Herewith Part II of "The Martyrdom of William Joyce" by Michael Walsh, subtitled THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST LEAGUE:
Subsequently William Joyce, John Beckett and John Angus MacNab set up the National Socialist League, which was dismissive of copying the German structure. This Joyce considered to be an insult to the German Leader who disdained imitation. "His way is for Germany, ours is for Britain; let us tread our paths with mutual respect, which is rarely increased by borrowing.
"Nationalism stands for the nation and Socialism for the people. Unless the people are identical with the nation, all politics and all statecraft are a waste of time. A people without a nation are a helpless flock . . . a nation without people is an abstract nothing or a historical ghost."
By studying these words carefully, one can perceive why Britons today, deprived of their nationhood through open-door immigration and foreign ownership, have become a flock without a shepherd and in many respects, especially abroad, a perpetual nuisance.
By now the war clouds were darkening, leaving Joyce on the horns of a dilemma. He could not support a war arranged by corrupt politicians acting on behalf of international finance. Yet evasion of National Service was unthinkable. (...) William Joyce and his wife Margaret were already marked down for arrest and detention for the duration of the coming war. In fact, people were sentenced to long terms in prison merely for peaceful activities aimed at stopping England's war against Germany.
One such was Anna Wolkoff, the daughter of an admiral in the Russian Imperial Navy. On November 7th 1940 Judge Justice Tucker sentenced her to ten years imprisonment. Coincidentally, the same judge four years later would try William Joyce at the Old Bailey. At the Wolkoff trial he described the absent William Joyce as a traitor; a well publicized remark that should have eliminated him from presiding over the fugitive's later trial.
William Joyce's plan was to renew his false passport and that of Margaret. Their intention was to go to Ireland, which would resolve their dilemma. However the Munich Agreement made their departure unnecessary and the couple went instead to Ryde on the Isle of Wight where Joyce experienced a spiritual visitation, the impact of which kept him awake and talking all night.
What followed was a period of much soul-searching. Events forced the young couple to decide on Berlin as being the best option to escape an English gaol. Angus MacNab had already established that both Joyce and his wife would be granted German citizenship if they chose to resettle in Germany. (4)
Time was fast running out. The House of Commons was being recalled the following Thursday to pass all stages of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act. This would effectively turn the British Government into a dictatorship.
Joyce was under no illusions. He and tens of thousands of others who had pursued peace with Germany would be summarily arrested and detained indefinitely without trial. He applied for the renewal of their passports. As National Socialists working for peace between the two nations, there was now only one country where the Joyces presumed they would not be imprisoned. Germany. It was an argument strongly favoured by Margaret.
"GET OUT OF ENGLAND, NOW!"
At about midnight on August 24th the couple's telephone rang. It was a call from an MI5 Intelligence officer warning Joyce that he was due to be arrested under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act. He had at most two days to make good their escape. On 26th August 1939, five days before Germany retaliated against repeated Polish attacks on her borders, William and Margaret Joyce left London.
Arriving in Berlin they found the city seething with defensive preparations. There the English visitors found that Christian Bauer, their contact and ticket to a new life, had exaggerated his influence and could offer little by way of assistance. In the confusion of events there was even the possibility they might be interned, should Britain declare war on Germany.
Disconsolate and footsore, the pair tramped the streets of the German capital, coming up against one obstacle after another. Finally, without work and running short of money, they decided in unison to return to England. Yet again fate was against them.
William had changed all of his money into Deutsch marks, a currency that was now invalid for journeys beyond Germany's borders. British Embassy staff were unhelpful. At Margaret's suggestion, the couple fatefully decided to stay in Berlin; a decision reinforced when next day Joyce landed a job as a part time freelance interpreter.
During the night of August 31st, 1939 Poland - which six months earlier had invaded Czechoslovakia and which already controversially occupied German territory looted after the 1st World War - crossed the German border. It was a little after midnight when radio broadcasts were interrupted by an announcement that the small German border town of Gleiwitz had been attacked and occupied by Polish irregular formations. Within hours Germany retaliated.
ENGLAND GETS THEIR WAR
Two days later a delegate of the Labour Party met with the British Foreign Minister Lord Halifax. "Do you still have hope?" he was asked. "If you mean hope for war," answered Halifax, "then your hope will be fulfilled tomorrow." "God be thanked!" replied the representative of the British Labour Party.
In Germany the mood was less jubilant. The shocked population listened to their country's leader, Adolf Hitler, as he addressed the Reichstag on September 1st: "Just as there have occurred, recently, twenty-one border incidents in a single night, there were fourteen this night, among which three were very serious...
"Since dawn today we are shooting back. I desire nothing other than to be the first soldier of the German Reich. I have again put on that old coat, which was the most sacred and dear to me of all. I will not take it off until victory is ours or - I shall not live to see the end. There is one word that I have never learned: capitulation."
Back in London the police were raiding the Joyce's apartment to find the tipped-off couple had already gone. Though free in Germany, they felt lonely, helpless and homesick. They had no ration cards; William's meager earnings reduced them to living on acts of charity. Every job opportunity turned out to be a disappointment, a vague promise and nothing more. Reduced to destitution he was finally asked: "Have you ever thought of working for the radio?" Joyce replied that he had not and moments later an interview was being arranged.
THE RELUCTANT BROADCASTER
Though desperate for competent English speakers, the Reichsrundfunks Foreign Service was not impressed with Joyce's performance - he was suffering a heavy cold that week - but reluctantly provided employment to the equally reluctant Joyce. Faced with possible internment or certain destitution, he had little choice but to accept the post offered.
The rest is history.
Joyce spent the rest of England's war providing English-speaking listeners with the German point of view on the conflict's unfolding events. He was one of many various nationalities carrying out the same task. The same could be said for the internationally-recruited staff serving the British Government through the BBC at London's Bush House.
William Joyce was never the "Lord Haw-Haw" of Fleet Street mythology. He was given this nom-de-plume by Daily Express journalist, Jonah Barrington, who had mistaken Joyce's broadcast for that of Norman Baillie-Stewart, a Seaforth Highland Regiment veteran who, like many others, had decided to fight for the triumph of European interests rather than Capitalism and international Jewry.
Much of the comment made about Joyce's broadcasts is similarly myth. His biographer, J.A Cole conceded that: "To this day he is quoted as having made statements he never uttered. Most of what people think they know of him is false and not fact . . . an extraordinary viciousness has characterized much of the writing about him, but what was written in anger (about Joyce) now looks spiteful and even absurd."
Claims that Joyce sneeringly provided accurate predictions that certain areas or buildings had been chosen for air strikes were also wide of the mark. The Government's Ministry of Information, having already refuted claims that Germany had detailed topical knowledge, felt the need to issue a further statement: "It cannot be too often repeated that Haw-Haw made no such threats."
Joyce's biographer concluded by remarking: "And the legend lives on to this day. Mention Haw-Haw in any gathering and out come the stories of what people heard, as they will insist, with their own ears. Joyce was a man who is remembered for what he did not say."
William L. Shirer, the author of the notable distortion, "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," who worked in Berlin with Joyce, described him as "No.1 personality of World War 2" (and) ". . . an amusing and intelligent fellow." (5)
What is beyond question is that Joyce's broadcasts, with the benefit of hindsight, seem compellingly accurate. In the first radio talk definitely established as William Joyce's the expatriate spoke of Britain's position in the war (6).
Tomorrow: Part III - "England, fighting to the last Frenchman..."
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Thought for the Day:
"But the actions of NATO in central Europe are finally completing the dream of Adolf Hitler, the final disolution of the bastard countries created at Versailles -- united under NATO instead of the Axis of course."
(A Giwer Gem)