radio station that broadcast propaganda to Eastern Europe

Date Started broadcasting in 1950

Radio Free Europe (RFE) served as a U.S. government short-wave broadcasting service to Eastern Europe and was established as a front for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to promote democratic values and institutions to countries behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War era.

Radio Free Europe was a short-wave service that was incorporated in 1949 as the broadcast division of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) and was designed to deliver local news and features to East European countries from transmitters in Germany . NCFE was established by former Office of Strategic Services officers as a CIA-front organization, and its existence was originally kept not only from the American people but also from the press and the U.S. Congress. It began its broadcasts on July 4, 1950, with a program beamed to Czechoslovakia from the Lamperthein transmitter site in Germany.

Crusade for Freedom , a fund-raising project of the American Heritage Foundation , was also a cover for NCFE activities, which enabled it to appear as a popular movement. Both NCFE (under the motto “To Halt Communism and Save Freedom”) and Crusade for Freedom (“The Struggle for the Souls of Men”) were organized “to liberate” central Europe. Radio Free Europe was considered the most important part of the NCFE operation. Its objective was to broadcast to communist-dominated Eastern Europe and to expose the problems of communist regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. RFE featured music and news, skits, satires, and speeches by exiled leaders; monitored the broadcasts of all central and eastern Europe; and managed the use of information compiled from the intelligence community. The governments of the target countries worked constantly to jam RFE signals.

Impact

The Committee for a Free Europe developed a full-scale plan for the liberation of Eastern Europe. Between April, 1954, and November, 1956, Radio Free Europe’s predecessor, Free Europe Committee, Inc., regularly delivered printed leaflets and informational booklets by balloon to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland in order to help amend the lack of free exchange of information in those countries.

During the severe labor unrest in Poland in 1956, RFE was praised for its balanced broadcasts and for its initiative to foster a climate that led to a temporary restoration of peace. However, in that same year, the Soviet occupation of Hungary closed many independent stations, leaving only RFE, outside the Iron Curtain, to broadcast to Hungary. The political troubles of 1956 led to new RFE management, which resulted in more factual news broadcasts with more reliance on major news bureaus, less dependence on the stories of refugees who had recently escaped the Iron Curtain, and more audience surveys to determine programming.

Subsequent Events

RFE’s front organization status was revealed after a series of 1967 articles in The New York Times. In August, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon appointed a presidential study commission on international broadcasting that found that RFE and Radio Liberty, with their flow of “free and uncensored information to peoples deprived of it,” actually contributed to a climate of détente. In 1973, the two radio stations were placed under the jurisdiction of the Board for International Broadcasting; three years later RFE and RL merged, but after the end of the Cold War during the early 1990’s, RFE/RL struggled to define its mission.

Further Reading

1 

Mickelson, Sig. America’s Other Voices: Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. New York: Praeger, 1983. Reveals little-known facts about the international politics and intelligence community background of RFE.

2 

Puddington, Arch. Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000. A former staff member of the RFE chronicles the history of the station.

3 

Urban, George R. Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy: My War Within the Cold War. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997. Former director of RFE provides behind-the-scenes details of the station.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Manning, Martin J. "Radio Free Europe." The 1950s in America, edited by John C. Super, Salem Press, 2005. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=1950_577.
APA 7th
Manning, M. J. (2005). Radio Free Europe. In J. C. Super (Ed.), The 1950s in America. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Manning, Martin J. "Radio Free Europe." Edited by John C. Super. The 1950s in America. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2005. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.