Scapegoats or traitors? The tale of the British radio propagandists in wartime Shanghai who were convicted in Hong Kong

A court case that made headlines in Hong Kong 70 years ago this summer exposed the murky world of collaboration in wartime Shanghai, where a cast of shady characters helped the Axis propaganda effort, some becoming unlikely radio stars.

On the overcast morning of Sunday, June 29, 1947, one of the leading Nazis in Asia was discreetly taken to Kowloon Wharf No 1 and escorted aboard the passenger liner Empress of Scotland, which was anchored in Hong Kong’s war-ravaged harbour. Baron Jesco von Puttkamer was being repatriated to Europe, to begin a long term of incarceration.

Having been director of the German Information Bureau in Shanghai – the largest Nazi propaganda office outside Berlin – during the second world war, von Puttkamer had been interned temporarily at Victoria Prison, in Central, while acting as a key prosecution witness in two highly sensitive trials that had taken place the previous month, referred to in official memos held at the Public Records Office as the “Johnston/Gracie case”.

Von Puttkamer’s powerful weapon in the long-running propaganda war with the Allies had been the radio station XGRS (“X” was used to denote China and “GRS” stood for German Radio Station), and two British subjects, Frank Henry Johnston, 41, and John Kenneth Gracie, 49, stood accused in Hong Kong – in the nearest British-run court to Shanghai – of being his star broadcasters.

Under the Defence Regulations, Johnston was accused of broadcasting official enemy news, participating in radio plays satirising Allied war leaders and selling information about British warships to the Germans. Gracie was charged with broadcasting commentaries with the intention of fomenting ill-feeling between certain classes of British nationals and influencing Allied workers to become malcontents. In court, gramophone records of Gracie’s broadcasts were played. Both men were widely regarded as collaborators and traitors.

“There were newspapers, too, but radio was very important, especially during the Japanese occupation of East and Southeast Asia, as XGRS broadcasts could be heard in Hong Kong, Singapore and as far away as Australia and the west coast of the USA,” says Horst H. Geerken, author of Hitler’s Asian Adventure (2015), which devotes a chapter to the exploits of XGRS.