World War 2’s Little League of the “Fourth Front”: Minor Propaganda Mouthpieces for the Axis Powers

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
International Relations, Media & Communications, Regional History

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)
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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)
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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).

⍓ Douglas Chandler

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

 

Hanging Out at Shakespeare and Company: Modernist Literary Salon and Sanctuary for Aspiring Writers Rolled into one Parisian Bookshop

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Old technology, Society & Culture

(Image: Aprendiz de Viajante)

Beach on the Seine
A must-visit in Paris for the literary and artistic set or even the mildly book-curious is the iconic “Shakespeare and Company” bookstore situated near the Latin Quarter and across from Notre Dame. It’s address is 37 rue de la Bûcherie 75005, V, but it wasn’t always there. Shakespeare & Co founder, American expat Sylvia Beach, started the legendary Left Bank bookshop at 8 rue Dupuytren in 1919. Within three years Beach moved the shop to the 6th Arrondissement at 12 rue de l’Odéan, across the street from La Masion des Amis des Livres owned by Beach’s future ‘bestie’ and amour Adrienne Monnier. This bookshop was the template Beach used for her own serious literature bookshop-cum-lending library.

𐅉 Ulysses – Joyce and Beach at Shakespeare & Co

Beach’s lifeline for Joyce’s untouchable manuscript
Beach is probably best remembered for giving James Joyce his big breakthrough in the literary world, publishing Ulysses in
1922 when nobody else would touch it…the abstruse, controversial novel went on to become a masterpiece of modern literature. Over time Shakespeare and Company acquired a more lasting fame as the hub of Anglo-American literary culture and modernism in Paris. Aspiring British, Irish and American writers, prompted by a post-WWI favourable pound and dollar exchange rate against the French franc, flocked to the creative milieu of Paris where they discovered the unique appeal of Beach’s Anglophone bookshop🄱 (The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses, Kevin Birmingham, 2014).

𐅉 Hemingway & Fitzgerald (www.pinterest.fr)

“The Lost Generation”
In the interwar years Beach’s bookshop became a haven for the Anglophone literati…habitués included the likes of TS Eliot and Ezra Pound, and the “Lost Generation” of American intellectuals, modernist writers and artists including Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Ford Maddox Ford, Man Ray, etc. Hemingway and other illustrious names belonged to the store’s lending library, borrowing books when they couldn’t afford to buy them. At the same time French intellectual writers such as Gidé and de Beauvoir also benefitted from Sylvia’s efforts to get their work better known in the US. The bookseller also gave crucial assistance to various avant-garde ‘little magazines’ in getting their publications off the ground by distributing their editions (Shakespeare and Co: The world’s most famous bookshop at 100‘, Cath Pound, BBC, 19-Nov-2019, www.bbc.com).

𐅉 a young George Whitman

Shakespeare and Company redux
In 1941 with occupied Paris under the Nazi swastika, the shop was closed down and Beach interned for a period after Sylvia refused to sell the last copy of Finnegan’s Wake to a German officer. The closure was permanent but the phoenix of Beach’s bookstore did rise again, reinvented by another American expat a decade later. In 1951 WWII veteran George Whitman opened a new, independent English-language bookshop – effectively “Shakespeare and Company Mach II“, though originally called Le Mistral. Later Sylvia Beach apparently anointed Whitman’s bookshop as the true and worthy successor to her original Shakespeare and Company (after Beach’s death in 1962 Whitman renamed the bookshop “Shakespeare and Company”) (‘Bookshop Shakespeare and Company. Paris’, by Els, www.flickr.com).

(Source: another mag.com)

“The Beat Generation”
Within a short time Whitman’s Mistral bookshop was fulfilling the same service to Paris-based Bohemians as Beach’s had for the Lost Generation of writers. Le Mistral, the second coming of “Shakespeare and Co”, became a mecca for a new literary generation in the Fifties, the ’Beat’ Generation and its writers including Allen Ginsberg, William S Burroughs and Greg Corso. Other English-language expats to frequent the bookshop at this time include Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Lawrence Durrell and Ray Bradbury (‘Shakespeare and a Company (Bookshop), Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org).

𐅉 Quote from medieval Persian poet Hafiz of Shiraz

Tumbleweed Hotel‘s quirky tariff
George Whitman maintained Sylvia Beach’s tradition of putting aspiring young writers up for the night (or several nights)…in return for a very basic cot or even a bench, the guests were required to work in the store, read a book and write a one-page autobiography🄲 (‘A Brief History of Shakespeare and Company, Paris’ Legendary Bookstore’, Alex Ledsom, Culture Trip, 26-Feb-2018, www.theculturetrip.com.

𐅉 Sylvia Whitman (Photo: nicethingspalomas.com)

Generation-and-a-half change
George Whitman died in 2011 at 98…the last 10 years of his life was a struggle of wills as the increasingly wildly eccentric George sought to push back against the attempts of his daughter Sylvia Beach Whitman🄳 to modernise the bookshop🄴. Since becoming sole proprietor, Sylvia has moved Shakespeare and Company forward with the times—web-based online transactions, modern accounting practices, the addition of a café, etc—but she still runs a lending library and a second-hand book section, hosts book launches and regular author readings by Zadie Smith, Martin Amis, etc in the shop (‘In a bookstore in Paris’, Bruce Handy, Vanity Fair, 21-Oct-2014, www.vanityfair.com).

(Photo: www.minute.net)

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Some takes by visitors on the physical layout of Whitman’s bookshop:

° “a Tardis – modest enough on the outside, a labyrinth on the inside” ~ Jeanette Winterson

° “Shakespeare and Company has the rambling lucidity of an unkempt boudoir” ~ Penny Watson, ‘A tale of two bookshops’ [SMH, Dec 1-2, 2007]

° “a literary octopus with an insatiable appetite for print, taking over the beat-up building … room by room, floor by floor, a veritable nest of books” ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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𐅉 Sylvia Beach (Source: ricorso.net)

 

Footnote: for the literary expatriates who frequented Shakespeare and Company, the bookshop served a number of purposes. It functioned as a sort of support network club where the expat writers could meet other members, could draw inspiration from its environs, they could read a wide range of quality literature including books banned in the US and UK, and they could write in its rooms🄵.The bookshop was a “sanctuary for progressive writers and a hub for innovative publishing” (Pound). Some of the expat artists and writers even used Beach’s bookshop as their postal box for receiving mail in Paris (Birmingham).

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🄰 Joyce ‘repaid’ Beach by later defecting to a new publisher at a time the bookseller was in a financial jam

🄱 Beach couldn’t however replicate the triumph of getting Ulysses into print with DH Lawrence’s controversial Lady Chatterley’s Lover 

🄲 the senior Whitman described these blow-in visitors as ’Tumbleweeds’, estimated to number around 30,000 since 1951

🄳 named in honour of the original Sylvia Beach

🄴 George was resistant to changing even one iota of the seemingly chaotic structure of the shop; he didn’t believe in phones or credit cards or computers (Handy)

🄵 Whitman gave the store’s rooms whimsical names like “Old Smoky Reading Room” and “Blue Oyster Tearoom”