William Joyce a.k.a. Lord Haw-Haw POW broadcast transcripts

Discussion in 'Prisoners of War' started by MBaldwin, Dec 20, 2017.

  1. MBaldwin

    MBaldwin New Member

    This is my first post; Mods please feel free to move this if there's a more appropriate section for the thread...
    I was wondering if there were written transcripts of the propaganda broadcasts by William Joice from WW2? I am trying to piece together as many details of my father's time during the war. One of the things that he would like to see/hear (he's still very much alive & kicking!) is the broadcast that mentions his name as a recently captured allied soldier. It was through this medium that his mother learned of his capture via a former workmate of my father who was a keen radio enthusiast. It was sometime later- maybe weeks, before his capture was officially confirmed to his mother; he had been listed as missing, presumed dead until then.
    I have contacted the National Archives, the BBC, and it seems that there are very few recordings that survived owing to shortages during the war of the material used for audio tape - it seems that 'day to day' recordings were taped over & lost. That is why I am keen to find written transcripts, if they exist. The period of interest would be Aug 8th to late Aug / early Sept 1944.
     
  2. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

  3. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    The BBC Monitoring transcripts of German radio broadcasts do survive but are currently in limbo at the moment while being catalogued.

    They are now back with the BBC Written Archives at Caversham, after being stored at another archive for a number of years and basically forgotten about.

    While they were there I was able to copy quite a number of them but I focused on the clandestine radio broadcasts rather than the regular Deutsche sender broadcasts.

    Try contacting the BBC Written Archives. If you can narrow down the likely broadcast date as much as possible that would help in a search. If I remember correctly POW names were broadcast once a week.

    Lee
     
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  4. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Just been listening to William Joyce's last broadcast on YouTube:

    Speaking strictly from personal experience I consider he must have been the most hated man in Britain during the war and I remember my late mother heaping curses on him at the sound of his cultured tones

    Ron
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2017
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  5. MBaldwin

    MBaldwin New Member

    Thanks Lee, that's great info; I'll give the BBC Archive a try. There's a period of about 20 days in which the broadcast will have been made, so hopefully the task will be manageable.
    You mention the "Deutsche Sender" broadcasts: - is this the name under which they were usually known?
     
  6. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    It's the "Germany Calling" broadcasts I believe carried POW names and even interviews with some.

    A funny send up by Pathe from 1940:
     
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  7. MBaldwin

    MBaldwin New Member

    Only problem with your suggestion might be....(as quoted on the Caversham Archives' site):-
    "Because of the demand for places we are not able to accept researchers pursuing school projects or personal interests. For commercial research there is a small daily charge."
    - so it looks as though I wouldn't get the chance to show my father the information that he has sought for many years.......unless I enrol at a university on a history degree course or amass enough material to start writing a commercial book, by which time he would have probably passed away. Any idea how rigidly the 'rules' are applied in this respect?
     
  8. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    I would drop them an email and explain the circumstances, see what they say.
     
  9. KevinBattle

    KevinBattle Senior Member

    As suggested above, why not ask?
    Especially as he was executed on 3rd January, so quite topical now).
    it might help if you corrected the spelling of your title though.
    It may be that the transcript you seek did not survive, is it that important?
    Have you already applied for his Service Records and transcribed his own wartime recollections?
    Do you know which PoW camps he was in and his own recollections?
     
  10. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    I would have thought that there was a National Archive file on the trial of William Joyce which may record his broadcasts to the British.His defence was that he was a citizen of Eire,a neutral and therefore beyond British jurisdiction.


    Deutschsender was the broadcasting system for Germany as part of the Reichsrundfunk heading the European Service.......sender also meaning transmitter

    The Deutschsender appears to have only broadcast in English at 0630hrs GST/Extra BST. This was part of the programme of propaganda from 0630 which was also broadcast each day at 1430,1730,1830,2130,2330 and 0030 as "The News in English" but from transmitters in Calais,Bremen,Friseland,Luxemburg,Breslau and Cologne using longwave and shortwave transmissions aimed at Great Britain.

    In addition at 2230hrs Joyce broadcast his "Views on the News" with transmissions from the Calais,Breslau,Cologne and Luxemburg transmitters (senders) It must have been a demanding schedule for Joyce if he was involved in every broadcast throughout every day of the week and every week.

    Probably a research source for these transmissions might come under "The News in English" and "Views on the News"

    Information taken from the English version of Signal,the German Wehrmacht magazine presumably for distribution in the Channel Islands and the US (until December 1941.)

    As an aside, recorded as a traitorous family......interestingly a claimed 1st cousin, Michael Joseph Joyce was a Sergeant on a No 61 Squadron Hampden out of Hemswell which became lost and ran out of fuel on an op to the oil plant at Leuna on 26/27 August 1940....landed intact on the West Frisian Islands.

    The crew were immediately captured and Sergeant Joyce became a collaborator in German captivity. He spun a yarn that he was involved in the setting up of POW escape lines such that he deceived the AM by these fictitious reports on his "escape" to Britain and was awarded the MM on account of it, as late as 1944.The reality was somewhat different as his captors had turned him and his task was to gain intelligence of the French escape routes he seemed to have travelled widely under his German controllers.He decided to return home,probably deceiving his captors by successfully tagging on to others on a French escape line into Spain, returning to Great Britain in November 1952. The AM saw fit to commission Joyce with the rank of F/L on his self promoted "distinguished" CV..

    On liberation, his bubble burst when Luftwaffe officer POWs were interrogated after the war ended..... returning RAF POWs provided further evidence of his collusion with the enemy.Following a RAF interrogation, he was forced to resign his commission,his MM award was revoked but surprisingly he was not court martialled but released without further action being taking against him under Section 161 of the Air Force Acts.

    Comprehensive detail on the case of Michael Joyce RAF is contained in Oliver Clutton -Brock's Footprints in the Sands of Time.Michael Joyce was also remembered by those who served at Hemswell in the early days and related the story in the Hemswell Association Imp.
     
  11. MBaldwin

    MBaldwin New Member

    Kevin
    Will do.
    -as for the spelling, I noticed that as soon as I posted :eek: but the 'edit' function doesn't seem to allow editing the title.
    ...As to the importance of the transcript, it is just another bit of information that helps to build a more complete picture, and, as they say "every little helps".
    I've had the war records for a number of years, it's only been possible due to time constraints to commence any digging in the last year or so. As he was in the 15th Scottish, the war diaries that are available online have been very useful. Using the info from those diaries I have already taken my father to Normandy, retraced his regiment's steps & been to the village where he was captured. Met some of the locals, as well as a few who were resident during the allied advance.
    Regarding the POW camps, he was initially taken to Stalag 12A then 4B & 4D.

    I'm thinking that I've got as far as I can using the info that I already have, & resources that are available on the internet. I think I may attempt a visit to the National Archives at Kew.
    ....A few questions for those that know:-
    From the 'Service/Casualty Record' that forms part of the Army Records: The left hand column, titled "No of Part II Order or other Authority"......Would the 'Orders', etc. in this column be the reference from which you might be able to delve more deeply?
    Are there lists of names, and dates/places of deployment in the Archives for Regimental Holding Units? (specifically 44 RHU)
    Are there any German records of POWs?
    Are there high resolution reconnaissance photos available to view at the Archives?

    Happy New Year.
    M
     
  12. Drayton

    Drayton Senior Member

    Joyce did not claim to be a citizen of the Irish Free State. He was born in the USA, whither his father had emigrated from the UK and where, before his birth, his father had been naturalised as a US citizen, making Joyce a US citizen by birth and inheritance. The family eventually returned to the UK, but Joyce remained a US citizen. However, in 1933 he applied for and was granted a UK passport by claiming birth in Ireland as part of the UK at the relevant time (the then regulations did not require production of an actual birth certificate) and without disclosing his real status as a US citizen.

    Under the then 5-year passport rule, the passport expired in 1938, but Joyce obtained a one-year renewal in 1938, and then a second one-year renewal in 1939, so that it formally expired in July 1940. Using the recently renewed passport, Joyce travelled to Germany shortly before the British declaration of war. Around 1940 he applied for, and was granted, naturalisation as a German citizen, which, as a citizen of a neutral country (USA), he was entirely free to do.

    After Joyce's apprehension in Germany by the invading British Army in 1945, consideration was given as to whether Joyce, agreed by all concerned never in his life to have been a British citizen, and during the war to have been first a citizen of the USA, a neutral county, and then a citizen of Germany, had committed any offence for which he could be tried under British law. Clearly, there were three such offences: making a false declaration as to British citizenship on his original passport application in 1933, and similar false declarations on the two renewal applications in 1938 and 1939; possibly, additional charges could have been made of actually obtaining the passport and the two renewals by fraud.

    Instead of bringing such charges, the British authorities invented a law which remains contoversial to this day, claiming that the mere application for a Britsh passport entailed personal allegiance to the Crown, such that to give aid and comfort to the Sovereign's enemies while in possession of such passport was tamtamount to treason. Pursuit of such a line necessarily meant that evidence of such aid and comfort had to be strictly confined to the period September 1939 to July 1940. After that, whatever Joyce broadcast as a German citizen on German radio was of no particular concern within British law - so that, if the OP's father's broadcast mention was in1944, it would have played no part in Joyce's trial.

    There were many good reasons for the ultimate abolition of capital punishment in Britain in 1999, but hanging a man for making a false declaration on an application for a British passport remains one of the most notorious.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2018

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