Although the idea of an American station transmitting from Great Britain was conceived as early as the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, OWI did not initiate concrete planning for two and a half years. By that time, the government's widespread radio propaganda activities included shortwave broadcasts to Japan; the operation of stations in Tunis, Algiers, and Italy; and the transmission of a large number of Voice of America (VOA) programs via shortwave radio. Nevertheless, the scarcity of shortwave receivers on the continent and the Nazis' increasingly effective efforts to jam broadcasts convinced OWI officials to build a station near enough to the front that its signal could reach European listeners.

     Brewster Morgan, ABSIE's first director, and Richard Con­don, its engineer, started work on the station in 1942, only to have their efforts postponed when OWi assigned them to set up the Armed Forces Network to broadcast to Allied troops. By 1943 they were back on the job, ordering equipment in the summer and recruiting staff in the fall. The following period of intense activity at the station coincided with heavy air raids in London. One evening German bombs narrowly missed the headquarters that ABSIE shared with Gaumont Films and destroyed the neighboring building. Shaken, the staff continued working; by early April, they had started rehearsing programs in anticipation of the inaugural broadcast of 30 April. Listeners to that program heard OWI's European director, Robert Sherwood, caution resistance forces to avoid premature action and to await word from Allied radio before striking the enemy. Sherwood also stated that an American voice could now be heard that was committed to "telling the truth of the War" to America's friends and enemies.

     To ensure that this voice was received, ABSIE broadcast using four medium wave transmitters built by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and six powerful shortwave trans​​mitters leased from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Its configuration allowed listeners to tune to ABSIE on several frequencies while forcing Nazi propagandists to dedicate an increased number of transmitters to jamming. Captured German records reveal that ABSIE's efforts to counter jamming were successful enough that most of the station's broadcasts were received. A more formidable tactic than jamming was the Nazis' ban, under penalty of death, on listening to Allied radio. Postwar surveys revealed, however, that German civilians and soldiers had listened to ABSIE's programming despite the potential consequences and that stories reported on ABSIE had circulated widely by word of mouth.

     ABSIE's organization mirrored that of a commercial station, an unsurprising fact given that it recruited key personnel from commercial stations and networks. Director Brewster Morgan had been a director and producer for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Station Manager Robert Saudek had worked at the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) Blue network in New York. The chief of the German language desk, Robert Bauer, had been an employee of WLWO Cincinnati prior to the war. Even William Paley, the head of CBS, helped ABSIE with planning and equipment procurement. Commercial radio's willingness to contribute staff to ABSIE reflected both its support for U.S. involvement in World War II and its conciliatory approach toward the government during the war years. Such attitudes also explain the networks' willing self-censorship at home.

     OWI's U.S. offices, particularly those of its Overseas Branch in New York, provided another major source for ABSIE's staff. Phil Cohen, Morgan's successor as ABSIE's director, had been chief of OWI's Domestic Bureau in Washington. ABSIE's language desks drew heavily from the OWI's New York offices. Pierre Lazareff, previously chief of the French radio section in New York, became chief of the French desk. Jorn Embretsen, chief of ABSIE's Norwegian desk, had headed OWI's Radio Program Bureau in New York. Robert Bauer, Alfred Puhan, and George Hanfmann, the three successive chiefs of the German desk, all came from New York as well.

     ABSIE's language desks were central to its operation. They translated key news items while tailoring programming to specific national audiences. Lazareff made sure the French desk established close working ties with the French government in exile and aired many speeches of its officials. A popular Norwegian program prompted a deluge of audience mail when it broadcast messages from Norwegian members of the armed forces for their friends and relatives at home. The English section was specifically designed to appeal to European listeners who, saturated with overly direct propaganda in their native languages, were more trusting of English language broadcasts. Most of its programming was news, supplemented by frontline commentary.

     In general, news accounted for the largest share of ABSIE's time, although special programs and rebroadcasts of BBC and VOA programs figured prominently on the daily schedule as well. Broadcasts generally avoided the most overt propaganda appeals in favor of carefully selected but usually truthful reports. This "white" propaganda contrasted with the Office of Strategic Services' use of such "black" propaganda as the invention of a revolutionary party in Germany devoted to the overthrow of the Nazis. More typical of ABSIE's approach was the news coverage in 1945, which juxtaposed stories of chaos in Nazi-occupied regions of Germany with reports of orderly conditions and fair treatment in the Allied zones. One program broadcast interviews with German prisoners of war in hopes that their families would tune in. On another broadcast, Bing Crosby performed after reading a phonetically written German script that projected a vision of the increased freedom Germans could expect after the Nazis were defeated.

ABSIE's final broadcast aired on 4 July 1945 and featured a statement by OWI director Elmer Davis asserting that ABSIE had successfully completed its mission but that the VOA and BBC would continue in its place.