The Execution of Lord Haw Haw at Wandsworth Prison in 1946 « Another Nickel In The Machine The Execution of Lord Haw Haw at Wandsworth Prison in 1946 William Joyce William Joyce, the man with the famous nickname ‘Lord Haw Haw’, is Britain’s most well-known traitor, of relatively recent times anyway. He had a catchphrase as famous as any comedian’s and to cap it all he had a facial disfigurement in the form of a terrible scar that marked him as a ‘villainous traitor’ as if the words themselves were tattooed across his forehead. Saying all that, a lot of people have argued that he shouldn’t have been convicted of treason at all, let alone be executed for the crime. On the cold and damp morning of 3 January 1946 a large but orderly crowd had formed outside the grim Victorian prison in Wandsworth. The main gates of London’s largest gaol are situated not more than a few hundred feet from the far more salubrious surroundings of Wandsworth Common in South West London.

Some people had come to protest at what they considered an unjust conviction, while others, ghoulishly and morbidly, wanted to be as close as they could, to what would turn out to be, the execution of the last person to be convicted of treason in this country. Wandsworth Prison William Joyce had woken early that morning and although he ate no breakfast he drank a cup of tea. At one minute to nine, an hour later than initially planned, the Governor of Wandsworth Prison came to the condemned man’s cell to inform him that his time had come. The walk to the adjacent execution chamber was but a few yards but there was just enough time for Joyce to look down at his badly trembling knees and smile. Albert Pierrepoint, the practiced and experienced hangman, said the last words that Joyce would ever hear: ‘I think we’d better have this on, you know’ and placed a hood over the condemned man’s head followed immediately by the noose of the hanging rope. A few seconds later the executioner pulled a lever which automatically opened the trap door beneath Joyce’s feet.

Almost instantaneously Joyce’s spinal cord was ripped apart between the second and third vertebrae and the man known throughout the country as Lord Haw-Haw, was dead. The gates of HMP Wandsworth around the time of William Joyce's execution At about the same time as the hangman pulled his deadly lever a group of smartly dressed men in winter coats stepped away from the main crowd outside the gates of the prison and behind some nearby bushes, almost surreptitiously, were seen to raise their right arms in the ‘Heil Hitler!’ salute. At eight minutes past nine a prison officer came out and pinned an official announcement that the hanging of the traitor William Joyce had taken place. At 1pm the BBC Home Service reported the execution and read out the last, unrepentant pronouncement from the dead man; In death, as in this life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war, and I defy the power of darkness which they represent. I warn the British people against the crushing imperialism of the Soviet Union. May Britain be great once again and in the hour of the greatest danger in the west may the Swastika be raised from the dust, crowned with the historic words ‘You have conquered nevertheless’.

I am proud to die for my ideals; and I am sorry for the sons of Britain who have died without knowing why. The official declaration of William Joyce's execution pinned on the gates of the prison The official notice of execution being pinned on the gates of Wandsworth Prison William Joyce had actually been born in Brooklyn, New York forty years previously to an English Protestant mother and an Irish Catholic father who had taken United States citizenship. A few years after the birth the family returned to Galway where William attended the Jesuit St Ignatius College from 1915 to 1921. William had always been precociously politically aware but both he and his father, rather unusually for Irish Catholics at the time, were both Unionists and openly supported British rule. In fact Joyce later said that he had aided and ran with the infamous Black and Tans, the notoriously indisciplined and brutal British auxiliary force sent to Ireland after the First World War in an attempt to help put down Irish nationalism. Joyce actually became the target of an IRA assassination attempt in 1921 when he was just sixteen.

For his own safety William immediately left for England, and after a short stint in the British army (he was discharged when it was found he had lied about his age) he enrolled at Birkbeck College of the University of London where he gained a first but also developed an initial interest in Fascism. In 1924, while stewarding a Conservative Party meeting at the Lambeth Baths in Battersea, a seventeen year old Joyce was attacked by an unprovoked gang in an adjacent alley-way and received a vicious and deep cut from a razor that sliced across his right cheek from behind the earlobe all the way to the corner of his mouth. After two weeks in hospital he was left with a terrible and disfiguring facial scar. Joyce was convinced that his attackers were ‘Jewish communists’ and the incident became a massive influence on the rest of his life. The bandage was covering twenty six stiches, he remained in hospital for two weeks In 1932 Joyce joined Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and within a couple of years he was promoted to the BUF’s director of propaganda and not long after appointed deputy leader.

Joyce was a gifted speaker and for a while became the star of the British fascist movement. He was instrumental in moving the union towards overt anti-semitism – something of which Mosley had always been relatively uncomfortable. Joyce’s career with the British Union of Fascists only lasted five years when, with membership plummeting, a devastated Joyce was sacked from his paid position in the party by Mosley in 1937. William Joyce, on the far left, with Oswald Mosley in 1934 In late August 1939, shortly before war was declared and probably tipped off by a friend in MI5 that he was about to be arrested, Joyce and his wife Margaret fled to Germany. Joyce struggled to find employment until he met fellow former-Mosleyite Dorothy Eckersley who got him recruited immediately for radio announcements and script writing at German radio’s English service in Berlin.

Crucially this was at a time when his British passport was still valid (although born in New York and brought up in Ireland Joyce had lied about his nationality to obtain a British passport – complications and niceties such as proving one’s identity with a birth certificate weren’t needed at the time) ostensibly to accompany Mosley abroad in 1935. Dorothy Eckersley The infamous nickname of ‘Lord Haw Haw’, associated with William Joyce to this day, was coined by a Daily Express journalist called Jonah Barrington. It’s not widely known but the title was actually meant for someone else completely – almost certainly a man called Norman Baillie-Stewart who had been broadcasting in Germany from just before the war. The nickname referenced Baillie-Stewart’s exaggeratedly aristocratic way of speaking. Barrington had written: A gent I’d like to meet is moaning periodically from Zeesen [the site in Germany of the English transmitter]. He speaks English of the haw-haw, dammit-get-out-of-my-way variety, and his strong suit is gentlemanly indignation.

Norman Baillie-Stewart - the real Lord Haw Haw Baillie-Stewart had already been convicted as a traitor by the United Kingdom for selling military secrets to Germany in the early thirties. He had the dubious distinction of being the last person in a long line of infamous people to have been imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason. Late in 1939 when William Joyce had become the more prominent of the Nazi propaganda broadcasters, although at the time no one knew who he was, Barrington swapped the title over to Joyce. Listening to Lord Haw Haw’s broadcasts (which famously always began with the words “Germany Calling, Germany Calling”) was officially discouraged, although incredibly about 60% of the population tuned in after the BBC news every night. The BBC’s output at the beginning of the war was said to have been exceedingly dreary (plus ca change) and the British public seemed to prefer being shocked rather than bored. Lord Haw Haw’s over-the-top and sneering attacks on the British establishment were really enjoyed, but in an era of state censorship and restricted information, there was also a desire by listeners to hear what the other side was saying.

At the start of the war, simply because there was more to brag about, the German news reports were considered, by some people, to contain slightly more truth than those of the BBC. William and Margaret Joyce in Germany As the tide turned in the latter stages of the war Joyce and his wife moved to Hamburg. On the 22nd April 1945 he wrote in his diary: Has it all been worthwhile? I think not. National Socialism is a fine cause, but most of the Germans, not all, are bloody fools. Eight days later, and on the very day that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in their Berlin Bunker, Joyce made his last drunken broadcast – the remains of his Irish accent can be heard through his slurring voice. The actual microphone and a script used by Joyce for his German broadcasts At the end of the war William and his wife Margaret fled to a town called Flensburg near the German/Denmark border and it was there, in a nearby wood, that Joyce was captured by two soldiers. They, like Joyce, were out looking for firewood. Joyce stopped to say hello and one of the soldiers asked “You wouldn’t by any chance be William Joyce, would you?”.

To ‘prove’ otherwise, Joyce reached for his false passport and one of the soldiers, thinking he was reaching for a gun, shot him through the buttocks, leaving four wounds. The arrest was utter poetic justice. The soldier who had shot the infamous broadcaster was called Geoffrey Perry, however, he had been born into a German jewish family as Hourst Pinschewer and had only arrived in England to escape from Hitler’s persecutions. So in the end a German Jew, who had become English had arrested an Irish/American who pretended to be English but had become German.

The Woods near the German/Denmark border where Joyce was shot and arrested Margaret Joyce at her arrest in 1945 A well-guarded William Joyce after his arrest in Germany 1945 Back in London, he was charged at Bow Street Magistrates court and in the dock he quietly stated “I have heard the charge and take cognisance of it.” He was subsequently driven to Brixton Prison in a Black Maria and on arrival, he said “So this is Brixton.” “Yes,” retorted his guard, “not Belsen.” The trial of William Joyce began on 17 september 1945 and for a short period of time, when his American nationality came to light, it seemed that he might be acquitted. “How could anyone be convicted of betraying a country that wasn’t his own?” It was argued. However, the Attorney General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, successfully argued that Joyce’s possession of a British passport (even if he had misrepresented himself to get it) entitled him to diplomatic protection in Germany and therefore he owed allegiance to the King at the time he started working for the Germans.

It was on this contrived technicality that Joyce was convicted of treason on 19th September 1945. The penalty of which, of course, was death. Sir Hartley Shawcross, he later said that the trial of William Joyce was not one of which he was especially proud A sizeable minority of the population were uncomfortable with the verdict mainly because of the nationality issue but also because he was alway seen as a bit of a joke-figure rather than someone trying to bring the country down. On Christmas day 1945 an accountant named Edgar Bray wrote to the King: I know nothing about Joyce, and nothing about his Politics. I don’t know much about Law either, but I do know enough to be firmly convinced that we are proposing to hang Joyce for the crime of pretending to be an Englishman which crime, so far as I am aware, in no possible case carries a Capital penalty. It happens to be just our bad luck, that Joyce actually WAS an American, (and now IS a German subject), but that is no reason to hang him, because we are annoyed at our bad luck.

The historian AJP Taylor made the point that Joyce was essentially hanged for making a false statement on a passport – the usual penalty for which was a paltry fine of just two pounds. Interior of Wandsworth Prison Real History and the WW2 Traitors The International Campaign for Real History Posted Saturday, April 24, 2004 Index to the Traditional Enemies of Free Speech Alphabetical index (text) [images added by this website] London, Saturday, April 24, 2004 By Michael Evans AN EXTRAORDINARY series of letters from William "Lord Haw-Haw" Joyce have (sic) revealed that the wartime traitor remained unrepentant as he awaited execution. David Irving comments: I AM not sure how undiscovered these letters are. I remember reading a Sunday Express series about thirty years ago in which letters of William Joyce were reproduced. They showed great strength of character, and fearlessness in the face of his adversaries. To his mother on the day of his execution he wrote, I recall: "I am not afraid of death. My death will cause less pain to me than my birth caused to you." And more in the same vein. BBC Monitoring Reports regularly transcribed Joyce's radio broadcasts from Berlin.

On the occasion of the 1945 British air raid on Dresden he broadcast that while the British were gloating that there would not be much china left undestroyed in the city that morning, they failed to realize that what was at stake was more than just the future of a few pieces of porcelain. His style went down well with the British working classes, and at one time he had a listening audience of millions in England. His fellow traitor in Berlin was John Amery, son of Churchill's schoolfriend and Cabinet Minister Leo Amery. On trial for his life at the Old Bailey in 1945, John Amery was asked on the first day, Nov 28, 1945, how he pleaded. He said: "Guilty, Your Honour." Shocked, the judge put on the black cap and sentenced him to death immediately, and he was hanged a few days later. His father was recently outed by Prof William Rubinstein as a secret Jew. Go figure that one.

Curious detail: In 1959, when I was having my scurrilous London University magazine Carnival Times produced, I was given a tour of the London printing work, Haycock Press, situated in London's Bermondsey I think. A printer came up to me, wiping his ink-stained hands on an overall, and thrust out one paw to me. "Great Editorial, David," he said. "Right stuff." He was Mr Joyce, William's brother. Small world. A reader suggests: "If you want to download some programmes of Lord Haw-Haw. go to install it and type in Lord Haw Haw in the search bit." The letters, written by Joyce as he awaited trial and then sentence in 1946 for broadcasting Nazi propaganda during the Second World War, have been discovered in an attic. In the last, dated December 28, 1945, just six days before he was hanged, Joyce made it clear there was no sense of repentance.

He wrote from Wandsworth prison: "The execution will take place at 9 am on Thursday; and you can think of me at that time as entering upon a triumph and of your friend as carrying this friendship to the other Bank (sic)." Joyce, who was dubbed Lord Haw Haw for his broadcasts from Berlin which always began with the words: "Germany calling", made his pro-Hitler, anti-Semitic broadcasts throughout the war, dismissing England's chances of resisting the Nazis. His diary: March 24, 1945 Website note: William Joyce was picked up by troops near the Danish border on May 28, 1945, shot in the arm by a soldier who believed he was trying to resist arrest, and brought back to stand trial under the ancient (1351) Treason Act. On May 31 he told Captain William Scardon of British Intelligence his reasons for going to help Hitler. He had been impressed, he said, by the constructive efforts of National Socialism and he was horrified by the war.

'One of my dominant beliefs was that a war between Britain and Germany would be a tragedy,' he wrote, 'the effects of which Britain and the British Empire would not survive, and I considered that a grossly disproportionate influence was exerted on British policy by the Jews, who had their reasons for hating National Socialist Germany.' He added, 'Whatever opinion may be formed at the present time with regard to my conduct, I submit that the final judgment cannot properly be passed until it is seen whether Britain can win the peace.' At Bow-street magistrates court in June 1945 he claimed to have been born in New York to an Irish-born naturalized American; but he was committed for trial at the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court), found guilty, and hanged. British Files Reveal Secrets of WWII Spies, Traitors - History in the Headlines British Files Reveal Secrets of WWII Spies, Traitors September 18, 2014 By Christopher Klein World War II intelligence files released by Britain's National Archives in September, 2014.

Share this: British Files Reveal Secrets of WWII Spies, Traitors Author British Files Reveal Secrets of WWII Spies, Traitors URL Google For the first time yesterday, Britain’s National Archives made available online more than 3,000 intelligence records connected to World War II. The formerly secret files confirmed the existence of the legendary “Agent Fifi,” a beautiful seductress who tested the discretion of spies-in-training, and shed more light on the notorious British traitor “Lord Haw-Haw,” who delivered his first Nazi propaganda radio broadcast 75 years ago today. On the afternoon of December 7, 1942, a stunning 22-year-old blonde scanned Liverpool’s State Café and spotted her prey. The target matched the brief description given to her—26 years old, black moustache, sallow complexion and large brown eyes. The small moles on the left cheek and the right side of the chin of José Tinchant left no doubt that this was her mark. She approached the British spy-in-training and asked, “Are you by any chance Mr. Tas?” The surprised Tinchant, who was awaiting a tall man with blue eyes, was briefly speechless before muttering in the affirmative. “Oh!

I have been asked to help you,” the elegantly dressed woman said as she took a seat at his table and introduced herself as French freelance journalist Christine Collard. She explained that she was writing about war transport and had been instructed to meet him and be as useful as possible. The pair spent the day together—sipping coffee in cafes, watching a movie at a local cinema and enjoying a late dinner. Under orders not to disclose information to anyone without a password, the fledgling spy let his guard down around the attractive young woman and revealed nearly every detail about his family, his training exercise and his impending sabotage mission to his native Belgium. “By the evening I had learnt practically all there was to know about him,” Collard reported to her superiors, which was bad news for Tinchant because the young woman was not a scribe at all but a secret agent with the codename “Fifi” dispatched by Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), the covert World War II espionage agency created by Winston Churchill, to test whether spies-in-training would “spill the beans” and compromise their secret missions. Once Agent Fifi delivered her report, Tinchant’s espionage career was over before it even began.

WWII British propaganda poster For decades rumors had circulated about a seductive female agent provocateur employed by the British during World War II, and a once-secret file with more than 200 pages of handwritten correspondence and intelligence reports released online by Britain’s National Archives for the first time yesterday not only confirmed her existence but revealed her true identity—Marie Christine Chilver. “‘Fifi’ was something of a legend of the Special Operations Executive,” said National Archives researcher Jonathan Cole. “Until now, her existence and the deployment of her services had been dismissed but with the release of this file, her identity, impressive skills and the important role she played in Second World War secret operations is now finally revealed.” Chilver was born in London in 1920 to an English journalist father and a Latvian mother. She was raised in Riga, Latvia, and attended a German school before traveling to Paris in 1940 to study French at the Sorbonne. After the Germans seized Paris, she was sent to an internment camp in Besancon before escaping with British prisoners of war.

She reached England in October 1941 along with a wounded British flight lieutenant who called her “one of the most expert liars in the world” and suspected she was a German spy because she looked too hale and hearty to have been a prisoner. British intelligence officials not only cleared her of suspicion after close questioning but thought her “quite unusual gifts of intelligence, courage and assessment of character” and her fluency in German could be potential assets. With no money and no job, Chilver agreed in the fall of 1942 to encounter trainees from the SOE’s “finishing school” on their 96-hour undercover exercises around Britain and test whether they could keep their secrets. Chilver’s true identity was known to only a handful of intelligence officials, and her meticulous and nuanced reports could make or break the futures of trainees such as Tinchant. Agent Fifi tested female trainees as well as men, and nothing in the files indicates that her encounters with the targets ever went beyond conversation, although in one report she mentions that a trainee invited her back to his hotel, only to ask her to hem his silk scarves.

Agent Fifi’s superiors found her “very intelligent, quick and well-informed” with a “considerable imagination.” However, they repeatedly refused her requests for raises, and her dream of becoming an agent in France remained unfulfilled. After the war ended, she left the intelligence service and lived in England. Using compensation from the Soviet Union for property seized from her family in Latvia, she set up an animal shelter in Riga in 2001 before her death in 2007. William Joyce, aka "Lord Haw-Haw," under arrest in 1945. The records released by the National Archives not only revealed the unknown Agent Fifi but included scores of articles, letters and manifestoes written by perhaps Britain’s most notorious World War II traitor—William Joyce. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Ireland, Joyce became a fascist leader in the 1920s after moving to England. Just days before Nazi tanks roared into Poland in 1939, Joyce fled to Germany after learning of British plans for his internment. The Nazis employed him to write scripts and deliver English-language propaganda radio broadcasts with inflated casualty reports and misinformation designed to demoralize the British people and English-speaking troops.

Joyce’s voice first crackled through the airwaves on September 18, 1939, and soon millions of British radios tuned in to his broadcasts that opened with the announcement “Germany calling! Germany calling!” The smug attitude and clipped, upper-crust English accent feigned by Joyce earned him the derisive nickname “Lord Haw-Haw” from the British public, but his broadcasts were no laughing matter to the British military. “Though the British public’s first reaction was one of amusement,” said a December 1939 War Office memorandum, Joyce’s broadcasts were “becoming a definite factor affecting public morale in this country.” Joyce broadcasted his missives until the end of the war. His distinctive voice ultimately proved his downfall when British soldiers recognized it and arrested him. Although an American citizen and a naturalized German, Joyce was tried, convicted and executed for high treason based on his British passport.

Also among the 3,300 Security Service records released by the National Archives are files on Cecil Day Lewis, the father of actor Daniel Day Lewis and United Kingdom poet laureate who joined the Communist Party in the 1930s; Ralph Baden Davenport Powell, a Nazi propaganda broadcaster and relative of Boy Scouts founder Lord Baden-Powell; British Union of Fascists founder Sir Oswald Mosley and Nazi leader Rudolph Hess. Tags The last Broadcast of Lord Haw Haw, 1945 Final days of the Third Reich Choosing suicide over surrender Leipzig April 19, 1945 Lord Haw-Haw was the name British listeners gave to William Joyce, a German radio propaganda broadcaster during World War II. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1906, Joyce moved with his English mother and Irish-American father to England in 1921. He joined the Nazi movement in England in the mid-'30s and fled to Germany just before war broke in 1939. He immediately became a broadcaster for Joseph Goebbel's Propaganda Ministry. His radio program reached England weekly from 1939 to 1945.

On the night of April 30, 1945, a drunken Joyce made his last broadcast from Hamburg as British troops entered the city. With his adopted world crashing down around him, but still committed to the Nazi cause, Joyce rambled on through his farewell speech. In Berlin, Hitler was simultaneously saying good-bye to his entourage in anticipation of ending his life a few hours later. Captured by the British, Joyce stood trial for treason. The court denied his claim of American citizenship because he held a British passport. He was found guilty and hanged on January 3, 1946. William Joyce-AKA Lord Haw Haw | History of Sorts William Joyce-AKA Lord Haw Haw Posted on by dirkdeklein under History , Nazi Propganda , Nazi supporters , World War 2 Regardless what you think of the Nazi’s, one thing can’t be denied. They had an extremely effective and well oiled propaganda machine. Not only German Nazi members and citizens were involved it had also foreign Nazi sympathizers working for them and none so infamous and notorious as William Joyce AKA Lord Haw Haw.

William Joyce was born on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn, New York, to an Anglican mother and an Irish Catholic father, Michael, who had taken United States citizenship on 25 October 1894. A few years after his birth, the family returned to Galway, Ireland. Joyce attended the Jesuit St Ignatius College in Galway (1915–21). It was here that during a fist fight with another boy that Joyce had his nose broken. He kept quiet about the injury and his nose never properly set – giving him the nasal broken drawl so familiar in his later broadcasts from Germany Unusually for Irish Roman Catholics, both Joyce and his father were strongly Unionist. Joyce later claimed he had aided the Black and Tans during the Irish War for Independence and had become a target of the Irish Republican Army. The Joyce family were in Ireland at the time of the Sinn Fein insurrections and because they were Conservative and pro-Union they were very unpopular with the rebels. Joyce’s early life was marked by violence, including an attack on his father’s business and attacks on the family home by Sinn Feiners.

When the British Prime Minister Lloyd George announced the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the creation of the Irish State the Joyce family left for England. Joyce was then 15 years old. Far from being the puny figure described by the press during World War II, William Joyce was of average height and strongly built. During his youth he excelled at boxing, swimming and fencing. This was to hold him in good stead later when he was involved in many street battles. On 22 October 1924, while stewarding a meeting in support of Jack Lazarus (the Conservative Party candidate for Lambeth North in the general election), Joyce was attacked by Communists 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 Jews. 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: “Thin, pale, intense, he had not been speaking many minutes before we were electrified by this man … so terrifying in its dynamic force, so vituperative, so vitriolic” William Joyce gained the reputation of a savage fighter and was always the first to dive into a fracas with knuckle-duster at the ready. † The image of “Jewish Communists” who scarred his face was always in the back of his mind and he wanted revenge. Standing on his soapbox in Blackshirt battledress – a buttoned black suit with a high-necked pullover – his left hand in his pocket and his right clutching the microphone – he fed on the tension and heckling like a drug. The June 1934 Olympia conference which turned into a bloody fight and the violent rhetoric of Joyce destroyed the image of respectability that Mosley and the BUF were striving for. But this did not prevent Joyce from being appointed Deputy Leader of the BUF. 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 Olympia, 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. One particular concern for Joyce was the Government of 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 should Mosley 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 Mosley and Joyce were completely different in character. Mosley was relaxed, humorous and charming whereas Joyce was impatient, intense and bad-tempered.

Joyce’s departure from the BUF in April 1937 came as a result of Joyce being dismissed from the salaried staff of the BUF. Bad election results, falling support and lack of money led to a BUF staff reduction of 143 to approximately 30. This and Joyce’s personal differences with Mosley led Joyce to form the British National Socialist League. Despite Joyce having been Deputy Leader of the BUF between 1933 and 1937 and a brave fighter and powerful orator, Mosley snubbed him in his autobiography and denounced him as a traitor because of his wartime activities. On 26 August 1939, approximately a week before the outbreak of war, Joyce and his family fled to Berlin after a tip-off that, under the soon to be introduced emergency powers, he would be interned for the duration of the war. It was an act that would lead eventually to his death and denouncement by many, including Mosley, as a traitor. Rightly or wrongly Joyce was adamant that Britain was being led into another pointless war and Neville Chamberlain’s, and subsequently Winston Churchill’s, governments were betraying their people.

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 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 in 1939 by the pseudonymous Daily Express radio critic Jonah Barrington,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 (because of 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 he would occasionally be announced as “William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw-Haw”.Urban legends 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 it was illegal to listen to his broadcasts in Britain they became very popular with British listeners. They always began with the words “Germany calling Germany calling,” which because of Joyce’s broken nose sounded like: “Jarmany calling, Jarmany calling.” During his heyday Joyce had almost as many listeners as the BBC – and he caused alarm with his tales of a Fifth Column in Britain and his talks on how to treat bombing wounds. He caused panic with his apparently accurate descriptions of Town Hall clocks that had stopped and how many steps there were in a particular church steeple.

After the Battle of Britain and the invasion of Russia, Joyce’s broadcasts lost more and more listeners in Britain – but he still remained the number one broadcaster in Berlin and his anti-semitism never faded in its virulence – continuing to blame the war on “Jewish International Finance.” For his efforts Joyce continued to live a comfortable life in Berlin and in September 1944 was awarded the Cross of War Merit 1st Class with a certificate signed by Adolf Hitler. As the war worsened he began to drink heavily and his marriage became a joke with both his wife and he having numerous affairs. During the final stages of the war, with the Red Army approaching Berlin, Joyce moved to Hamburg. He made a final broadcast on 30 April 1945 – warning that the war would leave Britain poor and barren now that she had lost all her wealth and power in 6 years of war, leaving the Russians in control of most of Europe. He signed off with a final defiant “Heil Hitler.” Joyce was captured while going through a wood near Flensburg after the war; he received a bullet wound to the leg in the process.

Joyce’s fate at the gallows was then merely a formality and the British press whipped up all the hysteria they could – reminding people that he was a snarling traitor. The British Government passed the Treason Act 1945 the day before Joyce was flown back to Britain. Although Joyce was born in the USA, brought up in Ireland and took German nationality on 26 September 1939, he was charged with treason from 3 September 1939 to 2 July 1940, the date his British passport ran out, and sentenced to death. Joyce was confined in a death cell at London’s Wandsworth Prison. In the cell next door was John Amery, the son of a British lord and the man who had tried to form British expatriates and sympathetic British POW’s into a Freicorp to fight on the German side. Joyce was executed five days after Amery on 3 January 1946. He was adamant and defiant to the end. He showed no emotion when confronted by news and scenes from the concentration camps, blaming the deaths on starvation and disease caused by Allied bombing of communication lines.

He also scratched a swastika on the wall of his cell whilst awaiting sentence. His last public message reported by the BBC was “In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war, and I defy the powers of darkness they represent.” He was not yet 40 years old when executed. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the grounds of the prison. William Joyce Home - Spying - World War Two - Treason - William Joyce Introduction The case of William Joyce must be one of the most famous treason trials in British legal history. Due to the legal issues involved, the case went to the House of Lords (the highest English court). Joyce did not deny that he committed the acts alleged, he denied that he had a duty of allegiance and so could not be guilty of treason. Early Life William Joyce was born on 24 April 1906 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of Michael and Gertrude Emily Joyce. Michael Joyce, originally came from Ireland, and became a naturalised American citizen on 25 October 1894. Three years after William's birth, the Joyce family returned to Ireland. They moved around several Irish counties during the First World War years.

For immigration and registration reasons, Michael Joyce obtained a copy of his son's birth certificate which was issued in New York on 2 November 1917. In 1922 the Joyce family moved to England. Following William passing his London Matriculation examination in 1922, he applied for enrolment in the University of London Officer's Training Corps (OTC). This application was accompanied by a letter from Michael Joyce stating that "We are all British, not American citizens". In 1922 William Joyce started studying Science at Battersea Polytechnic. A year later, Joyce left his science course and stared on a English Language, Literature with history course at Birbeck college. He graduated in 1927. Following his coming-of-age, William Joyce married Hazel Kathleen Barr at Chelsea Register Office on 30 April 1927. The Thirties The period 1933-37 was a hectic time in Joyce's life. During this time, Joyce studied a one year post-graduate course in Philology, and during 1931-3 a psychology course at King's College London.

Also during this time period he was a member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascist's (BUF) movement. This movement had several clashes with the police. This resulted in Oswald Mosley, William Joyce and two others being tried, and acquitted, before Mr. Justice Branson of taking part in a riotous assembly at Worthing. On 4 July 1934, William Joyce applied and obtained his British Passport. Following the dissolving of his first marriage in 1936, William Joyce married Margaret Cairns White at Kensington Register Office (London) on 13 February 1937; the marriage witnesses being Mrs. Hastings Bonora and John A. Macnab. After becoming disgruntled with Mosley's B.U.F organisation in 1937, Joyce founded his National Socialist League and Margaret Joyce became the League's Assistant Treasurer. In 1938, he extended his British Passport by one year. On 17 November 1938, charges of assault against William Joyce were dismissed by Mr. Paul Bennett at West London Police Court.

William Joyce was again in court on 22 May 1939, when charges against him under the Public Order Act were dismissed by Mr. Marshall at Westminster Police Court. Joyce in Germany In July 1939 William Joyce sent a letter to a suspected German agent in the UK. He revealed in the letter that he was planning to travel to Germany. At this time, MI5 had produced a report that recommended that when war with Germany was declared, William Joyce should be detained. In August 1939, just before the outbreak of war, Joyce renewed his British Passport for another year and dissolved his National Socialist League. On 1 September 1939, two days before war was declared, Special Branch detectives went to arrest Joyce at his Earl's Court home. However, they found that William Joyce and his wife had left for Germany on 26 August. Joyce's sister claimed that a MI5 agent had tipped off Joyce that he was about to be arrested. During Late 1939 and early 1940, while his British Passport was still valid, William Joyce made several radio broadcasts in English. Because William Joyce held a British Passport he had a duty of allegiance to the British crown.

By broadcasting for the Germans, Joyce broke that allegiance and consequently committed high treason (See my article on the treason and treachery acts for a greater explanation of treason). Shortly after his passport expired, Joyce fell out of favour with the Germans. He continued to make radio broadcasts to the U.K. Joyce's nickname of "Lord Haw Haw" was given him by a correspondent in a Daily Express article: "A gent I'd like to meet is moaning periodically from Zeesen [the site in Germany of the English transmitter]. He speaks English of the haw-haw, damit-get-out-of-my-way variety, and his strong suit is gentlemanly indignation." In was in fact Baillie-Stewart who made the September 1939 radio broadcast which was heard by Jonah Barrington (a pen-name used by a Daily Express correspondent). After hearing this broadcast, Barrington wrote about a gentleman speaking with an English accent of the haw-haw type, get-out-of-my-way type. On 18 September 1939, Barrington wrote for the first time about Lord Haw-Haw.

These comments were aimed at Baillie-Stewart 'the Sandhurst-educated officer and gentleman' (who made the broadcast heard by Barrington) and not the nasal-accented William Joyce. It should be remembered that these broadcasts were made at a time of very heavy German air raids. While people regarded the broadcasts as something of a joke, Joyce was regarded as a traitor who would hopefully get what he deserved. William Joyce made radio broadcasts throughout the war, although during his last broadcast he was heavily drunk. He was arrested by British Troops near Flensburg on the Danish-German border. They came across what appear to be a German civilian, whose voice sounded familiar. It eventually dawned who he was. When they challenged Joyce, he put his hand into a pocket. Thinking that he was going for a pistol, the British troops shot Joyce in the leg. Joyce's Arrest After recovering in Lueneberg Military Hospital, William Joyce arrived as a prisoner in the U.K on 16 June 1945. The day before Joyce's arrival, the Treason Act 1945 had been granted Royal Assent by King George VI. William Joyce was charged with three counts of high treason.

Due to the need for evidence, concerning the important question of Joyce's nationality, from the U.S.A, the crown court case was put back to September. The Trial On 17 September in the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey, before Mr. Justice Tucker and a jury, William Joyce was charged with three counts of High Treason: 1. William Joyce, on the 18 September 1939, and on numerous other days between 18 September 1939 and 29 May 1945 did aid and assist the enemies of the King by broadcasting to the King's subjects propaganda on behalf of the King's enemies. 2. William Joyce, on 26 September 1940, did aid and comfort the King's enemies by purporting to be naturalised as a German citizen. 3. William Joyce, on 18 September 1939 and on numerous other days between 18 September 1939 and 2 July 1940 did aid and assist the enemies of the King by broadcasting to the King's subjects propaganda on behalf of the King's enemies.

The trial lasted three days: 17,18 and 19 September 1945. The main arguments in the case concerned whether the defendant had a duty of allegiance to the King. If there was no duty of allegiance, then Joyce could not be found guilty of treason. William Joyce did not deny carrying out the alleged acts, he just denied that he owed any allegiance to the King. The prosecution accepted that under counts 1 and 2 Joyce did not owe allegiance as he was an American citizen. However, they argued that as he held a British Passport and left the U.K on this passport he had the protection given to passport holders. As protection demands allegiance, Joyce broke this allegiance and committed treason. This point in law was accepted by Mr. Justice Tucker, who ruled that the prosecution's point in law was valid. The judged also directed the jury to find Joyce not guilty of counts 1 and 2. Following the judge's ruling, the jury was left with the question of whether Joyce had made the broadcasts between the dates of 18 September 1939 and 2 July 1940 (the period when Joyce's British Passport was valid).

They decided that Joyce had made the broadcasts, and they found him guilty of count 3. As High Treason carried a mandatory capital sentence, the judge sentenced William Joyce to death by hanging. Court of Appeal On 27 September 1945, Joyce's lawyers gave notice of appeal. Due to high treason having only one possible sentence, they could only appeal the conviction not the sentence itself. His lawyers argued that the trial judge was wrong to accept the prosecution's legal arguments relating to the question of allegiance. They argued that the fact the King was unable to offer protection to Joyce in Germany, that Joyce was an American citizen and that Joyce never intended to ask for protection, meant that as no protection was asked for, no allegiance was owed in return. William Joyce's appeal was heard before the Lord Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Humphreys and Mr. Justice Lynskey, on 30 October 1945. On 1 November 1945, they announced that judgement was reserved. On 7 November 1945, it was announced that the appeal was dismissed. In effect, they supported the prosecution argument relating to the protection offered by the British Passport, and the consequent allegiance demanded.

House of Lords Due to the important questions of law involved in the case, the Attorney-General granted his certificate on 16 November 1945, which allowed the case to be heard before the House of Lords; the highest British court. The appeal before the House of Lords on 10 to 13 December 1945, was heard by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Macmillan, Lord Wright, Lord Porter and Lord Simonds. This appeal was dismissed, with Lord Porter dissenting, on 18 December 1945. They also announced that they would give their reasons at a later date. The Execution At a few minutes past 9am on 3 January 1946, with a sizeable crowd outside the prison, William Joyce was hanged at Wandsworth Prison in London. After the post-mortem and inquest in the afternoon, William Joyce was buried in unconsecrated ground within the prison grounds (as with all executed prisoners). On 18 August 1976, William Joyce's remains were exhumed and returned for burial in Ireland. Margaret Joyce William Joyce's wife, Margaret, was arrested the same day as Joyce and returned to London's Holloway Prison.

It was decided after the war that no further action would be taken against William Joyce's wife Margaret. Although she was born in Manchester, had apparently made no effort to renounce her British Citizenship after arriving with her husband in Germany and made German propaganda radio broadcasts to the UK, no proceedings were taken against her. In documents at the PRO, a MI5 officer admitted that the decision was in effect based on compassionate grounds; namely the trial and execution of her husband. Margaret Joyce died in London during 1972. German War Propaganda: William Joyce, alias Lord Haw-Haw LORD HAW-HAW Alex Softly Julius Streicher, who was executed at Nuremburg in 1946, had given himself the title “Jew-Baiter Number 1.” If there was ever a figure in British politics who deserved the title it was William Joyce, alias Lord Haw-Haw. Dismissed by many historians as a comical, almost pathetic, figure in reality his life was far more complex. Joyce was born in New York of an Irish father and an English mother on 24 April 1906, but when he was only three the family moved to Ireland, settling in County Mayo.

Joyce was educated at a convent school in Galway – the College of St. Ignatius Layola. It was here that during a fist fight with another boy that Joyce had his nose broken. He kept quiet about the injury and his nose never properly set – giving him the nasal broken drawl so familiar in his later broadcasts from Germany. The Joyce family were in Ireland at the time of the Sinn Fein insurrections and because they were Conservative and pro-Union they were very unpopular with the rebels. Joyce’s early life was marked by violence, including an attack on his father’s business and attacks on the family home by Sinn Feiners. When the British Prime Minister Lloyd George announced the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the creation of the Irish State the Joyce family left for England. Joyce was then 15 years old. Far from being the puny figure described by the press during World War II, William Joyce was of average height and strongly built. During his youth he excelled at boxing, swimming and fencing. This was to hold him in good stead later when he was involved in many street battles.

In 1923 at the age of 17, the same year as Hitler’s attempted putsch in Munich and 9 years before Mosley formed the BUF, Joyce joined the ‘British Fascisti Ltd’ – a movement based on its Italian big brother. At a Conservative meeting at Lambeth’s Bath Hall the following year a squad of fascists under the control of William Joyce became involved in a fracas with left-wing agitators. It was here that Joyce received the famous scar that ran down the right side of his face from the lobe of his ear to the corner of his mouth. The scar was received during fighting in the meeting and Joyce had no doubt that the perpetrators were “Jewish Communists.” This incident had a marked bearing on his outlook. He was reminded of his hatred of “the enemy” every time he looked in the mirror until the day he died. Joyce left British Fascisti Ltd in 1925 seeing no way forward through their policies. He joined the Conservative Party, but left after a short period in 1931. He called the old men of the Conservative Party weak, grasping and dishonest men, who were betraying the nation to the agents of International Finance.

When Sir Oswald Mosley launched the British Union of Fascists on 1 October 1932, Joyce was quick to join. He made a name for himself as a dedicated activist and a good speaker very quickly. A. K. Chesterton described Joyce as a “brilliant writer, speaker who addressed hundreds of meetings... always revealing the iron spirit of Fascism.” In 1934 Joyce was promoted to the BUF’s Director of Propoganda. With his savage anti-semitism and shrill voice at meetings Joyce began to alarm some members of the BUF. When asked about Jewish involvement in class war in 1934 Joyce snapped “I don’t regard the Jews as a class I regard them as a privileged misfortune.” It was during this time that the numbers protesting at major BUF meetings increased from a few dozen to a few thousand. Some of the enemies of the BUF came equipped with knuckle-dusters, metal bars and potatoes encrusted with razor blades. William Joyce gained the reputation of a savage fighter and was always the first to dive into a fracas with knuckle-duster at the ready.

† The image of “Jewish Communists” who scarred his face was always in the back of his mind and he wanted revenge. Standing on his soapbox in Blackshirt battledress – a buttoned black suit with a high-necked pullover – his left hand in his pocket and his right clutching the microphone – he fed on the tension and heckling like a drug. The June 1934 Olympia conference which turned into a bloody fight and the violent rhetoric of Joyce destroyed the image of respectability that Mosley and the BUF were striving for. But this did not prevent Joyce from being appointed Deputy Leader of the BUF. Mosley and Joyce were completely different in character. Mosley was relaxed, humorous and charming whereas Joyce was impatient, intense and bad-tempered. Joyce’s departure from the BUF in April 1937 came as a result of Joyce being dismissed from the salaried staff of the BUF. Bad election results, falling support and lack of money led to a BUF staff reduction of 143 to approximately 30. This and Joyce’s personal differences with Mosley led Joyce to form the British National Socialist League.

Despite Joyce having been Deputy Leader of the BUF between 1933 and 1937 and a brave fighter and powerful orator, Mosley snubbed him in his autobiography and denounced him as a traitor because of his wartime activities. When Joyce left the BUF in April 1937 he took approximately 60 members with him; the numbers dwindled quickly to about 20. Although the membership was very small they were loyal and worked extremely hard, and the League survived. It held many street-corner meetings, which resulted in many fights – fights which Joyce never shrunk from. Joyce made no effort to hide his admiration for Adolf Hitler and praised him whenever possible. Joyce had made up his mind long before World War II that it was the result of provocation by Jewry and International Finance. On 26 August 1939, approximately a week before the outbreak of war, Joyce and his family fled to Berlin after a tip-off that, under the soon to be introduced emergency powers, he would be interned for the duration of the war. It was an act that would lead eventually to his death and denouncement by many, including Mosley, as a traitor.

Rightly or wrongly Joyce was adamant that Britain was being led into another pointless war and Neville Chamberlain’s, and subsequently Winston Churchill’s, governments were betraying their people. Friends in Germany put Joyce in contact with Dr. Erich Hetzler – Private Secretary to Germany’s Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop. Two weeks after the outbreak of war he was appointed Editor and speaker for the German transmitters for Europe at Berlin’s Charlottenburg. Joyce was still only 33 years old. His wartime broadcasts to England became infamous – he was nicknamed ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ by a Daily Express journalist because of his aristocratic nasal drawl. Unknown to the public at this time, his image was very different from the scar-faced fascist thug he was usually portrayed as. Although it was illegal to listen to his broadcasts in Britain they became very popular with British listeners. They always began with the words “Germany calling Germany calling,” which because of Joyce’s broken nose sounded like: “Jarmany calling, Jarmany calling.” During his heyday Joyce had almost as many listeners as the BBC – and he caused alarm with his tales of a Fifth Column in Britain and his talks on how to treat bombing wounds.

He caused panic with his apparently accurate descriptions of Town Hall clocks that had stopped and how many steps there were in a particular church steeple. After the Battle of Britain and the invasion of Russia, Joyce’s broadcasts lost more and more listeners in Britain – but he still remained the number one broadcaster in Berlin and his anti-semitism never faded in its virulence – continuing to blame the war on “Jewish International Finance.” For his efforts Joyce continued to live a comfortable life in Berlin and in September 1944 was awarded the Cross of War Merit 1st Class with a certificate signed by Adolf Hitler. As the war worsened he began to drink heavily and his marriage became a joke with both his wife and he having numerous affairs. During the final stages of the war, with the Red Army approaching Berlin, Joyce moved to Hamburg. He made a final broadcast on 30 April 1945 – warning that the war would leave Britain poor and barren now that she had lost all her wealth and power in 6 years of war, leaving the Russians in control of most of Europe.

He signed off with a final defiant “Heil Hitler.” Joyce was captured while going through a wood near Flensburg after the war; he received a bullet wound to the leg in the process. Joyce’s fate at the gallows was then merely a formality and the British press whipped up all the hysteria they could – reminding people that he was a snarling traitor. The British Government passed the Treason Act 1945 the day before Joyce was flown back to Britain. Although Joyce was born in the USA, brought up in Ireland and took German nationality on 26 September 1939, he was charged with treason from 3 September 1939 to 2 July 1940, the date his British passport ran out, and sentenced to death. Joyce was confined in a death cell at London’s Wandsworth Prison. In the cell next door was John Amery, the son of a British lord and the man who had tried to form British expatriates and sympathetic British POW’s into a Freicorp to fight on the German side. Joyce was executed five days after Amery on 3 January 1946. He was adamant and defiant to the end.

He showed no emotion when confronted by news and scenes from the concentration camps, blaming the deaths on starvation and disease caused by Allied bombing of communication lines. He also scratched a swastika on the wall of his cell whilst awaiting sentence. His last public message reported by the BBC was “In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war, and I defy the powers of darkness they represent.” He was not yet 40 years old when executed. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the grounds of the prison. † If this is true then Joyce was acting contrary to Mosley’s orders. It was expressly forbidden for any Blackshirt to carry knuckledusters or other weapons on their person. William Joyce – Lord Haw Haw - Tribe Joyce William Joyce – Lord Haw Haw Jan 3rd, 1946 | By lozster | Category: Uncategorized For other uses, see William Joyce (disambiguation) .

William Joyce Joyce shortly after capture, 1945 Born Brooklyn , New York City, United States Died Broadcasting German propaganda in World War II Political party National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) 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 controversially hanged for treason by the British as a result of his wartime activities, being taken to owe allegiance to the UK by his possession of a British passport, a document to which, ironically, he was not entitled. Contents [ edit ]Early life Joyce was born on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn, New York , [2] to a Protestant 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 . [3] [4] 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 Royal Worcester Regiment in 1921 but was discharged when it was discovered that he had lied about his age. [5] He then applied to Birkbeck College of the University of London and to enter the Officer Training Corps . At Birkbeck, he worked hard and obtained a First Class degree. [6] He also developed an interest in fascism, and he worked with (but never joined) the British Fascisti 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. Joyce was convinced that his attackers were “Jewish communists”. It was an incident that had a marked bearing on his outlook. [ edit ]British Union of Fascists Flag of the 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: Thin, pale, intense, he had not been speaking many minutes before we were electrified by this man … so terrifying in its dynamic force, so vituperative, so vitriolic. [7] 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. [8] [9] 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”. [10] 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.

[10] 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. Main article: 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 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“). [11] Eckersley was the former wife or second wife [11] 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, to whom the name Lord Haw-Haw had originally been given. After the war Wolf Mittler became a prominent radio and TV journalist with the southern German Bayerischer Rundfunk. The name “ Lord Haw-Haw of Zeesen ” was coined by the pseudonymous Daily Express radio critic Jonah Barrington in 1939, [12] 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.

[13] 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”. [14] Urban legends soon circulated about Lord Haw-Haw, alleging that the broadcaster was well-informed about political and military events, to the point of near- omniscience . [15] Although listening to his broadcasts was officially discouraged (but not illegal), many Britons did indeed tune in to them. At the height of his influence, in 1940, Joyce had an estimated 6 million regular and 18 million occasional listeners in the United Kingdom. [16] The German broadcasts always began with the announcer’s words “Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany calling” (because of a nasal drawl this sounded like “Jairmany 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 restricted and at the start of the war it was possible for German broadcasts to be more informative than those of the BBC . This was a situation which was reversed towards the middle of the war, with German civilians tuning (usually secretly) to the BBC.[ citation needed ] Joyce recorded his final broadcast on 30 April 1945, during the Battle of Berlin . [17] Rambling and audibly drunk, [18] 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”. [19] There are conflicting accounts as to whether this last programme was actually transmitted, despite a tape being found in the Apen studios. [20] 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. [21] 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 bookTwilight 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. Scripts and the microphone used by Joyce were seized by soldier Cyril Millwood and have now come to light following the ex-soldier’s death. [22] [ edit ]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. [23] 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 : William Joyce, on the 18th of September, 1939, and on other days between that day and the 29th of May, 1945, being a person owing allegiance to our Lord the King, and while a war was being carried on by the German Realm against our King, did traitorously adhere to the King’s enemies in Germany, by broadcasting propaganda. William Joyce, on the 26th of September, 1940, being a person who owed allegiance as in the other count, adhered to the King’s enemies by purporting to become naturalized as a subject of Germany. William Joyce, on 18 September 1939, and on other days between that day and the 2 July 1940, being a person owing allegiance to our Lord the King, and while a war was being carried on by the German Realm against our King, did traitorously adhere to the King’s enemies in Germany, by broadcasting propaganda.

[24] 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.

[ edit ]Appeal His conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal on 1 November, and by the House of Lords (on a 4–1 vote) on 13 December. 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.

[25] [ edit ]Execution He went to his death unrepentant and defiant: In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war, and I defy the power of darkness which they represent. I warn the British people against the crushing imperialism of the Soviet Union. May Britain be great once again and in the hour of the greatest danger in the West may the standard be raised from the dust, crowned with the words – “You have conquered nevertheless”. I am proud to die for my ideals and I am sorry for the sons of Britain who have died without knowing why. 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 .[ citation needed ] In both cases the hangman was Albert Pierrepoint . Joyce chose to die in his mother’s faith, the Anglician faith. [26] 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.

[27] 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. [28] [ edit ]Joyce’s 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. [29] [ edit ]Further reading Haw-Haw: the tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce by Nigel Farndale (Macmillan, London, 2005) The Trial of William Joyce ed. by C.E. Bechhofer Roberts [Old Bailey Trials series] (Jarrolds, London, 1946) The Trial of William Joyce ed. by J.W.

Hall [Notable British Trials series] (William Hodge and Company, London, 1946) The Meaning of Treason by Dame Rebecca West (Macmillan, London, 1949) Lord Haw-Haw and William Joyce by William Cole (Faber and Faber, London, 1964) Hitler’s Englishman by Francis Selwyn (Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, London, 1987) Renegades: Hitler’s Englishmen by Adrian Weale (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1994) Germany Calling — a personal biography of William Joyce by Mary Kenny (New Island Books, Dublin, 2003) [ edit ]External links Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William Joyce

Question: What was the real name of the WW 2 traitor Lord Haw Haw?
Answer: William Joyce