Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards podcast about
Speaker 1: the very worst people in all of history. And this
Speaker 1: week we are on part two of our episodes on
Speaker 1: Lord Haha and this is Reverse Bastards. I am sitting
Speaker 1: in the guest chair this week and our host and
Speaker 1: topic expert is Padrick or Rourke. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this, and yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: excited to see how this guy becomes the mouthpiece of
Speaker 1: the German fascist movement in the UK.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Robert, I hope, and thanks for having
Speaker 2: me back. I'm hoping part one. Your ears aren't bleeding
Speaker 2: from all my terrible British impressions that I'm not loading
Speaker 2: them on to.
Speaker 1: Things they're much better than mine.
Speaker 2: My poor wife is upstairs putting the kids to bed
Speaker 2: and they can hear me doing the accents. So now
Speaker 2: both of my sons are like doing their best attempts
Speaker 2: at posh British accents and terrifying them.
Speaker 1: Or mother just absolute hell for her.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so she has it in surround sound anyway, So
Speaker 2: we're back for more bastardy. What do you think you're
Speaker 2: excited for? Joyce's escapade so far? And see where he's
Speaker 2: going to end up, right, sure, yeah so Iheart's lawyers
Speaker 2: reached out to me after the last recording and demanded
Speaker 2: I make no more Prince Andrew jokes, So no sweat.
Speaker 2: Returning to this week's bastard, William Joyce. When we left
Speaker 2: at the end of Heart One, all of his political
Speaker 2: projects that he had ever gotten involved in had ended
Speaker 2: in disaster. In the early nineteen thirties, he was an
Speaker 2: insignificant and embittered high school teacher, spouting conspiracy theories to
Speaker 2: anyone who would listen, whiles cheating on his wife with
Speaker 2: one of his students when he found another would be
Speaker 2: Messiah enter stage right, Sir Oswald Mosley. Now. Regular listeners
Speaker 2: to the podcast will know that Oswald Tommy Moseley six
Speaker 2: foot two was a British aristocrat who became the youngest
Speaker 2: ever sitting member of Parliament in the nineteen eighteen British
Speaker 2: general election. Roberts, did you know that in the mid
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties Moseley was a fishing body of future American
Speaker 2: President FDR.
Speaker 1: I did not know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just sent you an email there with a
Speaker 2: photo if you want to open it up. This is
Speaker 2: their beach party. How would you describe this to the listeners?
Speaker 1: It looks like a Christian rock album cover. It looks
Speaker 1: like a Christian rock album.
Speaker 2: What would what would they call their band?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, geez, I don't know, Yeah, the Apostles.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you do? It looks like I
Speaker 1: don't know how else to describe it, like you have.
Speaker 1: I think that's FDR there in the middle, who's like
Speaker 1: sitting in the water with his arm up in like
Speaker 1: a prayer gesture. You have which one of those is
Speaker 1: that Crosby in the right or is that Mosley?
Speaker 2: I think that's I think that's Moseley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like half kneeling with again his hands up
Speaker 1: in prayer. And then the third guy, Crosby I guess,
Speaker 1: is laying on his back with his legs in the air,
Speaker 1: and they're all just kind of like like flat against
Speaker 1: like right in the like the tidepool level of the ocean.
Speaker 2: It looks like, Yeah, do you imagine the kind of
Speaker 2: selfies they would have taken if they had had smart.
Speaker 1: Who No, no, but it would have gotten them all canceled,
Speaker 1: Like FDR would never have been the president. They would
Speaker 1: have all gotten in horrible trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Basically, Mosley's first wife, Lady Cynthia Curzon, was totally
Speaker 2: fucking famous. She was the daughter of a really famous
Speaker 2: British lords, So that's probably how they met. But they's
Speaker 2: vacation together for a month in Florida in February of
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty six. However, their bodying political romance fell apart
Speaker 2: when the two men adopted rad different positions on Hitler.
Speaker 2: FDR would end up being yeah, would definitely end up
Speaker 2: being anti Hitler, while Moseley remained very much pro Hitler,
Speaker 2: so much so that in nineteen thirty two, Moseley founded
Speaker 2: the British Union of Fascists or BUF. Sure did, and
Speaker 2: you've done I think two episodes on this guy, Robert
Speaker 2: or three even so obviously check those out listeners if
Speaker 2: you want more on on Moseley. Moseley attempted to merge
Speaker 2: all of the veterans of the Nassian fascist movement in
Speaker 2: the UK together in the BUF. Now, the British Union
Speaker 2: of Fascists or BUF was heavily influenced by Italian fascists.
Speaker 2: The buf's uniform consisted of a black fencing jacket and
Speaker 2: black trousers. The BUF also adopted the so called Roman
Speaker 2: salute in the nineteen twenties. The Italian Fascists were the
Speaker 2: first political movement to adopt the salute, which was later
Speaker 2: made famous by the Nazis and recently brought back into
Speaker 2: vogue by Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk. Moseley's
Speaker 2: Black Shirts adopted the salute, but added their own unique
Speaker 2: British element to the gesture by shouting pj whilst giving
Speaker 2: it short not for pajamas but perish Judah. The motto
Speaker 2: of Moseley's new organization was loyalty to the King and
Speaker 2: Empire and the building of the Greater Britain. And of
Speaker 2: course William Joyce loved all of this and he joined immediately.
Speaker 2: Throughout his life, Joyce had one phenomenal, godlike talent which
Speaker 2: he used frequently but never used for good. He was
Speaker 2: an incredible orator, a unique talent, possibly one of the
Speaker 2: greatest speakers of his generation. He could speak without notes
Speaker 2: for several hours if necessary, without faltering or losing his
Speaker 2: train of thought. Once, at one BUF rally in Eveson,
Speaker 2: he spoke for over four hours, but one raptured onlooker commenting.
Speaker 2: People stayed for the whole length of the speech out
Speaker 2: of sheer curiosity to see how long he could keep
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a lot going on back then. I didn't
Speaker 1: have Netflix or anything, you know, there wasn't Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was easy to keep people in a line.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Everyone, political opponents, rivals in the fascist movement. Everyone agrees.
Speaker 2: This man is an incredible speaker.
Speaker 1: And the journalist makes sense.
Speaker 2: Cecil Roberts, who witnessed him speak, recalled quote. I have
Speaker 2: been a connoisseur of speechmaking for over a quarter of
Speaker 2: a century, but never before had I met a personality
Speaker 2: so terrifying in its dynamic force, so vituperative, so vitriolic.
Speaker 2: The words poured from him in a corrosive state. We
Speaker 2: listened in a kind of frozen hypnotism to his cold,
Speaker 2: stabbing voice. There was a gleam of marat in his eyes,
Speaker 2: and his eloquence took on a satanic ring, with which
Speaker 2: he invoked the rise rat of his audience against the
Speaker 2: festering scum who, by cowardice and sloth, had reduced the
Speaker 2: British Empire to a marabaud thing. So Joyce's fame as
Speaker 2: a speaker spread well beyond the BUF, and even political
Speaker 2: opponents came to here. One such was John Beckett, former
Speaker 2: Labor Party Member of Parliament quote. I first saw him
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty three at a crowded meeting at Paddington Bats.
Speaker 2: I had left political life and the Labor Party in
Speaker 2: disgust two years previously, but within ten minutes of this
Speaker 2: twenty seven year old taking the platform, I knew he
Speaker 2: was one of the finest orators in the country. He
Speaker 2: had the trade unionist and Labour MP Philip Snowden's close
Speaker 2: reasoning and on nurring instinct for words, combined with the
Speaker 2: Scottish pacifist James Maxton's humor and the conservative Winston Churchill's
Speaker 2: dairy His great audience assembled to hear a speaker quite
Speaker 2: unknown in the political world, and the enthusiasm he created
Speaker 2: was an eye opener for me. Beckett was the son
Speaker 2: of a Christian father and a Jewish mother. He had
Speaker 2: come to the meeting as a curious left wing opponent,
Speaker 2: and he departed a committed fascist and soon joined the
Speaker 2: BUF after hearing Joyce speak, that's a rare holy talent.
Speaker 2: Joyce's oratory brilliants led his fellow black Shirts, hailing him
Speaker 2: as quote the Mighty Atom, the Master, the Professor, and
Speaker 2: most chillingly, the man without a soul. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean they like the boot licking goes down all
Speaker 1: the way with these people, right like they're they're that's
Speaker 1: kind of key to the fascist things. You have to
Speaker 1: have someone that you're like embarrassingly dick writing for and
Speaker 1: in this case like that's that's what it means to
Speaker 1: be a leader within these movements is to have a
Speaker 1: bunch of people making up the most cringe worthy praise
Speaker 1: in nicknames for you. They possibly could. It's the it's
Speaker 1: the old timey equivalent of fucking having an AI make
Speaker 1: Donald Trump look jacked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the man without his soul. The only other nickname
Speaker 2: I can compare it to for the time is Hitler
Speaker 2: calling Reinhart Heydrich the man with the iron heart.
Speaker 1: The man with the iron heart. Yeah, yeah man.
Speaker 2: Anyway. Amongst Moseley's adoring fascist fans was Margaret White, an
Speaker 2: organizer of the women's section of the BUF, and within
Speaker 2: days of first meeting the two began an affair. Joyce
Speaker 2: eventually dumped his first wife, Hazel, to take Margaret as
Speaker 2: his second wife. His pet name for her was mother Sheep,
Speaker 2: and she in turn referred to him lovingly as the
Speaker 2: old Ram. Margaret later boasted that she was like a
Speaker 2: dom and Joyce was her sub and that he was
Speaker 2: pathologically devoted to her. She did not know, of course,
Speaker 2: that Joyce, true to form, soon started an affair with
Speaker 2: another fascist fangirl named Sylvia Morris. So these two, Margaret
Speaker 2: and William choice are just one of the most toxic
Speaker 2: couples ever and they both constantly cheat on the other. Now, look,
Speaker 2: I'm not judging people. If that's their thing, open marriages
Speaker 2: as a couple or whatever, that's your thing, fine, But
Speaker 2: according to their joint biographer Nigel Farndale, this was done
Speaker 2: by each of them without the consent of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were. Part of the point was that they
Speaker 1: were cheating on each other. That was important to both
Speaker 1: of them that they be cheating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, presumably that gives them the trill or whatever. She
Speaker 2: was constantly cuckolding him and altered between pouring affection on
Speaker 2: him mocking him, making him sexually jealous and frustrated. He
Speaker 2: responded by screaming verbal abuse at her, conducting his own
Speaker 2: illicit affairs and inflicting occasional bouts of domestic violence on her.
Speaker 2: The fact that both of them were increasingly dysfunctional alcoholics
Speaker 2: did not help matters in their very very fucked up
Speaker 2: relationship with just got it increasingly worse the longer they
Speaker 2: were together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that scance makes sense now.
Speaker 2: Moseley himself was no stranger to extramarital affairs, mistresses and
Speaker 2: multiple spouses, and he also, of course shared Joyce's talent
Speaker 2: for oratory. Moseley appointed Joyce the bus director of Propaganda,
Speaker 2: which was a full time paid position paid about three
Speaker 2: hundred pounds per year at a time when the average
Speaker 2: construction worker would have made about one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: pounds per years. So he's doing quite well and this
Speaker 2: allows Joyce to quit his teaching job and the vote
Speaker 2: himself full time to politics. Mosley of course, never joined
Speaker 2: in the adulation for Joyce, even though he respected his abilities.
Speaker 2: He referred to Joyce as the little man now for
Speaker 2: reference as well, Tommy Moseley, as we know, was six
Speaker 2: foot two whilst Joyce was just five foot five, and
Speaker 2: as Moseley's catty nickname for Joyce implies, the two men
Speaker 2: had a fraud hyper para citic relationship, which was the
Speaker 2: best term I could find online to describe their dynamic.
Speaker 2: Not a psychologist, but they're just two guys who were
Speaker 2: grifting off each other in an unending competition. Whilst Joyce
Speaker 2: had been drawn to the Leader or Moseley by his
Speaker 2: strong man image and the promise of a new fascist
Speaker 2: British empire, he felt that Moseley was too soft on
Speaker 2: the Irish question because Moseley was not calling for the
Speaker 2: British Army to reinvade Southern Ireland. On a political level,
Speaker 2: Moseley admired Joyce's manic energy, his intelligence and dedication to
Speaker 2: the b UF, but an issue arose because of Joyce's fanatical,
Speaker 2: uncompromising and unhinged anti Semitic rhetoric. As the BUF grew
Speaker 2: in popularity, its public image was increasingly tarnished by a
Speaker 2: wave of anti Semitic attacks by the BUF in the
Speaker 2: East End of London, and of course the rising tide
Speaker 2: of anti Jewish Violin and Pilgrims in Nazi Germany. In
Speaker 2: response to this, Moseley turned down his own anti Semitic
Speaker 2: remarks and repeatedly had to urge Joyce to do the same.
Speaker 2: And let's face it, you have a serious problem if
Speaker 2: Oswald Moseley, the British hitler, is telling you to dial
Speaker 2: down the anti Jewish stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're going a little hard man.
Speaker 2: Moseley, on a personal level, was wary of Joyce's popularity
Speaker 2: within the movement, and he viewed him as a potential
Speaker 2: threat to his leadership.
Speaker 1: Regular bad the weaknesses these movements always have. When you
Speaker 1: have two guys who are really good at the whole
Speaker 1: being charismatic thing, they inevitably fall out, right, you can't
Speaker 1: have two fewers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they love a good furor fight. Yeah, regular bastards.
Speaker 2: Bad listeners will recall that Moseley served in World War
Speaker 2: One as a member of the Royal Flying Corps and
Speaker 2: he crashed his aeroplane whilst doing a loop the loop
Speaker 2: to show off to his mother and sister who were
Speaker 2: watching him fly an aeroplane in an aerobatic display. As
Speaker 2: a result of this self inflicted war wound, Moseley developed
Speaker 2: phlebiatis in his leg, which flared up from time to time.
Speaker 2: On one occasion, phlebiatis was so painful that he was
Speaker 2: not able to walk or stand to deliver a speech.
Speaker 2: At a major black.
Speaker 1: Shirt Rather, what is phlebiitis? Because my only reference point
Speaker 1: is a joke they made with the Nixon character and Futurama.
Speaker 1: What what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2: It's basically if you get a now, not a medical doctor,
Speaker 2: but my understanding because I looked it up for this
Speaker 2: is if you get a broken bone and it doesn't
Speaker 2: heal properly, it can affect the nerves in the area
Speaker 2: around it, and the nerves and the muscle can swell,
Speaker 2: so your leg could swell up so much so that
Speaker 2: it's painful to move the joint. Gadget, gadget. Not a
Speaker 2: medical doctor. But that's that's what I could figure out
Speaker 2: from from a quick a quick google. P H L
Speaker 2: E B I T I S. Don't make my word first,
Speaker 2: go google it yourself, or ask your physician.
Speaker 1: Or say the word while doing a Nixon accent. You'll
Speaker 1: you'll appreciate why it's such a good bit.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's think that now. On one occasion, it was
Speaker 2: so painful he was not able to walk or stand
Speaker 2: to deliver a speech at a major Backshirt rally. Joyce
Speaker 2: took his place at the last moment, giving a rousing
Speaker 2: oration as good, if not better than anything Moseley could
Speaker 2: have delivered. Joyce was such a good stand in that
Speaker 2: Moseley increasingly saw him as a threat and was now
Speaker 2: determined to keep the little man in line or to
Speaker 2: get rid of him altogether. Moseley got the opportunity to
Speaker 2: dismiss Joyce in late thirteen six, in the wake of
Speaker 2: the Fascist defeat at the Battle of Cable Street. Between
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three and nineteen thirty six, Mussolini had sent
Speaker 2: Moseley a secret annual stipend of sixty thousand pounds per
Speaker 2: annam again remember Jesus, Yeah, Jesus had no.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you're talking again. One hundred and thirty pounds
Speaker 2: for a construction workers annual wage and Mosley is getting
Speaker 2: sixty grand.
Speaker 1: And that's a shitload back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it gets laundered to Moseley through the London
Speaker 2: Bank account of William Allen, who's a former Belfast Loyalist
Speaker 2: member of Parliament who had joined the British Union of Fascists.
Speaker 2: So but after the Battle of Cable Street, Mussolini regarded
Speaker 2: Moseley as a failure and he cut off the funds
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty seven. Though Moseley did later get financial
Speaker 2: support from the Nazis, it never matched Mussolini's generosity, and
Speaker 2: this left Moseley in financial difficulty. So when he announced cutbacks,
Speaker 2: the very first thing that had to go was the
Speaker 2: bus Department of Propaganda, which Joyce had been director of
Speaker 2: with an annual salary of three hundred pounds. The loss
Speaker 2: of this wage was the last straw for Joyce, who
Speaker 2: already suspicious that Mosley was quote too soft on the
Speaker 2: Jewish question. So in nineteen thirty seven, Joyce adopted friend
Speaker 2: of the Pod Adolf Hitler as his new political messiah,
Speaker 2: and he left the BUF to form his own organization
Speaker 2: called the National Socialist League with John Beckett, the secretly
Speaker 2: half Jewish former Socialist MP that I mentioned earlier. Now, Rob,
Speaker 2: what is the one thing that the Nazis in particular
Speaker 2: have always been streets ahead of compared to other political movements.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I would say, like turning political
Speaker 1: violence into electoral success.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's that's one thing. I was thinking more
Speaker 2: along the lines of style.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Yeah, the outfits Jesus Christ. They looked
Speaker 1: so I mean fucking just look at the fascists we're
Speaker 1: dealing with today, Like yeah, and honestly, Mussolini's brow. Mussolini
Speaker 1: not a great looking movement, weird looking outfits. But the
Speaker 1: Nazis they had tailors.
Speaker 2: They had it. Hugo Boss was making their their uniforms. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think again of how powerful the swastka was
Speaker 2: as a symbol, and I think you covered this before,
Speaker 2: And think of how evil, cool and genocidely stylish the
Speaker 2: SS look in their black uniforms.
Speaker 1: And that was a big reason why people joined them, right,
Speaker 1: You get a lot of early sessmen were like, well,
Speaker 1: I thought the uniforms looked cool, like that kind of
Speaker 1: my politics descended from me wanting to look cool. Of
Speaker 1: many such cases, unfortunately, that's it.
Speaker 2: So speaking of of of you know, brilliant symbolism and style,
Speaker 2: I have sent you the if you look in the
Speaker 2: emails the logo that that William Joyce designed for the
Speaker 2: National Socialist League.
Speaker 1: Yes, so I'm looking at it, and honestly it it
Speaker 1: looks more like the logo for a prey away the
Speaker 1: gay camp. There's a bunch of like I would I
Speaker 1: know what it supposed to be. It looks like like
Speaker 1: about four or five four to six rolling pins are
Speaker 1: are forming like like almost like a Star of David
Speaker 1: type design with like a blue circle around them, and
Speaker 1: then the words steer straight underneath it. I know that
Speaker 1: the rolling pins are actually supposed to be like a
Speaker 1: like a ship's and ships right, yeah, what with England
Speaker 1: and the Navy being such a big deal, But just
Speaker 1: the whole steer straight thing, it looks like it's a
Speaker 1: It looks like a prey away the gay camp logo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I mean think of it even
Speaker 2: steer straight as a motto like the Nazis have deutschkan
Speaker 2: de ervach, you know, Germany awake, and these guys have
Speaker 2: steer Straight. But Roberts. Do you know who else has
Speaker 2: a dogshit logo?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean look, it was a long time ago
Speaker 1: when we got the logo for this podcast. I've done
Speaker 1: all right for us.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, not the sponsors of this
Speaker 2: of this podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, good logos only unless it's the Washington State.
Speaker 1: I would patrol again.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen thirty eight, Joyce hoped that his movement
Speaker 2: with a shitty ships wheel logo would grow to replace
Speaker 2: Moseley's and that he would become the future British fuelure.
Speaker 2: The problem was that Moseley had forty thousand black Shirts,
Speaker 2: whilst Joyce's splinter group had just forty one. Former comrade
Speaker 2: from the BUF came to see Joyce and Beckett speaking
Speaker 2: one day and recalled quote. They were at a street corner,
Speaker 2: with Joyce standing on a platform and speaking from it,
Speaker 2: with Beckett the only spectator pretending to be an opposition Heckler.
Speaker 2: It was their way of trying to attract some controversy
Speaker 2: and to generate an audience for their open air meeting.
Speaker 2: What a terrible come down. It was from the great
Speaker 2: BUF meetings attended by thousands that I had seen the
Speaker 2: men speaking at. So Joyce writes the party's policy document
Speaker 2: entitled National Socialism Now, in which he declared his devotion
Speaker 2: to Hitler but stressed that an indigenous form of Nazism
Speaker 2: was required for Britain. Quote, we are the only one
Speaker 2: hundred percent British organization working with British people and British
Speaker 2: funds for the rebuilding of Britain in a modern British way.
Speaker 2: So basically he just wants it to be made very clear.
Speaker 2: That he is definitely not Irish. From the foundation of
Speaker 2: the party until the outbreak of the Second World War,
Speaker 2: Joyce organized public meetings in London at which he disseminated
Speaker 2: Nazi propaganda, but he failed to attract many supporters. Joyce's
Speaker 2: meetings were mainly attended by hostile audiences. Joyce in flame
Speaker 2: matters by singing God Save the King as a means
Speaker 2: of ending each meeting, which was fairly customary across most
Speaker 2: political parties in Britain at the time, but Joyce would
Speaker 2: follow the national anthem by giving the Nazi salute and
Speaker 2: shouting the National Socialist League. Sure, yeah, see how that
Speaker 2: could come in nineteen thirty nine England.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're on the pulse man.
Speaker 2: The National Socialist League's lack of success meant that it
Speaker 2: was soon de registered as a political party, and Joyce
Speaker 2: re registered it as a drinking club. I didn't realize
Speaker 2: you could formally found one of them in Britain, but
Speaker 2: I suppose it's kind of like what the Proud Boys
Speaker 2: have now. So he became increasingly depressed about the looming
Speaker 2: prospect of war with Nazi Germany and was growing even
Speaker 2: more dependent on alcohol. His last public meeting of the
Speaker 2: National Socialist League in May of nineteen thirty nine ended
Speaker 2: in chaos, with Joyce stood on stage giving the Nazi
Speaker 2: salute and repeatedly screaming seek Hyle, before stage diving into
Speaker 2: his audience in an attempt to punch Heckler. Joyce was
Speaker 2: brought to court twice for assault, but neither case ever
Speaker 2: proceeded to trial. Sounds like a screwdriver, gig or something.
Speaker 2: In the autumn of nineteen thirty nine, as the threat
Speaker 2: of war with Nazi Germany loomed, the British government passed
Speaker 2: Regulation eighteen B to allow for the internment without trial
Speaker 2: of potential fascist fifth columnists. On the afternoon of twenty
Speaker 2: fourth of August nineteen thirty nine, Joyce received a phone
Speaker 2: call warning him that he's internment had been approved and
Speaker 2: that Five had been ordered to arrest him within forty
Speaker 2: eight hours. It is widely believed that the tip off
Speaker 2: to Joyce had come from Maxwell Knight, the head of
Speaker 2: I five, who not only was the main source of
Speaker 2: inspiration for the character m in Ian Flemings James Bond series,
Speaker 2: he was also former friend and comrade of Joyce's from
Speaker 2: their time together in the early years of the British fascisty,
Speaker 2: Joyce simply picked up the receiver and listened to the
Speaker 2: caller for some minutes without replying. He and his second wife, Margaret,
Speaker 2: then immediately left for London. When Special Branch of the
Speaker 2: London Metropolitan Police raided his flat four days later, they
Speaker 2: found Joyce's mother Gertrude and his mistress Sylvia Marris, both
Speaker 2: of whom he had chosen to abandon, along with his
Speaker 2: two daughters, whom he would never see again, because just
Speaker 2: one week later, when Britain declared war on Nazi Germany,
Speaker 2: Joyce was already safely in Berlin looking for a way
Speaker 2: to serve the Nazi war effort. William and Margaret Joyce
Speaker 2: arrived in the Third Reich without a plan. Joyce had
Speaker 2: not been in contact with the Nazis beforehand, and unlike
Speaker 2: Moseley's the UF, the Nazis had no idea who this
Speaker 2: guy was. The Joyces were quickly running out of money,
Speaker 2: and for a while it looked as if they would
Speaker 2: be interned as enemy aliens. But luckily for Joyce, some
Speaker 2: other British Nazi sympathizers had fled to Germany earlier and
Speaker 2: had established close ties with the Nazi regime. Through this network,
Speaker 2: Joyce got a job broadcasting propaganda to Britain. During World
Speaker 2: War II, the Nazis set up dozens of radio stations
Speaker 2: in a multitude of languages, broadcasting all over Europe. For example,
Speaker 2: Nazi propaganda was broadcast in minority indigenous languages such as Irish, Gaelic, Scott's,
Speaker 2: Gallic and Welsh in the hope of encouraging separatists in
Speaker 2: Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to rebel against the English
Speaker 2: dominated British government. In London, Joyce was given a job
Speaker 2: broadcasting in English to the populace of Britain and Ireland.
Speaker 2: Each night, he bombarded his audience with anti Semitic propaganda
Speaker 2: and assured them of the impending victory of Nazi Germany
Speaker 2: and urged the British to see peace terms. His broadcasts
Speaker 2: always began the same way, and I think we've were
Speaker 2: recording there the first one of how it starts. People
Speaker 2: haven't heard it before.
Speaker 3: Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany calling. Here are the rights
Speaker 3: in ambush Station Bremen and Station dx B.
Speaker 1: On the faty one meter Ben.
Speaker 3: You are about to hear our news in English. The
Speaker 3: British Ministry of Misinformation has been conducting a systematic campaign
Speaker 3: of frightening British women and girls about the danger of
Speaker 3: being injured by splinters from German bombs. The women have
Speaker 3: reacted to these suggestions and alarms by requesting their milliners
Speaker 3: to shape the spring and summer heads out of very
Speaker 3: thin tin plate which is covered with silk, velvet or
Speaker 3: other draping material.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so this was unbelievably successful. At the time,
Speaker 2: listening to Joyce's pro Nazi broadcast in Britain was not illegal,
Speaker 2: but it was very much discouraged. Nonetheless, his broadcasts were,
Speaker 2: as I said, of phenomenal success. At a time when
Speaker 2: official BBC news broadcasts had a radio listenership of eighteen
Speaker 2: million listeners, Nightly Joyce had a listenership of nine million.
Speaker 1: Okayce Britz.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's kind of giving the people what they want.
Speaker 2: It drew a large audience in part because it usually
Speaker 2: had more accurate war news than the heavily censored BBC.
Speaker 2: I mean, this guy can say anything he wants once
Speaker 2: it causes chaos in Britain. So he entertained them with
Speaker 2: humor at a time when BBC broadcasts were strictly scripted,
Speaker 2: stuffy and fairly boring. But most of all, he terrorized.
Speaker 2: He's fascinated listeners by sowing fear, doubt and demoralizing rumors
Speaker 2: aimed at undermining the British war effort. So at a
Speaker 2: time when there were thousands of British men serving in
Speaker 2: the Royal Navy or flying against the Luffaffe in the RAF,
Speaker 2: the BBC refused to report any war losses out of
Speaker 2: fear of demoralizing the nation and undermining the war effort.
Speaker 2: In an effective effort to fill this vacuum, Joyce regularly
Speaker 2: broadcast nightly lists of dead and captured British servicemen, and
Speaker 2: of course millions of people tuned in to learn if
Speaker 2: their husband's sons, fathers and brothers were mentioned.
Speaker 1: God, that's bleak, I mean, it's why Also that that's
Speaker 1: a bad propaganda idea, just pretending like nothing's bad happening
Speaker 1: while you're fighting a war. Like people will be aware
Speaker 1: that things are like, you know, they'll stop hearing from
Speaker 1: their loved ones. They'll see that, like the notes are
Speaker 1: going out to neighborhoods in town, Like you can't hide
Speaker 1: that sort of shit.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, And this is one of the things he does,
Speaker 2: like his most famous kind of catchphrase, One of the
Speaker 2: big British battleships is the Arc Royal. The guys on
Speaker 2: board it can't send home, you know, mail and stuff
Speaker 2: and the results kind of security opsec you know things,
Speaker 2: you know, they can't report much about it or what
Speaker 2: it's doing, or even if it's still a float or
Speaker 2: if it's been sunk. So Joyce's catchphrase that he'd repeat
Speaker 2: every few episodes was where is the Aarc Royal? Where
Speaker 2: is the act Royal? You don't know that we do,
Speaker 2: and we can sink it any time we choose. So
Speaker 2: he also specializes in informing like, think of what's happening
Speaker 2: in the early stages of the war. It just looks
Speaker 2: like rolling Nazi victory after Nazi victory, and he's happily
Speaker 2: broadcasting accurate information about it. And this is terrifying people
Speaker 2: in Britain. And he's saying stuff like, you know, and
Speaker 2: the invasion is coming Hitler the time, the hour, the place.
Speaker 2: These are Hitler's secrets. But bear in mind he is coming,
Speaker 2: will be with you. I'll be broadcasting from London soon.
Speaker 2: He also knew Britain very well because he had traveled
Speaker 2: all over England making speeches at different fascist rallies, and
Speaker 2: he exploited, like his brilliant photographic memory to strike fear
Speaker 2: into people, so he might broadcast to some English town saying,
Speaker 2: dear listener, in Sophie's Town, Robertshire, where miss Smith serves
Speaker 2: tea in the yellow Daw cafe, where the mallard swim
Speaker 2: and the duck pond off the village green, and the
Speaker 2: town hall pluck runs three minutes slow, And of course
Speaker 2: this made it seem like he had a local secret
Speaker 2: Nazi spy, or if he had just parachuted in yesterday,
Speaker 2: because he's describing the place so well when in fact
Speaker 2: he hadn't been there for years. And of course there's
Speaker 2: a very good chance that one thing that keeps coming
Speaker 2: up in these listeners is the detail about the clock
Speaker 2: being three minutes slow. And of course there's a very
Speaker 2: good chance that somebody locally had a watch that's three
Speaker 2: minute fast, and they look at the town hall clock
Speaker 2: and think, fuck, he's right, or else the town hall
Speaker 2: clock is two minutes slow, and people ignore the discrepancy
Speaker 2: when down, when they're down the pub or else somebody
Speaker 2: spread a conspiracy theory saying, ah, but the clock was
Speaker 2: three minutes slow yesterday. But then the Home Guard were
Speaker 2: sent in to synchronize the time to undermine Joyce. And
Speaker 2: of course all these rumors spread and it creates sheer panic,
Speaker 2: and there are some verified cases of Joyce's listeners actually
Speaker 2: being so terrified of his of his shows and the
Speaker 2: prospect of an immediate Nazi invasion, that they commit suicide.
Speaker 2: Joyce would announce that a specific armaments factory in some
Speaker 2: city would be bombed the following night, and of course
Speaker 2: what happens is it might be bombed coincidentally he doesn't
Speaker 2: know what the Love Draft are planning, or it might
Speaker 2: be bombed five nights later, and again people forget the discrepancy.
Speaker 2: It's like Alex Jones prediction. People just remember the hits
Speaker 2: and forget all the misses has or munitions. Workers will
Speaker 2: listen to the broadcasts and they just won't turn up
Speaker 2: at work the next day. They don't want to be bombed.
Speaker 2: And then the factory has to close, so the rumor
Speaker 2: goes out that, oh it's been closed, and that's why
Speaker 2: the bombing raid didn't arrive. So basically panic, fear and
Speaker 2: rumor filled the vacuum of information left in the wartime censorship.
Speaker 2: And that's of course what fascism drives on, you know,
Speaker 2: on fear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fear, isolation.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And he's so successful that the British government
Speaker 2: actually considers blocking the cross channel radio signal. But the
Speaker 2: problem is if they broadcast a block he's incoming broadcasts,
Speaker 2: they are also stopping their outgoing broadcasts and communications with
Speaker 2: the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, the OSS and
Speaker 2: the French Resistance and so on, so they can't do
Speaker 2: anything about it. And for the first few years he's
Speaker 2: broadcast Joyce through mained completely anonymous. He's nasal tone earned
Speaker 2: him the nickname Lord Hahall because of he's perceived haughty, haughty,
Speaker 2: posh Mayfair accent. Now Joyce, we don't know what kind
Speaker 2: of accent this guy had as a kid, because remember
Speaker 2: he's born either in America or in Ireland. Yes, father
Speaker 2: is Irish, his mother is English. And when he comes
Speaker 2: to when he comes to Britain and starts making political speeches,
Speaker 2: I mean he was from Galway. I'm from County Claire,
Speaker 2: which is the next county down. So like, you couldn't
Speaker 2: stand on a stage in Britain to give a political
Speaker 2: speech to the Conservative Party with my accent. You know,
Speaker 2: we jar with people, so he basically gets received pronunciation
Speaker 2: lessons and that is that's that's where the accent seems
Speaker 2: to come from. There's a myth that you'll find online
Speaker 2: and it's popular in Galway that remember remember I said
Speaker 2: in episode one about how he used to make speeches
Speaker 2: against the ira and against Bolshevism and stuff, and yeah,
Speaker 2: he was supposed to have gotten into a lot of fights.
Speaker 2: So there's a myth about it that some other kid
Speaker 2: broke his nose so badly that he had a nasal
Speaker 2: tone for the rest of his life, which.
Speaker 1: Is a great impossible not impossible I talked.
Speaker 2: To as in depth research for this. I phoned up
Speaker 2: a friend of mine who's a consultant optomologist and he said, no,
Speaker 2: that is, that is not really possible. And even if
Speaker 2: you can find early accounts of William Joyce, he always
Speaker 2: seemed to have a kind of nasal or high voice,
Speaker 2: even because.
Speaker 1: People always talked about him being yeah, well, yeah nice,
Speaker 1: you can still believe it. You can still believe it.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Eventually, when a Nazi victory seemed inevitable in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty one, Lord Haha, as he was known out of
Speaker 2: himself on air as William Joyce, ending years of feverish
Speaker 2: speculation as to his identity. People didn't and actually the
Speaker 2: term ha god applied. It's kind of like the dread
Speaker 2: Private Roberts. It gets applied to several different speakers. But
Speaker 2: Joyce is the guy who becomes Wesley. He's the guy
Speaker 2: who goes on to kind of personify it. So but
Speaker 2: the tide of war, of course, after he outs himself
Speaker 2: and the tide of public opinion soon change because with
Speaker 2: rapid Soviet Russian advances on the Eastern Front, the D
Speaker 2: Day Landings, the Allied reconquest of Africa, and the invasion
Speaker 2: of Italy, Lord haw Hall became less a figure of
Speaker 2: dread and more a figure of ridicule as he's in passion.
Speaker 2: Broadcasts about the inevitable Nazi victory rang more and more hollow.
Speaker 2: So Looney Tunes produced a cartoon called Tokyo Jokio as
Speaker 2: a piece of propaganda and is mocking the Japanese, but
Speaker 2: also features Joyce as Lord Heehaw, depicting him as a
Speaker 2: braying Nazi donkey at a microphone.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I remember this cartoon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the comment are the British Pathay who would
Speaker 2: produce newsreels also made like they start playing Joyce at
Speaker 2: his own game, and you know, doing comedy, which is
Speaker 2: something that you know, British Pathey and the BBC would
Speaker 2: never have have done before. But they have nasty Nazi
Speaker 2: news featuring Lord haw Haw and they depict him as
Speaker 2: a wealthy buffoon in the comedy clips, you know, going
Speaker 2: around saluting Hitler's picture on the wall and all this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. And they would show these before, you know,
Speaker 2: newsreels and movies in the in the cinema. And I
Speaker 2: think that we have an audio clip. There's also a
Speaker 2: song by the Western Brothers that is that is written
Speaker 2: about Lord Hahaw the Humbug of Hamburg, and I think
Speaker 2: I've sent you a link to that, Robert, maybe the
Speaker 2: forty first forty five seconds or as much. But as
Speaker 2: you can stand, because it's atrocious.
Speaker 1: This is not a banger, Okay, not a banger. All right,
Speaker 1: Well let's let's let's make that judgment for ourselves. Let's
Speaker 1: see how I feel about it. Maybe this guy's going
Speaker 1: to be my new my new obsession.
Speaker 4: Oh well, referring to this fellow, Lord hare Hole, this
Speaker 4: is Germany calling so Bin Tillero. Who is the chap
Speaker 4: who hits the high spot, the greatest comedian now of
Speaker 4: the lot, the definite radio star number one, the life
Speaker 4: of the party, the Bundle of Puth, Lord hall Hol,
Speaker 4: the Humburg of Hamburg, the bloke with the tonsils and
Speaker 4: tone his Hamburg. He raises in Hamburg. His top lip
Speaker 4: is quite overgrown, and yet in the winter it's rather pathetic.
Speaker 4: He's frozen to death cause his pants are synthetic. The
Speaker 4: whole hold the Humbug of Hamburg.
Speaker 2: Well do you think you could? You could, you could
Speaker 2: have proper someone dropped some beats behind us and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you could remix that into something good.
Speaker 3: No you.
Speaker 1: That also reminds me, but you mentioned a Pathay which
Speaker 1: distributed a movie. It's one of my favorite, like fringe
Speaker 1: little British comedies that has some like fake uh uh
Speaker 1: like comedy music bits like this in there that's made
Speaker 1: to sound like it's stuffed. From the forties. There's this
Speaker 1: film called Churchill The Hollywood Years with Christian Slater and
Speaker 1: nev Campbell, where Christian Slater plays Winston Churchill, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of like, there's this movie he made in
Speaker 1: the nineties called U five seventy one I think we
Speaker 1: made in the nineties, and it was basically it was
Speaker 1: about the capture of the Enigma machine by the British,
Speaker 1: but since it was an American movie, we just replaced
Speaker 1: all the British soldiers with Americans. So there's the bit
Speaker 1: in the movie is that like, no, no, no, all
Speaker 1: British heroes have been Americans throughout history, you know, like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a grand conspiracy to convince the British
Speaker 1: that they can have heroes, but it's really just Americans
Speaker 1: the whole time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is we get the British kind of stealing Irish celebrities.
Speaker 2: They come along and they say that, oh, sir Charon
Speaker 2: and she's Irish, or they'll say, you know, Brendan Leeson
Speaker 2: or Colin Farrell or someone. And the award winning Irish
Speaker 2: actress Brenda Fricker said, when you're when you win an oscar,
Speaker 2: they call you British, and when you're drunk in an
Speaker 2: airport they call you Irish. You know, was Daniel Day
Speaker 2: Lewis's mother in My Left Foot. That's the movie you
Speaker 2: want to ask her for?
Speaker 1: Oh? Okay, yeah good.
Speaker 2: I think I think we need to take our revenge
Speaker 2: by just stealing British successful British actors with no Irish
Speaker 2: heritage like Bennett, cumber Patch and just.
Speaker 1: I would say, you guys are already ahead because you
Speaker 1: have cale Meeni, obviously one of the greatest actors of
Speaker 1: all time, Chief O'Brien. He also beat the absolute shit
Speaker 1: out of James Bond in the movie Layer Cake, just
Speaker 1: really absolutely annihilated it.
Speaker 2: And of course the famous Star Trek episode with the
Speaker 2: United Ireland, which is very relevant. We've gone the sidetrack
Speaker 2: from Lord Star Trek.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I can talk about col Meani all day.
Speaker 1: But yes, let's get back to Lord Haha.
Speaker 2: Yes. Facing ridicule for his day job as a radio DJ,
Speaker 2: Joyce began increasingly turning his hand to writing propaganda leaflets
Speaker 2: in a failed attempt to recruit captured British prisoners of
Speaker 2: war as members of the British Free Corps or the
Speaker 2: British Free Corps, a unit of the SS. He also
Speaker 2: published a book on Anglo German relations entitled Damer Ubert
Speaker 2: England or Twilight Over England, which was promoted by the
Speaker 2: German Ministry of Propaganda. It has compared the alleged evils
Speaker 2: of supposedly Jewish dominated Britain with the purported wonders of
Speaker 2: Nazi Germany. The book was a publishing success, and it
Speaker 2: was reprinted three times. Doctor Joseph Goebbels was delighted with
Speaker 2: Joyce's propaganda efforts so much that he had Hitler bestowed
Speaker 2: the German war Merit Cross first Class on Joyce. However,
Speaker 2: Hitler did not bestow the medal in person, and though
Speaker 2: Goebbels was often in the same radio broadcast center as
Speaker 2: Joyce and regularly left him gift baskets of cigars and brandy,
Speaker 2: he never met him in person. He did refer to Joyce, however,
Speaker 2: as the finest horse in our stable, but he never
Speaker 2: regarded him as an equal. He never met Joyce to
Speaker 2: Shakey's hand or to pose for a photo with him.
Speaker 2: But he was a big fan of He's writing, so
Speaker 2: much so that in nineteen forty three he commissioned Joyce
Speaker 2: to write a detective novel. Now, Robert, I regret to
Speaker 2: inform you that when I looked in all the dark
Speaker 2: corners of the Internet was unable to find a copy
Speaker 2: of Joyce's weird Hitler fanfic Murderer.
Speaker 1: That's tragic.
Speaker 2: That's tragic, But I think it's remarkable that in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty three, as the Battle of you know, Stalingrad is
Speaker 2: coming to an end, Goebel's thought, Hey, I know what
Speaker 2: will turn the whole war efforts around. Let's commission the
Speaker 2: detective novel championing national socialist principles.
Speaker 1: That does make sense for these guys. I mean, Hitler
Speaker 1: sent a bunch of cowboy novels to his generals in
Speaker 1: the Ast Front when things were slowing down. They had
Speaker 1: a lot of faith in fiction.
Speaker 2: Well, Rabert, you some very talented listeners. So somebody wants
Speaker 2: to design a title and cover art for this send
Speaker 2: it on anyway. As the military and political situation went
Speaker 2: to shit in Nazi Germany in late nineteen forty four
Speaker 2: and early ninety five, so too did William and Margaret's marriage. Now,
Speaker 2: this had never been a Hollywood romance with a heavy
Speaker 2: dose of cheating, alcoholism, verbal shacking, domestic violence engaged in
Speaker 2: by boat spouses by now, but amazingly living in a
Speaker 2: war zone with almost nightly aerial bombardment, widespread food shortages,
Speaker 2: and increasing societal collapse actually made their relationship worse. The
Speaker 2: pair got divorced on the twelfth of August nineteen forty one,
Speaker 2: but later reunited and remarried almost immediately. As soon as
Speaker 2: they remarried, they just dive back into their previous toxic behaviors.
Speaker 2: Margaret started a long term affair with a Wehrmacht officer,
Speaker 2: and when he caught a bullet on the Eastern Front,
Speaker 2: she had a string of shorter affairs and one night stands,
Speaker 2: while Joyce fucked about every secretary who was willing in
Speaker 2: the radio center. And for some fucking reason, they just
Speaker 2: would not call it quits or go to therapy or
Speaker 2: marriage counseling, and they just seemed to take joy in
Speaker 2: making each other increasingly fucking miserable. Even towards the end
Speaker 2: of the war, Joyce, creepy fucker that he was began
Speaker 2: fantasizing again about Mary Ogilvy, the teenage students that he
Speaker 2: had cheated on his pregnant wife with when she was
Speaker 2: just fifteen or sixteen years old, and Joyce wrote in
Speaker 2: his diary quote I think I was luckier in the
Speaker 2: marriages I did not contract, then in those I did.
Speaker 2: The exception was Mary, with whom I am sure success
Speaker 2: would have been certain. In the last years and months
Speaker 2: of the war. Joyce is just pounding schnaps all day,
Speaker 2: every day, and he was such a dedicated Nazi that
Speaker 2: when he was offered extra food rations or extra pay
Speaker 2: because of his privileged position as a broadcaster, he doggedly
Speaker 2: refused to accept it. But he did, however, take all
Speaker 2: the cigarettes and snaps that he could get, and he
Speaker 2: was able to use his influence to dine out as
Speaker 2: often as possible in the Press Club, one of Berlin's
Speaker 2: few remaining functioning restaurants. One evening, he was coming home
Speaker 2: from the club and he had gotten so fucking cabbage
Speaker 2: drunk that he started a fist fight with one of
Speaker 2: the wardens in charge of the air raid shelter where
Speaker 2: he and Margaret were sheltering from an area on. So
Speaker 2: Roberts is strength for Boton in deutsch Land. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you know this, but the Germans are said
Speaker 2: to be pretty big on rules and discipline at the
Speaker 2: best of times. Yeah, and in the dying days of
Speaker 2: the Third Reich. They are not cool with anybody, including
Speaker 2: state employees like Joyce, assaulting air raid wardens, which they
Speaker 2: see as a subversive act, undermining the national role at
Speaker 2: the national morale and the Nazi war effort.
Speaker 1: Look, I very rarely say the Nazis have a point
Speaker 1: on this one, but you probably shouldn't start a fist
Speaker 1: fight with an air raid warden. That might be anti
Speaker 1: social behavior basically everywhere.
Speaker 2: Also, you should probably listen to their directions and take cover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, they're an air raid warden.
Speaker 2: Joyce wags up the following morning in prison with the
Speaker 2: mother of all hangovers and that he was a broadcaster
Speaker 2: and Nazi radio. He did not have enough influence to
Speaker 2: talk his way out of this situation. He did get bail,
Speaker 2: but was due to be brought to trial for undermining
Speaker 2: the war effort. Potential penalty if he was found guilty
Speaker 2: was death. Joyce's case did not go to trial because
Speaker 2: the night before he was due to appear in court,
Speaker 2: the RIF did him with favor of killing the judge
Speaker 2: and obliterating the court records in an air raid, leaving
Speaker 2: Joyce free to return to the airwaves for the remainder
Speaker 2: of his increasingly pointless broadcasting career. So this is the
Speaker 2: second time that Joyce has escaped a death sentence.
Speaker 1: But he really owes the favor here.
Speaker 2: But his luck is about to run out. But Roberts,
Speaker 2: do you know whose luck won't run.
Speaker 1: Out our sponsors?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not now absolutely.
Speaker 2: I remember your old ad pivot and the joke you
Speaker 2: had about the child hunting island with blue apron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you would always in trouble.
Speaker 2: You would always beep out blue apron. But for me,
Speaker 2: listening in Ireland, I wasn't familiar with blue apron. And
Speaker 2: it's the exact same length of time and syllables starting off.
Speaker 2: I always thought you were saying Bill Clinton's childhound.
Speaker 1: If you know, ifwhere, if these, if these emails have
Speaker 1: taught us anything, it's that he used someone else's child
Speaker 1: hunting island. He didn't maintain his own. That's not the
Speaker 1: way it works when you're the president.
Speaker 2: And we're back, okay. So the Joycees were evacuated from
Speaker 2: Berlin March of nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: Five to a time to get out of Berlin, yeah, to.
Speaker 2: A broadcasting station in Hamburg, and by April of nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five, it was clear to pretty much everyone that
Speaker 2: the Nazis had lost the war, but I continued to
Speaker 2: broadcast every night. He was repeatedly assured that he would
Speaker 2: not be captured by the Allies because the Nazis would
Speaker 2: take him and Margaret by submarine to Ireland, which had
Speaker 2: remained neutral during World War Two. The reality was that
Speaker 2: Hitler had a very packed schedule in April and May
Speaker 2: of nineteen forty five. He was running a government, fighting
Speaker 2: a war on two fronts, planning his fifty sixth birthday party,
Speaker 2: he had to get his favorite dog put to sleep.
Speaker 2: He was planning his wedding and two funerals, so he'd
Speaker 2: probably did not know who Joyce was, and any available
Speaker 2: submarines they had were being loaded with gold bars and
Speaker 2: looted Renaissance masterpieces, and if they were going anywhere, it
Speaker 2: was the South America with senior Nazis on board and
Speaker 2: not saving sailing to Ireland to save the Joyces. Joyce
Speaker 2: made his final broadcast on the thirtieth of April nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five, same day as Hitler's suicide. Joyce's last broadcast
Speaker 2: was a rambling monologue during which he was so rubber
Speaker 2: drunk that He slurred his words repeatedly and struggled to
Speaker 2: string sentences together. Joyce used this last opportunity to admonish
Speaker 2: Britain for declaring war on Germany and warned of the
Speaker 2: global menace that the USS or POST the whole world.
Speaker 2: So again, thankfully our recording of this survives. You just
Speaker 2: want to pay like I think the last forty five
Speaker 2: seconds of it, Robert.
Speaker 5: A tremendous, well shattering conflict.
Speaker 2: It's been way good. I would want to say. The
Speaker 2: men of Guy is a battle.
Speaker 5: Of Marrier, have liven their lives to show that whatever
Speaker 5: else happened, Germany will live. And never, I say you
Speaker 5: in these last word you may not hear from me
Speaker 5: again for a few minutes, I say, es leba goddam.
Speaker 1: I like that, And well, yeah, I think that's probably
Speaker 1: better enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah. How half hearted did that last hile Hitler sound, Robert?
Speaker 1: It does not sound motivated. It sounds like a guy
Speaker 1: who just got evacuated from Berlin in March of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five, and it is aware that, like, we lost
Speaker 1: about as badly as we could have lost.
Speaker 2: Yeah. After the fall of Berlin, Joyce fled to Flinnsburgh,
Speaker 2: where Hitler's successor, Admiral Donuts, had established a makeshift government
Speaker 2: and was busy teaching people how to show shout Hile
Speaker 2: Donuts whilst he plotted increasingly desperate strategy to try and
Speaker 2: keep the few steps scraps of territory that he had
Speaker 2: together under Nazi control as the Third Reich.
Speaker 1: And you had that work for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Four days after Joyce made his last broadcast, Nazi
Speaker 2: Germany surrendered and the British Army took control of the
Speaker 2: Hamburg Broadcasting Center. A German Jew named Horst Pincher, who
Speaker 2: had fled Nazi Germany for Britain at the age of seventeen,
Speaker 2: walked into Joyce's former studio and turned on the transmitter.
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Pincher had survived the D Day landing and was
Speaker 2: present at the liberation of Belzen. He picked up Joyce's
Speaker 2: old microphone and made this broadcast. This is Germany calling
Speaker 2: for the last time from Station Hamburg tonight. You will
Speaker 2: not hear William Joyce, or Lord Hawhaw, as he is
Speaker 2: known to most of us in Britain. He has been
Speaker 2: most unfortunately interrupted in his broadcasting career, and at present
Speaker 2: he has left Rader hurriedly for vacation, an extremely short
Speaker 2: vacation if the British Army has anything to do with it.
Speaker 2: After tonight's great news of the surrender of the German forces,
Speaker 2: I wonder what now our Lord Hawhaw's views on the news. Incredibly,
Speaker 2: just over three weeks later, the two met in person.
Speaker 2: William and Margaret Joyce were hiding in the town of Flinsburgh,
Speaker 2: near the German Danish border, in the hope of escaping
Speaker 2: to neutral Sweden. On the twenty eighth of May, Joyce
Speaker 2: left to search for some firewood with which to cook
Speaker 2: and keep the couple warm. Emerging from a forest clearing
Speaker 2: carrying a bundle of sticks, he was stopped when he
Speaker 2: met two British officers who were out on the same
Speaker 2: errand one was Pincher, who was accompanied by his commanding
Speaker 2: officer who had the most English name ever, Captain Bertie Licorice.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, wow wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's actually a British company, Bassetts, a sweet company
Speaker 2: like a candy company, who make licorice all sorts and
Speaker 2: have done for like one hundred years. And their their
Speaker 2: mascot is called Bertie the fuck that his parents given
Speaker 2: this name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's that's shockingly English.
Speaker 2: Let's let's also just pause here to remember that Joyce
Speaker 2: is literally carrying the symbol of fascism a bundle of
Speaker 2: sticks when he encounters.
Speaker 1: The British Army. Yeah, also that that facial scar is
Speaker 1: no longer doing him any favors, because he is pretty
Speaker 1: recognizable anyway.
Speaker 2: Joyce decides to bluff it out, and he pretends to
Speaker 2: be a displaced Belgium and speaks to the two British
Speaker 2: officers in French, shouting idea, which I'm told is the
Speaker 2: French for there is more firewood over here. So the
Speaker 2: trio collected some firewood together and exchanged a few pleasantries
Speaker 2: in German before Joyce broke into English. He began critiquing
Speaker 2: the two soldiers on their technique for gathering firewood, and
Speaker 2: then launched into an impromptu lecture on the difference between
Speaker 2: deciduous and coniferous trees, before starting on about which types
Speaker 2: of timber were the best fuel. Lieutenant Pincher later recalled
Speaker 2: he was insufferable. He would just not talking.
Speaker 1: Does he get himself caught because he's a fucking dry heard.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The more he spoke, the more his voice sounded familiar,
Speaker 2: and eventually our hero, Captain Bertie Licorice, grew suspicious and
Speaker 2: said to him, you you wouldn't happen to be William Joyce,
Speaker 2: would you choice immediately reached for a fake German passport
Speaker 2: he had.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't happen to be the British guy we're looking for,
Speaker 1: would you? You know, the one who's a huge asshole
Speaker 1: and as a scar on his face.
Speaker 2: Boss. So he reaches for the fake German German passport.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to get him out of it,
Speaker 2: but Lieutenant Pincher, thinking he was reaching for a weapon,
Speaker 2: immediately drew his own gun and shot Joyce twice. First
Speaker 2: bullet awesome, it gets better, lovers. The first bullet went
Speaker 2: through and through both cheeks of Joyce's ass. The second
Speaker 2: lodged in his shoulder and knocked him off he's feet.
Speaker 2: Neither wound looked fatal, but Pincher was immediately worried that
Speaker 2: he might have shot an innocent civilian. But when they
Speaker 2: searched him, as well as the German passport with a
Speaker 2: fake name, they found a Volkstorm Militia pass issued in
Speaker 2: the name of William Joyce, and they knew they had
Speaker 2: captured Lord Hall Joyce.
Speaker 1: Throw that thing out, man.
Speaker 2: Joyce was taken to hospital in a Royal Army Medical
Speaker 2: Corps ambulance. It was a memorable journey for Joyce, who
Speaker 2: lay in the back of the vehicle with four bullet
Speaker 2: wounds in his ass and another round lodged in his shoulder.
Speaker 1: Couldn't it happen to a nicer guy?
Speaker 2: It gets better. When the ambulance driver discovered who the
Speaker 2: wounded patient he had was, he drove as hard and
Speaker 2: as fast as he could, deliberately aiming the wheels of
Speaker 2: his vehicle at every rot, at every rot, pothole and
Speaker 2: shell crater he could find. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Pincher, who was
Speaker 2: guarding the wounded prisoner in the back of the vehicle,
Speaker 2: took great delight in revealing to him that the British
Speaker 2: Army officer who had shot him was in fact not
Speaker 2: an English Christian but a German Jew. In due course,
Speaker 2: Joyce was extradited to Britain, where he was put on
Speaker 2: trial for treason. Now Joyce was extradited the day after
Speaker 2: the Felony Treason Act, which was a medieval law, had
Speaker 2: been updated to make his prosecution more likely, a legal
Speaker 2: issue arose because of a lack of evidence. BBC had
Speaker 2: only kept transcripts and recordings of Joyce's Lord haw Hall
Speaker 2: radio broadcasts in the latter stage of the war, and
Speaker 2: Joyce became a German citizen in nineteen forty two, so
Speaker 2: after that point his support for Nazi Germany couldn't legally
Speaker 2: be considered a treason. They managed to find a police
Speaker 2: officer who claimed he had heard Joyce broadcasting in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine and had previously heard him at Fascist meetings,
Speaker 2: so he could identify the voice, but the problem is
Speaker 2: that hearsay evidence they couldn't play the recording in court.
Speaker 2: Matters were further complicated by the fact that Joyce was
Speaker 2: now claiming American citizenship, and of course the USA had
Speaker 2: been neutral until nineteen forty one. The British government's prosecution lawyer, however,
Speaker 2: was able to prove that Joyce had sworn allegiance to
Speaker 2: the British king when he joined the British Army to
Speaker 2: escape from Ireland in nineteen twenty two, and he had
Speaker 2: claimed the protection of the British crown when he traveled
Speaker 2: to Germany on a British passport. Just before the outbreak
Speaker 2: of war in nineteen thirty nine, and therefore had committed
Speaker 2: treason by making pro Nazi broadcast between thirty nine and
Speaker 2: forty two when he became a German citizen. At his trial,
Speaker 2: Joyce did not deliver an impassioned, rousing speech from the
Speaker 2: dock to defend his life. He merely spoke two words
Speaker 2: when entering a plea not guilty. After the death sentence
Speaker 2: was passed, he merely smiled and bowed his head, but
Speaker 2: otherwise remained silent. Joyce's last recorded words were mailed to
Speaker 2: his friend John McNabb, who had been a member of
Speaker 2: the National Socialist League. Quote, I do not, in the
Speaker 2: most infinitesimal degree regret what I have done for me
Speaker 2: underlined there was nothing else to do. I am proud
Speaker 2: to die for what I have done. I shall not
Speaker 2: die in vain and suspect my service in dying maybe
Speaker 2: greater than my service in living. May it be so
Speaker 2: so A Nazi to the end. There is another cool
Speaker 2: story about him that when they hanged him, that the
Speaker 2: facial scar actually burst open because of the pressure, which
Speaker 2: is a very cool story and I was going to include,
Speaker 2: but again until I talked to my friend, the consultant optomologist,
Speaker 2: and he said, no, scar tissue was incredibly strong. There
Speaker 2: is no way that happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd have to get something like a scurvy or
Speaker 1: whatever to exactly that happened.
Speaker 2: Again, great story. There's loads that about Joyce everywhere. But anyway,
Speaker 2: Joyce was executed by hanging at Wandwert Prison on the
Speaker 2: third of January nineteen forty six. If he made a
Speaker 2: speech from the gallows, it was not recorded by his executioner,
Speaker 2: Albert Pierpoint, who had also executed Irma Greece and other
Speaker 2: Nazi war criminals convicted at Nuremberg. Joyce's body was initially
Speaker 2: buried in an unmarked grave within the prison walls, but
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies his eldest daughter, Heather, began a
Speaker 2: successful campaign to get his body exhumed. Nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: it was reinterred at Bohmore Cemetery in Galway City. His widow, Margaret,
Speaker 2: had vowed to William Joyce one of her last prison
Speaker 2: letters to him that she would write his biography after
Speaker 2: he's martyrdom. When she died in nineteen seventy two, all
Speaker 2: she left as a manuscript were a few scant biographical
Speaker 2: details about Joyce scribbled on a piece of cardboard. That
Speaker 2: didn't prevent Joyce, however, becoming an inspiration to new generations
Speaker 2: of Nazis. First editions of Joyce's book Twilight Over England
Speaker 2: are collector's items, often prized by neo Nazis and sell
Speaker 2: for up to ten thousand dollars online today. In the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell inspired
Speaker 2: Terry Byrne, an overweight Irish house painter who lived with
Speaker 2: his mom in Dublin, to found the Irish Nazi Party.
Speaker 2: Burne said yeah. Burne said that his political heroes were
Speaker 2: Adolf Hitler and William Joyce. Like he's hero, Commander Byrne was,
Speaker 2: like Joyce, repeatedly stabbed on more than one occasion by
Speaker 2: anti fascist opponents in the IRA, but incredibly he survived
Speaker 2: until the nineteen eighties. For almost twenty years, he echoed
Speaker 2: Joyce by continually encouraging his followers to harassed Dublin's tiny
Speaker 2: Jewish community and attacked Jewish owned businesses there. Joyce also
Speaker 2: remains popular on the British phara right scene. Members of
Speaker 2: the British Neo Nazi Movement, or sorry, the Neo Nazi
Speaker 2: British Movement, founded by Rockwell's English pal Colin Jordan, who
Speaker 2: incidentally was once convicted of shoplifting women's underwear, visited Joyce's
Speaker 2: grave in Galway City earlier this year. To Lao reached
Speaker 2: him on the anniversary of his execution. So that Robert
Speaker 2: is the Nazi bastard I have for you, he continues. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he continues to inspire hate from beyond the grave. But hey,
Speaker 2: at least he eventually got what he deserved after he
Speaker 2: was brought to justice by a Jewish refugee who shot
Speaker 2: him in the ass. So I consider that a happy end.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know what, We so rarely get a happy
Speaker 1: ending like this, where it's like, and then the Nazi died,
Speaker 1: and then the Nazi was killed, you know, before he
Speaker 1: could get rehabilitated or enjoy a peaceful life. He just
Speaker 1: somebody took that fucker out. And that's nice, that's happy.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to hear that.
Speaker 2: There's your Christmas wish, Robert.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, well, what a beautiful story. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I think that's going to do it for us. Do
Speaker 1: you want to plug your pluggables down at the end here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my pluggable really is my book Burned Them Out.
Speaker 2: It is a history of fascism and the far right
Speaker 2: in Ireland. It's published by Bloomsbury head of Zeus. So
Speaker 2: just google burn them Out Fascism Ireland and it should
Speaker 2: come up. And yeah, if you convite us, that would
Speaker 2: be great. Thank you very much, Mila Margat excellent.
Speaker 1: All right, well, thank you so much. And yeah, everybody,
Speaker 1: that has been our week. We're back next week with
Speaker 1: another piece of shit who probably lives a long life
Speaker 1: and dies in bed or is still alive one of
Speaker 1: the two. But at least this week there was a
Speaker 1: happy ending.
Speaker 6: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 6: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
Speaker 6: dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 6: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Speaker 6: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
Speaker 6: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 6: at Behind the Bastards