If “Lord Haw-Haw” (William Joyce), “Axis Sally” (Mildred Gillars) and the most significant of the “Tokyo Roses” (Iva Toguri) were the major leaguers of Axis radio propaganda promulgators in WW2, then there was certainly a minor league of active players as well. Most of these other wartime on-air advocates of Fascism and Nazism didn’t come close to achieving the profile of the “Big Three”…names like Paul Ferdonnet, Philippe Henriot(𝓪), John Amery, Frederick Wilhelm Kaltenbach, Edward Delaney, Douglas Chandler, Robert H Best, Donald S Day and Jane Anderson and are not exactly household names of the “Fourth Front” in wartime (although Ezra Pound certainly was) [‘Voices of the Axis: The Radio Personalities of the Fascist Propaganda’, Chuck Lyons, Warfare History Network, www.warfarehistorynetwork.com].
⍓ Goebbels & Hitler with the “People’s Receiver” (Source: badischezeitung.de)Home-grown Gallic Nazi mouthpieces
Vichy France had plenty of collaborators with the Nazi occupying forces of course, two who had roles in the propaganda airwaves war on France’s own citizenry and troops were Paul Ferdonnet and Philippe Henriot. Ferdonnet, a right wing anti-Semite, moved to Germany before the war to work for Radio Stuttgart as their French language broadcaster. Labelled le traître de Stuttgart by the French press, Ferdonnet focussed on undermining French faith in the alliance with Britain – a recurring refrain directed towards his French audience was “Britain would fight to the last Frenchman” or its variant, “Britain provides the machines and France provides the bodies” [Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944, (2003)]. Apprehended after the fall of the Nazis, he was executed for treason in 1945.
⍓ Henriot in full flight (Photo: Keystone/France/Gamma vis Getty Images) The “French Goebbels”
Philippe Henriot eagerly aligned himself with the collaborationist Vichy regime, rising to become the Vichy minister of information and propaganda in early 1944, waging a verbal and psychological war against the Free French. His 270 broadcasts on Radio Vichy played on the fears, anxieties and prejudices of the French people, like Ferdonnet urging them to break off their association with Britain. Henriot’s airwaves appeal was his “mesmerising rhetoric and delivery” which made him compulsory listening for many French men and women [‘Philippe Henriot and the Last Act of Vichy: Radio Broadcasts, January – June 1944’, (K Chadwick), University of Liverpool, www.gtr.ukri.org]. Assassinated by the French Resistance in 1944.
A son of the British establishment
John Amery, son of a British Conservative cabinet minister, is best known for proposing to Hitler the formation of an anti-Bolshevik league, British Free Corps, to fight against communism. Avery made propaganda appeals via radio from Berlin to try to recruit British and Dominion members to the force (he also targeted British POWs). Avery moved later to Italy to resume his stint at the Axis microphone spruiking Mussolini’s “last chance saloon” Republic of Sàlo. Captured in 1944 and transported to London, he was tried for high treason, convicted and hanged in 1945.
Tasked with keping America in isolation
It’s interesting that quite a significant proportion of the foreign recruits voicing pro-Nazi propaganda at the mic on German radio were American(𝓫). As early as 1939 Hitler’s regime was actively recruiting expat Yank performers for short wave transmissions to America with the objective of persuading Americans to stay out of the world war, in synch with the mission of the “America First” movement on the home front. For a few of the expatriate American mouthpieces for Nazism like Donald S Day it was a highly lucrative vocation. Day was making $3,000 a month(𝓬) railing against Jews, Bolsheviks and the allegedly “Jew- loving” FDR(𝓭).
It was a standard feature for the expat broadcasters to use (or to be assigned) nicknames. Robert H Best always signed on as “Mr Guess Who”; Jane Anderson was the “Georgia Peach”; Douglas Chandler styled himself as a pro-Nazi “Paul Revere” with galloping horse-hoof sound effects (‘The Nazi Who Infiltrated National Geographic’, Nina Strochlin, National Geographic, 28-Apr-2017, www.nationalgeographic.com). Fred Kaltenbach’s homespun style of commentary and similarity to William Joyce’s creation earned him the derisive nickname of “Lord Hee-Haw” (‘6 World War II Propaganda Broadcasters’, Evan Andrews, History, Upd. 29-Aug-2018, www.history.com).
⍓ Jane Anderson (Source: guerracivildia.blogspot.com)After the war eleven of the expat Americans were prosecuted for treason, the great majority of them were not as lucky as Jane Anderson. Anderson who had ‘upgraded’ herself from being a Falangist mouthpiece for Franco during the Spanish Civil War to broadcasting for the Nazis’ RRG (Reich Broadcasting Corporation) was indicted in absentia for treason, however charges against the Nazi sympathiser were dropped for lack of evidence (the prevailing view seems to be that she was “not a very effective political commentator”) …the case against her further complicated by her being a Spanish citizen by marriage [‘The Propaganda Front’, William L. Shirer, The Washington Post, 14-Feb-1943, www.justice.com].
⍓ Ezra pounding out his Axis radio scripts (Photo: Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
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Pound’s propaganda pieces
By far the most famous of the pro-Axis broadcasters was yet another expat American, the influential poet Ezra Pound. Pound’s disavowal of democracy and egalitarianism took him to Fascist Italy where his hero-worshipping of il Duce and the inducement of Italian Lire resulted in Pound becoming a broadcaster of anti-Allied, pro-Axis propaganda—first from Rome Radio for the Mussolini regime and later from Milan for the Nazi puppet state Republic of Sàlo—churned out in short wave transmissions to Britain and the US. (‘Empty Air: Ezra Pound’s World War Two Radio Broadcasts’, Gibran Van Ert, Past Imperfect, Vol. 3, 1994, pp.47-72, www.journals.libraryualberta.ca). Arraigned for treason after the war, Pound’s comeuppance for his sins was of a whole different kind to the other apprehended foreign broadcasters. Courtesy of his lawyers’ successful insanity plea, the Cantos poet/cum/propagandist avoided prison or worse and was instead committed to a Washington DC psychiatric hospital where he was incarcerated for 12 years, unrepentant and still sprouting extremist and anti-Semitic opinions (‘Ezra Pound: Modernist Politics and Fascist Propaganda’, Matthew Feldman, Fair Observer, 02-Nov-2013, www.fairobserver.com).
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(𝓪) in Henriot’s case however, if only within occupied France, his profile was “movie star” huge
(𝓫) even the notorious Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce), more associated with Britain and Ireland, was American born
(𝓬) placing him the top half-dozen salary earners on RRG’s payroll (‘Donald Day Got $3000 a Month as Nazis Stooge’, Montréal Gazette, 9-July-1945).
(𝓭) the Pro-Nazi radio broadcasters rarely ever deviated from the popular pet topics of their vitriol which were usually interlinked – Jews (associated with international finance), communism (sometimes combined with Jews, ie, “Judeo-Bolshevism”), the “Jew-loving” American President Roosevelt, PM Churchill and ”his bondage to the plutocrats”, etc.
𝓮.𝓯𝓰n𝓱𝓲
