Transocean News Service (also Trans-Ocean News Service) was a wireless German news agency headquartered in

Berlin, Germany Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constituent ...

. It was closed by the Allied occupation government after the German capitulation in May 1945. The agency was founded in 1914 in response to

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’s cutting of transatlantic cables to Germany during the

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. In the 1920s and until Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, Transocean was a reputable news agency. Then the Nazis put it under control of the Foreign Office and the Propaganda Ministry. Transocean, however, presented itself as an independent news agency and not an official government run institution like the German News Bureau ({{interlanguage link, Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, de). The news agency became active in the United States in August 1938 with the arrival of Dr. Manfred Zapp and Günther Tonn, Transocean's U.S. managers from Germany. It maintained an office at 341 Madison Avenue, New York City. In the summer of 1941, before the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...

, the United States Government ordered the closure of Transocean and the withdrawal of the German nationals connected with it after a trial in which it was found guilty of having failed to register with the State Department as the agent of a foreign government. During the German

National Socialist Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

period the news agency provided articles to small papers in

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and some of the 178

German language German ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and Official language, official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Ita ...

papers in the

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for free or at a nominal rate. Transocean was largely subsidized by the German government. Transocean's most famous dispatch was early on June 6, 1944, when its German language broadcast announced the landing of Allied parachute troops on the French coast. This broadcast was picked up by the Associated Press, which put it out on its news wire to its subscribers. This was the first news of the landing code-named

Operation Overlord Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allies of World War II, Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Front (World War II), Western Europe during World War II. The operat ...

, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Jay Winik Jay Winik (born February 8, 1957) is a ''New York Times'' best-selling author and American historian who is best known for his book ''April 1865: The Month That Saved America''. Education and early career Winik is an honors graduate of Yale Co ...

(2015), 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History, p. 190

References

WAR & PEACE: Propaganda Trial

Investigation of un-American propaganda activities in the Trans-Ocean News Service trial

News agencies based in Germany