William Joyce

William Joyce 1906-46, British Nazi propagandist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., called Lord Haw-Haw. Taken to England as a child, Joyce became involved there in the fascist movement. He went to Germany just before the outbreak of World War II and throughout the war broadcast German propaganda in English from Berlin. He was captured by British soldiers in Germany in 1945. Despite his American birth, he was adjudged subject to British jurisdiction because he held a British passport. He was convicted of treason and hanged.

Bibliography: See biography by J. A. Cole (1964); R. West, The New Meaning of Treason (rev. ed. 1967).

Joyce, William (1906–46),born in Brooklyn, New York, of an Irish-American father and an English mother. In 1909 the family moved to Eire and in 1922 to the UK, where Joyce obtained a first class honours degree in English Literature. He joined the British Fascist Party ( 1923), the Conservative Party ( 1925), and the British Union of Fascists ( 1933)—where he became Mosley's deputy—before founding in 1937 the openly pro-Nazi British National Socialist League.

Travelling on a British passport, falsely acquired in 1933, he fled to Germany in August 1939 to escape internment and began working for the German English-language radio station. He soon established himself as a scriptwriter and broadcaster, but he was not the original ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, this sobriquet, which Joyce adopted later, having initially been given by a British journalist to another German propaganda broadcaster—probably Norman Baillie-Stewart—first heard in April 1939.

Joyce became a naturalized German citizen in September 1940. But during his trial for treason a ruling established that he had still owed allegiance to the Crown while his British passport remained valid, and on these grounds he was found guilty and hanged.

Bibliography

Selwyn, F. , Hitler's Englishman (London, 1987).
West, R. , The Meaning of Treason (London, 1949).

Joyce, William ( ‘Lord Haw-Haw’) (b. 24 Apr. 1906, d. 3 Jan. 1946). British traitor Born in Brooklyn, New York, his family moved to Ireland in 1909, and then to Britain in 1922, where he was educated at Birkbeck College, London. He joined the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1933, and became deputy to Mosley. He left the BUF in 1937, forming the British National Socialist League, which was more pro-Nazi than the BUF. He fled to Germany in August 1939 to escape arrest, and began to work for the Ministry of Propaganda, broadcasting on its English-language radio station. He gained the nickname ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, which was originally bestowed on another broadcaster on the station. He was captured by the British army in April 1945, and was hung in 1946 having been found guilty of treason. The case was controversial: he was an American citizen, but it was argued that he owed allegiance to Britain since he also held a British passport.