A novel feature of Axis and particularly German propaganda during World War II was the broadcasting of radio messages to the enemy, heaping scorn and invective on the Allies’ war efforts via the airwaves. The most famous/notorious of these broadcasters acquired the nickname of Lord Haw-Haw¤. There were in fact several “Lord Haw-Haws” broadcasting from Nazi Germany during the war, including Munich Anglophone journalist Wolf Mittler and a British spy for Germany, Norman Baillie-Stewart. But the person who came to personify Lord Haw-Haw for the British and American publics was William Joyce.
A pathological anti-Semite and fascism fan boy from his teens, Joyce was drawn to Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the early 1930s, becoming the party’s director of propaganda and even rising eventually to deputy to leader Mosley. By 1937 Joyce’s violent rhetoric and frequent recourse to brawling with political foes led to a fallout with Mosley and Joyce’s ejection from BUF§.
‘Jairmany’ calling
Joyce tipped off that the British authorities were going to intern him defected to Hitler’s Germany a week before war broke out in 1939, finding work as a broadcaster for Reichsrundfunk (German Radio Corporation). Joyce would began his Radio Hamburg diatribes to the UK and the US with the words “Germany calling”, which in his strange, affected upper-class, nasal drawl sounded like “Jairmany calling”. “Haw-Haw” would bang on about how hopeless Britain’s cause was in the face of the unstoppable German Reich juggernaut, criticising the UK over the calibre of its politicians and soldiers, it’s rationing policy, inciting the Scots to rise up against their English overlords etc, saying anything he thought that might demoralise the Allied troops and their countries’ citizenry.
Radio ratings king
Remarkably, considering his unrelenting message of doom and gloom and the awareness of Britons (soldiers and civilian) of the blatant propaganda of his unbridled rants, Joyce as Haw-Haw early in the war was pulling in an estimated six and nine million listeners a week (some weeks he scored over 50% of the UK radio audience).
Why were his broadcasts so popular? One reason was their pure entertainment value, in the difficult days of world war many Brits found his fantastic claims a diversion and a fillip, not to mention wildly funny. Listening to the ‘weirdo’ expat British Nazi mouthpiece was the done thing in UK homes. Being widely ridiculed didn’t stop Joyce from acquiring a kind of cult status among Allied audiences. The high level of war censorship imposed in home countries (eg, the BBC’s freedom was strictly curtailed) was another drawcard for many Brits and Yanks, regularly tuning in from home. Their reasoning was that, notwithstanding the propaganda, they might pick up some clues on the circumstance or whereabouts of family members engaged in the combat (‘The Rise and Fall of Lord Haw Haw During the Second World War’, Imperial War Museums,www.iwm.org.uk).
Long before the war began to turn pear-shaped for the Nazis Joyce’s popularity with enemy audiences ebbed. Nonetheless he continued peddling his defeatism theme in his broadcasts—imploring Britons to surrender—right up to the bitter end of the Third Reich. Joyce escaped after Hitler’s death and was captured in hiding in Flensburgϖ, near the Danish border.
Stitched up, a quasi-show trial?: Treason for a reason
Transported back to London, Joyce was quickly put on trial for high treason, charged with having “given comfort and aid to the King’s enemies in wartime”. The problem about treason in this case was one of nationality. Joyce, born in the US and brought up in Ireland, had obtained a British passport by deception. As he was never a subject of Britain, therefore it was thought that he could not be expected to give allegiance to the king. However, the prosecution aided by a partisan judge successfully argued that as Joyce held a British passport in 1939-40 (prior to his becoming a naturalised German citizen) he did in fact (briefly) owe allegiance to the British crown. As historian AJP Taylor remarked of the episode: “technically, Joyce was hanged for making a false statement when applying for a passport, the usual penalty for which is a £2 fine” (‘When Speech Became Treason’, Mary Kenny, Index on Censorship, 1 2006, www.journals.sagepub.com).
Queue outside Old Bailey trial of Joyce (Source: thejc.com)There was quite a lot of unease both within the British legal fraternity and in the public—notwithstanding the perceived abhorrence of his vile words and opinions—about the death penalty for Joyce, a sense that any conviction should have been for unlawful actions he may have committed, not for what he said. That Joyce’s sentence was commensurate with major war criminals who committed massacres in concentration camps, some Britons asserted, was a travesty (‘William Joyce’s Lord Haw-Haw Crime Files’, Crime + Investigation, www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk; ‘When Speech Became Treason’).
Settling scores with the English voice of Nazi Germany
Was there an element of payback in Joyce’s draconian fate? A lot of Britons in their homes might not have taken Haw-Haw seriously but the authorities did, he caused the government a lot of grief…he mocked Britain and it’s leadership, he taunted it with his announcements of where Germany bombs would hit Britain next and (bogus but hurtful) reports of Allied loses. And as Mary Kenny notes, London “came within an ace of jamming the broadcasts and banning them” (‘When Speech Became Treason’). Quite simply, Joyce had been the wartime voice of Nazi Germany and the establishment was prepared to do whatever was necessary including resuscitating an archaic law, the 1351 Treason Act, to secure his execution.
Postscript: Lady Haw-Haw
Joyce’s wife Margaret who accompanied him to Germany played her own supporting role in the wartime baiting of the Allies (she had her own propaganda radio air time spot). Ultimately though “Lady Haw-Haw” managed to avoid William’s fate at the gallows. No charges against Margaret Joyce were ever proceeded with. Nigel Farndale suggests that rather than an act of leniency, Margaret’s avoidance of punishment may have been due to a deal her husband did with the authorities not to reveal his MI5 links.
Ξ See elsewhere on this site for follow-up blogs on WWII female counterparts of Lord Haw-Haw – Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally.
________________
¤ Britons tended to imagine “Lord Haw-Haw” as some kind of toffee-nosed aristocratic type
§ Joyce was linked to a host of other extreme right organisations in Britain like the Nordic League and White Knights of Britain and ultimately started his own local Nazi-wannabe party, National Socialist League
ϖ Flensburg was the last capital of the Nazi empire