Posted on 01/03/2024 10:42:18 AM PST by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1946, fascist William Joyce, famous by the nickname “Lord Haw-Haw” for his English-language Nazi propaganda broadcasts, was hanged at Wandsworth Prison for treason.
As a pugilistic young anti-Semite with the unusual credential of being a Unionist Irish Catholic, Joyce had been a moving spirit in the interwar British fascist party. (Since audio broadcasts would define Joyce’s life, it seems appropriate to refer the reader for a fuller biography to this recent Oxford biography podcast.)
But because time loves a good laugh, it had the guy haranguing his countrymen for insufficient patriotism marked out for the last treason execution in British history, and unrepentant about it by the time he got there.
The Brooklyn-born Joyce (he never lost his American citizenship) who naturalized as a German in 1940 had a rather tenuous claim on the patriotic high horse to begin with, and after the war, that meant the treason charge proceeded on legally doubtful grounds: speaking the King’s English didn’t mean he owed allegiance to the king. Prosecutors ultimately hung him with a British passport he’d obtained fraudulently, and the legal principle has never since sat well with jurists......
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
After the war and how many tens of millions dead, mercy and clemency was not available for such as Haw Haw.
The Joe Scarborough of his day.
I think it was wrong to execute him. A 20-year sentence would have been more appropriate.
Let’s remember the prescribed penalty for treason.
Are there traitors in our midst today?
Charging Haw Haw with treason was a very long reach, as he was not even a subject of Her Majesty.
Hundreds of thousands of dead Brits and American soldiers were not around to comment. They died fighting the evil SOB nazis he worked hard to support.
Good riddance.
That’s what you get for working with and for the SS several times.
He was carrying a British passport. Close enough. The post war world was better because he wasn’t in it.
I doubt that many Brits complained about him having been strung up.
my dad always watched that dumb show back in the 70s.
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They executed him for treason even though he wasn't a British citizen. They used the British deep state lawfare of the day.
It saved the US from executing him.
We didn’t execute Tokyo Rose or Axis Sally.
He should not have been hanged. He was a spy. Spies are shot.
There will be no time for pity
when the Screaming Eagle flies.
That will be the end of Axis.
They must answer with their lives.
--from Smoke on the Water
There's an hour-long transcript of one of her broadcasts from 1944 in which she plays Oldies from the late 1930's and early '40's because they were unable to get newer recordings into Japan. It also features a news broadcast--"fighting news for the fighting men." I believe this can be heard on Youtube.
I’m not sorry he was hanged but there is no way he could have committed treason against a country of which he was not a subject. He was an American with dual German citizenship.
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