William Joyce William Joyce ( 24 April 1906 – 3 January 1946 ) , nicknamed Lord Haw - Haw , was an Irish - American fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during the Second World War . He was hanged for treason by the British as a result of his wartime activities , being believed to owe allegiance to the UK by his possession of a British passport , a document to which , ironically , he was not entitled . The Court of Appeal and the House of Lords upheld his conviction on one count of high treason . Early life . Joyce was born on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn , New York , to an Anglican mother and an Irish Catholic father who had taken United States citizenship . A few years after his birth , the family returned to Galway , Ireland . Joyce attended the Jesuit St Ignatius College in Galway from 1915 to 1921 . Unusual for Irish Roman Catholics , both Joyce and his father were strongly Unionist . Joyce later said that he had aided the Black and Tans during the Irish War for Independence and had become a target of the Irish Republican Army . Following what he alleged to be an assassination attempt in 1921 ( which supposedly failed because he took a different route home from school ) , he left for England where he briefly attended King ' s College School , Wimbledon , on a foreign exchange . His family followed him to England two years later . Joyce had relatives in Birkenhead , whom he visited on a few occasions . He joined the Worcestershire Regiment in 1921 but was discharged when it was discovered that he had lied about his age . He then applied to Birkbeck College of the University of London and to enter the Officer Training Corps . At Birkbeck , he obtained a First Class degree . He also developed an interest in fascism , and he worked with ( but never joined ) the British Fascists of Rotha Lintorn - Orman . In 1924 , while stewarding a Conservative Party meeting , Joyce was attacked and received a deep razor slash that ran across his right cheek . It left a permanent scar which ran from the earlobe to the corner of the mouth . He claimed his attackers were Jewish communists . It was an incident that had a marked bearing on his outlook . British Union of Fascists . In 1932 , Joyce joined the British Union of Fascists ( BUF ) under Sir Oswald Mosley , and swiftly became a leading speaker , praised for his power of oratory . The journalist and novelist Cecil Roberts described a speech given by Joyce : In 1934 , Joyce was promoted to the BUF ' s director of propaganda and later appointed deputy leader . As well as being a gifted speaker , Joyce gained the reputation of a savage brawler . His violent rhetoric and willingness to physically confront anti - fascist elements head - on played no small part in further marginalizing the BUF . After the bloody debacle of the June 1934 Olympia rally , Joyce spearheaded the BUF ' s policy shift from campaigning for economic revival through corporatism to a focus on antisemitism . He was instrumental in changing the name of the BUF to " British Union of Fascists and National Socialists " in 1936 , and stood as a party candidate in the 1937 elections to the London County Council . In 1936 Joyce lived for a year in Whitstable , where he owned a radio and electrical shop . Between April 1934 and 1937 , when Mosley sacked him , Joyce also served as Area Administrative Officer for the BUF West Sussex division . Joyce was supported in this role by Norah Elam as Sussex Women ’ s Organiser , with her partner Dudley Elam taking on the role of Sub - Branch Officer for Worthing . Under this regime , West Sussex was to become a hub of fascist activity , ranging from hosting Blackshirt summer camps to organising meetings and rallies , lunches etc . Norah Elam shared many speaking platforms with Joyce and worked on propaganda speeches for him . One area of particular concern that Joyce had her work on was the government ' s India Bill ( passed in 1935 ) , designed to give a measure of autonomy to India , allowing freedom and the development of limited self - government . Joyce harboured a desire to become Viceroy of India under a Mosley administration should he ever head a BUF government , and is recorded as describing the backers of the bill as " feeble " and " one loathsome , fetid , purulent , tumid mass of hypocrisy , hiding behind Jewish Dictators " . Unlike Joyce , the Elams did not escape detention under Defence Regulation 18B ; both were arrested on the same day as Mosley in May 1940 . The relationship between Joyce and Norah Elam was evidence of the strange bedfellows that politics can bring together . Elam ' s father had been an Irish Nationalist , while Joyce had been a Unionist and supporter of the Black and Tans . In later life , Elam reported that although she disliked Joyce , she believed that his execution by the British in 1946 was wrong , stating that he should not have been regarded as a traitor to England because he was not English , but Irish . Joyce was sacked from his paid position when Mosley drastically reduced the BUF staff shortly after the 1937 elections ; upon which Joyce promptly formed a breakaway organisation , the National Socialist League . After the departure of Joyce , the BUF turned its focus away from anti - Semitism and towards activism , opposing a war with Nazi Germany . Though Joyce had been deputy leader of the party from 1933 and an effective fighter and orator , Mosley snubbed him in his autobiography and later denounced him as a traitor because of his wartime activities . Lord Haw - Haw . In late August 1939 , shortly before war was declared , Joyce and his wife Margaret fled to Germany . Joyce had been tipped off that the British authorities intended to detain him under Defence Regulation 18B . Joyce became a naturalised German citizen in 1940 . In Berlin , Joyce could not find employment until a chance meeting with fellow Mosleyite Dorothy Eckersley got him an audition at the Rundfunkhaus ( " " broadcasting house " " ) . Eckersley was the former wife or second wife of the Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Corporation , Peter Eckersley . Despite having a heavy cold and almost losing his voice , he was recruited immediately for radio announcements and script writing at German radio ' s English service . William Joyce replaced Wolf Mittler . The name " Lord Haw - Haw of Zeesen " was coined by the pseudonymous " Daily Express " radio critic Jonah Barrington in 1939 , but this referred initially to Wolf Mittler ( or possibly Norman Baillie - Stewart ) . When Joyce became the best - known propaganda broadcaster , the nickname was transferred to him . Joyce ' s broadcasts initially came from studios in Berlin , later transferring ( due to heavy Allied bombing ) to Luxembourg and finally to Apen near Hamburg , and were relayed over a network of German - controlled radio stations that included Hamburg , Bremen , Luxembourg , Hilversum , Calais , Oslo and Zeesen . Joyce also broadcast on and wrote scripts for the German Büro Concordia organisation , which ran several black propaganda stations , many of which pretended to broadcast illegally from within Britain . His role in writing the scripts increased as time passed , and the German radio capitalized on his public persona . Initially an anonymous broadcaster , Joyce eventually revealed his real name to his listeners , and would occasionally be announced as " William Joyce , otherwise known as Lord Haw - Haw " . Urban legend s soon circulated about Lord Haw - Haw , alleging that the broadcaster was well - informed about political and military events , to the point of near - omniscience . Although listening to his broadcasts was officially discouraged ( but not illegal ) , many Britons did tune in . At the height of his influence , in 1940 Joyce had an estimated six million regular and 18 million occasional listeners in the United Kingdom . The broadcasts always began with the announcer ' s words " Germany calling , Germany calling , Germany calling " . These broadcasts urged the British people to surrender , and were well known for their jeering , sarcastic and menacing tone . There was also a desire by civilian listeners to hear what the other side was saying , since information during wartime was strictly censored , and at the start of the war it was possible for German broadcasts to be more informative than those of the BBC . Joyce recorded his final broadcast on 30 April 1945 , during the Battle of Berlin . Rambling and audibly drunk , he chided Britain for pursuing the war beyond mere containment of Germany , and warned repeatedly of the " menace " of the Soviet Union . He signed off with a final defiant " Heil Hitler and farewell " . There are conflicting accounts as to whether this last programme was actually transmitted , despite a recording being found in the Apen studios . The next day Radio Hamburg was seized by British forces , who on 4 May used it to make a mock " Germany calling " broadcast denouncing Joyce . Besides broadcasting , Joyce ' s duties included writing propaganda for distribution among British prisoners of war , whom he tried to recruit into the British Free Corps . He wrote a book " Twilight Over England " promoted by the German Ministry of Propaganda , which unfavourably compared the evils of allegedly Jewish - dominated capitalist Britain with the alleged wonders of National Socialist Germany . Adolf Hitler awarded Joyce the War Merit Cross ( First and Second Class ) for his broadcasts , although they never met . On May 5 , 1945 , three days after the liberation of Hamburg , CBS war correspondent Bill Downs broadcast a report about the condition of Hamburg using Joyce ' s microphone . Scripts and the microphone used by Joyce were then seized by soldier Cyril Millwood and have now come to light following the ex - soldier ' s death . Capture and trial . At the end of the war , Joyce was captured by British forces at Flensburg , near the German border with Denmark . Spotting a dishevelled figure while resting from gathering firewood , intelligence soldiers – including a Jewish German , Geoffrey Perry ( born Horst Pinschewer ) , who had left Germany before the war – engaged him in conversation in French and English . After they asked if he was Joyce , he reached for his pocket ( actually reaching for a false passport ) ; believing he was armed , they shot him through the buttocks , leaving four wounds . Two intelligence officers then drove him to a border post , and handed him to British military police . Joyce was then taken to London and tried at the Old Bailey on three counts of high treason : The only evidence offered that he had begun broadcasting from Germany while his British passport was valid was the testimony of a London police inspector who had questioned him before the war while he was an active member of the British Union of Fascists and claimed to have recognised his voice on a propaganda broadcast in the early weeks of the war ( Joyce had previous convictions for assault and riotous assembly in the 1930s ) . During the processing of the charges Joyce ' s American nationality came to light , and it seemed that he would have to be acquitted , based upon a lack of jurisdiction ; he could not be convicted of betraying a country that was not his own . He was acquitted of the first and second charges . However , the Attorney General , Sir Hartley Shawcross , successfully argued that Joyce ' s possession of a British passport , even though he had mis - stated his nationality to get it , entitled him ( until it expired ) to British diplomatic protection in Germany and therefore he owed allegiance to the king at the time he commenced working for the Germans . It was on this basis that Joyce was convicted of the third charge and sentenced to death on 19 September 1945 . Appeal . His conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal on 1 November 1945 , and by the House of Lords ( on a 4 – 1 vote ) on 13 December 1945 . In the appeal , Joyce argued that possession of a passport did not entitle him to the protection of the Crown , and therefore did not perpetuate his duty of allegiance once he left the country , but the House rejected this argument . Lord Porter ' s dissenting opinion was based on his belief that whether Joyce ' s duty of allegiance had terminated or not was a question of fact for the jury to decide , rather than a purely legal question for the judge . Joyce also argued that jurisdiction had been wrongly assumed by the court in electing to try an alien for offences committed in a foreign country . This argument was also rejected , on the basis that a state may exercise such jurisdiction in the interests of its own security . It is alleged that Joyce made a deal with his prosecutors not to reveal his links to MI5 . In return , his wife Margaret , known to radio listeners as " Lady Haw - Haw " , was spared prosecution for high treason . Execution . He went to his death unrepentant and defiant : Other cites refer to his having said , " may the Swastika be raised from the dust " Joyce was executed on 3 January 1946 at Wandsworth Prison , aged 39 . He was the penultimate person to be hanged for a crime other than murder in the United Kingdom . The last was Theodore Schurch , executed for treachery the following day at Pentonville . In both cases the hangman was Albert Pierrepoint . Joyce chose to die in his mother ' s faith , the Anglican faith . It is said that the scar on Joyce ' s face split wide open because of the pressure applied to his head upon his drop from the gallows . As was customary for executed criminals , Joyce ' s remains were buried in an unmarked grave within the walls of HMP Wandsworth . In 1976 they were exhumed and reinterred in the Protestant section of the New Cemetery in Bohermore in County Galway , Ireland . A Roman Catholic Tridentine Mass ( in Latin ) was celebrated at his reburial . Family . Joyce had two daughters by his first wife , Hazel , who went on to marry Oswald Mosley ' s bodyguard , Eric Piercey . One daughter , Heather Piercey ( m . Vincenzo Iandolo 1955 – 72 ) , spoke publicly of her father .