During the long Nazi occupation of Western Europe, citizens were desperate to hear truthful news. Their newspapers and magazines were censored and their radios had been confiscated by German authorities. Consequently, using parts scrounged from many places, many civilians constructed their own radio receivers and tuned to the powerful British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) transmitter in London. Because the mere possession of a radio was an offense punishable by fines, jail, or even execution, the makers’ ingenuity was focused on camouflage and concealment of the instrument. One of those who turned out several cleverly disguised radios was Alv Bjerklo of Sandnessjoen, Norway, a leader in the underground. Some of his radios were built in vacuum bottles and sofa legs. Another ingenious Norwegian radio builder was Thorleif Thorgersen of Stavanger. German soldiers often walked within a few feet of a birdhouse that hung on an outside wall, unaware that the seeming refuge for feathered creatures actually contained an illegal radio. No doubt the most incredibly disguised radio of all was created by a Norwegian soldier, a dental technician in civilian life, who was in a German POW camp near Breslau, Poland, in 1943. Arthur Bergfjord crafted a radio into a fellow inmate’s denture plate. To use the receiver, the inmate removed the denture and hooked it to a battery and headset that had been smuggled into camp. Said the resourceful Bergfjord much later: “The twice-false teeth worked remarkably well. We could hear BBC’s news reports loud and clear.” No doubt the inmate with the radio had been warned to keep his mouth shut when Germans were around... literally Soon after their French town was liberated by the Allies, inhabitants reclaim their radios that had been confiscated by the Germans.
