I was just talking to my mum yesterday, and we got into a conversation about WW2...she was born in Ferryhill and raised in Bedale, at the Waggon and Horses Pub...alot of military stopped by the there during WW2, she told me a story, the 6th tanks guards who were stationed nearby, they were all having fun in the pub when a radio transmission came across, " It was Lord Haw Haw, telling the enemy exactly where the troops were, during the night, there was alot of quiet commotion outside, the 6th Tank Guards had to find a new place to move to....I was wondering if anyone else has heard about this guy, just curious..regards bdbarry Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Lord Haw-Haw, who signed his mail as William Joyce, is an interesting and tawdry guy. I wrote an article on him for a magazine. He was born in Brooklyn to an Irish family before Ireland declared independence. The family went home to Ireland and William actually fought alongside the British during the "troubles." He then became a math tutor in London and got involved with the British Union of Fascists under Sir Oswald Mosley. He was a key propagandist and big anti-Semite in their organization. He gained his diistinctive facial scar in a fight with a Communist (so he said) during this period. But the Fascists lost a lot of support in the 1930s (despite German and Italian successes) because of their brawling and violence. When the money dried up, Mosley fired a bunch of people, including Joyce. Royally angry, Joyce set up his own Fascist Party, which didn't amount to much more than a bunch of bitter anti-Semites muttering over beers. So Joyce, an American citizen by birth, filled out paperwork for a British passport, and used that to go to Germany. He didn't do to well there, either, and was stuck when war broke out. But he parlayed an introduction to Ribbentrop into one with Goebbels, who was setting up an anti-English radio propaganda campaign -- in English, and he put Joyce on the air to do "William Joyce's Views on the News." With his drawl, he sounded like, a British reporter said, "One of those 'haw-haw, get out of my way upper-crust Englishmen.'" So he became Lord Haw-haw, and spewed out vitriolic denunciations of the British leadership and the Jews all through the war. He was paid well, had girlfriends, and found time to write a book, "Twilight Over England," which was given out en masse to British POWs, who used it for toilet paper. His broadcasts were sneering for a long time ("So, English schoolboys, using penny magazines, are building Molotov cocktails to hurl at the mighty panzers!"), which either grated on British nerves or amused them. He promised that England would perish in a sea of Stukas and mustard gas. Much of his appeal was his apparent knowledge that such-and-such a division was in Upper Thudmarsh, or that the clock in Tiddlebury was slow, or that the streets needed widening. He actually got that information straight from the British. The Double Cross Committee in London, feeding lies and deception to their listeners through their "turned" spies in England, had to put in a certain amount of actual truth to keep them hooked to the lies. That consisted of announcements of some troop movements, usually long after the fact, or that streets needed widening. Some of that "information" he just made up. Every small town in England had a big clock, and they were all probably slow at one point or another, and certainly English streets of the time were too narrow for the increasing numbers of deuce-and-a-half ton trucks and halftracks that jammed the roads. Haw-haw stayed at the mike all through the war, but his once-triumphant tone melted away in the face of Allied advances. By 1944, he was saying, "Generally the Allied advance is regarded by their propagandists one way and by me in another. I can well understand their display of oslid satisfaction at the gains in ground which the invading expeditionary forces have achieved during the last few weeks. They would not be human if they did not rejoice at the retirement of the German forces, and from these withdarawals they are deducing inferences which are not only out of conformity with the facts, but which represent, I must say, very bad propaganda. Without specifying in detail their flamboyant predictions, I can sum them up by saying that they promise the complete collapse of Germany in the immediate future." Joyce did not see Berlin fall -- he'd fled to Hamburg, still broadcasting, and made his last broadcast, dead drunk, on April 30, 1945. He hotfooted it to Denmark to avoid the advancing British, but went back to Germany. He was caught by two British officers who were looking for firewood in a forest. Joyce apparently saw them and helpfully said, "There are some pieces over there," in English. One of the officers, Lt. Perry, said, "You wouldn't happen to be William Joyce, would you?" Joyce reached into his pocket. Perry thought Joyce was going for his gun, and shot him in the thigh. Joyce went into custody. He was tried at Old Bailey for treason, and Joyce claimed that he was American by birth. The Crown argued that he had applied for and got a British passport, and regardless of the reason, Joyce owed Britain loyalty for that blue-and-gold document. The judge agreed, and Joyce was hanged. Hitler's Englishman, by Adrian Weale, Lord Haw-Haw and William Joyce, by J.A. Cole, and The New Meaning of Treason, by Rebecca West, cover this bizarre life very well.
Hi, I had to sign up to this forum just to say how much I enjoyed reading that little biography of Lord Haw Haw by Kiwiwriter. That was an excellent piece there mate, just imagine those two officers at the moment that they caught him. I bet they couldn't believe it! I hope they both lived to a ripe old age and told the story of how they caught "Lord Haw Haw" a thousand times. Thanks again, Mark
Originally posted by Driver67@Aug 27 2004, 02:39 PM Hi, I had to sign up to this forum just to say how much I enjoyed reading that little biography of Lord Haw Haw by Kiwiwriter. That was an excellent piece there mate, just imagine those two officers at the moment that they caught him. I bet they couldn't believe it! I hope they both lived to a ripe old age and told the story of how they caught "Lord Haw Haw" a thousand times. Thanks again, Mark [post=27719]Quoted post[/post] I wrote an article about this guy for the magazine I edit for Games/Research Design, "The Europa Magazine." Issue number 61 or 62, "Britain At War." The magazine is the publication of Games Research Design (They are on the web), which produces the Europa, Glory, and Great War series of games, which I highly recommend to serious cardboard counter wargamers. Anyway, that article gives his whole tragicomic life and times. I even listened to a BBC tape that had his last broadcast on it before I wrote the piece, to hear his final drunken spiel. He was plastered, hammering the table, utterly wasted. Sort of like the Third Reich. Again, thanks for the warm words on the post. You can read more of my stuff on my web pages (the unsolicited plug!)
Very good and well written article but according to a new book I just finished on Lord Haw-Haw - by Nigel Farndale - he was not shot in the thigh as is commonly understood. The bullet - it states - passed through both cheeks of his rear end, leaving four holes! According to the same book he ((Haw-Haw) did not "flee" Berlin. Many of the staff at the radio station in Berlin were made to relocate to Hamburg where it was considered much safer.
Another of Haw Haw's broadcasts claimed that the Germans had sunk HMS Ganges. Caused a lot of laughter and ridicule in this area, Home of HMS Ganges the shore based naval training establishment. ( About to be developed into yet another housing estate ).
