Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Lord Haw-Haw: Hitler's Favorite Anglo Propagandist

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Padraig explains how Lord Haw-Haw became an agent of the Third Reich...and how it all came crashing down for him at the end of the war.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. And this week, we are on part two of our episodes on Lord Hawa. And this is Reverse Bastards. I am sitting in the guest chair this week. And our host and topic expert is Patrick O'Rourke. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for doing this. And yeah, I'm excited to see how this guy becomes the mouthpiece of the German fascist movement in the UK.
Starting point is 00:00:36 Thanks very much, Robert. I hope, and thanks for having me back. I hope in part one your ears aren't bleeding from all my terrible British impressions that I'm not loading them on too thick. They're much better than mine. My poor wife is upstairs putting the kids to bed and they can hear me doing the accents. So now both of my sons are like doing their best attempts at power. British accents and terrifying their poor mother. Just absolute hell for her.
Starting point is 00:01:03 Absolutely. So she has it in surround sound. Anyway, so we're back for more bastardry. What do you think you're excited for Joyce's escapade so far and see where he's going to end up right? Sure. Yeah. So IHeart's lawyers reached out to me after the last recording
Starting point is 00:01:19 and demanded I make no more Prince Andrew Joe, so no sweat. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human A new true crime podcast from Tenderfoot TV in the city of Mance in Belgium women began to go missing it was only after their dismembered remains began turning up in various places
Starting point is 00:01:42 that residents realized a sadistic serial killer was lurking among them. The murders have never been solved. Three decades later we've unearthed new evidence Le Monstre Season 2 is available now. Listen for free on the iHeart Radio Ave
Starting point is 00:01:58 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Explain the mash-up that occurs around the OK Corral. How in the world is it Doc Holliday's business? In episode 799 of the Meat Eater podcast, host Stephen Rinella talks with author and Old West historian Mark Lee Gardner. Whenever there was a posse form, Doc Holliday was always there to help out. So he's like, I'm sick, I'm half dead, I'd love to throw in. So he just gets excited when there's a posse. It's like your buddy drew a tag, you know.
Starting point is 00:02:25 Listen to the Meat Eater podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people. Horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way to the airline is. The most Texas story ever.
Starting point is 00:02:58 Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me. In season two of Rip Current, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Berry and why? They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging
Starting point is 00:03:18 logging equipment in the woods. She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage. episodes of RipCurrent season two are available now listen on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts returning to this week's bastardars william joyce when we left at the end of part one all of his political projects that he had ever gotten involved in had ended in disaster the early 1930s he was an insignificant and
Starting point is 00:03:55 an embittered high school teacher spouting conspiracy theories to anyone who would listen, whilst cheating on his wife with one of his students. When he found another would be Messiah, enter stage right, Sir Oswald Mosley. Now, regular listeners to the podcast will know that Oswald, Tommy Mosley, six foot two, was a British aristocrat who became the youngest ever sitting member of parliament in the 1918 British general election. Roberts, did you know that in the mid-1920s, Mosley was a fishing buddy of future American president FDR?
Starting point is 00:04:33 I did not know that. Yeah. I just sent you an email there with a photo if you want to open it up. This is their beach party. How would you describe this to the listeners? It looks like a Christian rock album cover. It looks like a Christian rock album cover. What would they call their band?
Starting point is 00:04:52 Oh my God, geez, I don't know. Yeah, the apostles, I don't know what you do. It looks like, I don't know how else to describe it. Like, you have, I think that's FDR there in the middle who's like sitting in the water with his arms up in like a prayer gesture. You have, which one of those? Is that Crosby in the right? Or is that Mosley? I think that's Mosley, yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:21 he's like half kneeling with again his hands up in prayer and then the third guy crosbie i guess is laying on his back with his legs in the air and they're all just kind of like flat against like right in the like the tide pool level of the ocean it looks like um can you imagine the kind of selfies they would have taken if they had had smartphones no no no but it would have gotten them all canceled like fDR would never have been the precedent they would have all gotten in horrible trouble yeah basically moseley's first wife Lady Cynthia Curzon was totally fucking famous. She was the daughter of a really famous British Lord. So that's probably how they met. But they vacations get her for a month in Florida in February of 1926. However, their budding political
Starting point is 00:06:07 bromance fell apart when the two men adopted radically different positions on Hitler. FDR would end up being... Not a fan. Yeah, would definitely end up being anti-Hitler while Mosley remained very much pro-Hitler. So much so that in 1932, Moseley founded the British Union of Fascists or BUF.
Starting point is 00:06:28 Sure did. And you've done, I think, two episodes on this guy, Robert, or three even. So obviously check those out, listeners, if you want more on Moseley. Mosley attempted to merge all of the veterans of the nasient fascist movement in the UK together in the BUF. Now, the British Union of Fascists or BUF was heaven. influenced by Italian fascists. The BUF's uniform consisted of a black fencing jacket and black trousers. The BUF also adopted the so-called Roman salute. In the 1920s, the Italian fascists were the first political movement to adopt the salute, which was later made famous by the Nazis and recently
Starting point is 00:07:11 brought back into vogue by Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk. Mosley's black shirts adopted the salute but added their own unique British element to the gesture by shouting PJ whilst giving it, short not for pajamas, but perish Judah. The motto of Mosley's new organisation was loyalty to the king and empire and the building of the Greater Britain. And of course, William Joyce loved all of this and he joined immediately. Throughout his life, Joyce had one phenomenal godlike talent, which he used frequently, but never used for good. He was an incredible orator, a unique talent, possibly one of the greatest speakers of his generation. He could speak without notes for several hours, if necessary, without faltering or
Starting point is 00:08:02 losing his train of thought once. At one BUF rally in Ivesham, he spoke for over four hours with one enraptured onlooker commenting, people stayed for the whole length of the speech out of sheer curiosity to see how long you could keep it up. There wasn't a lot going on back then. They didn't have Netflix or anything, you know? There wasn't. It was easy to keep people in a line. Yeah, everyone, political opponents, rivals in the fascist movement,
Starting point is 00:08:33 everyone agrees this man is an incredible speaker. The journalist, Cecil Roberts, who witnessed him speak, recalled, quote, I have been a connoisseur of speech-making for over a quarter of a century but never before had I met a personality so terrifying in its dynamic force
Starting point is 00:08:50 so vituperative so vitriolic the words poured from him in a corrosive state we listened in a kind of frozen hypnotism to his cold stabbing voice there was a gleam of marat in his eyes and his eloquence
Starting point is 00:09:06 took on a satanic ring with which he invoked the rising rat of his audience against the festering scum, who by cowardice and sloth had reduced the British Empire to a Marabound thing. So Joyce's fame as a speaker spread well beyond the BUF and even political opponents came to here. One such was John Beckett, former Labour Party member of Parliament. Quote, I first saw him in 1933 at a crowded meeting at Paddington Bats. I had left political life and the Labour Party in disgust two years previously. But within ten minutes of this 27-year-old taken the platform, I knew he was one of the finest orators in the country. He had the trade unionist
Starting point is 00:09:54 and Labour MP Philip Snowden's close reasoning and unnering instinct for words, combined with the Scottish pacifist James Maxton's humour and the Conservative Winston Churchill's daring. His great audience assembled to hear a speaker quite unknown in the political world, and the enthusiasm he created was an eye-opener for me. Beckett was the son of a Christian father and a Jewish mother. He had come to the meeting as a curious left-wing opponent, and he departed a committed fascist and soon joined the BUF after hearing Joyce speak. That's a rare unholy talent. Joyce's oratory brilliance led his fellow black shirts hailing him.
Starting point is 00:10:37 as, quote, the mighty atom, the master, the professor, and most chillingly, the man without a soul. Yeah, I mean, they, like, the bootlicking goes down all the way with these people, right? Like, they're, that's kind of key to the fascist things. You have to have someone that you're, like, embarrassingly dick writing for. And in this case, like, that's what it means to be a leader within these movements is to have a bunch of people making up the most cringe-worthy praise. nicknames for you, they possibly could. It's the old time the equivalent of fucking having an AI make Donald Trump look
Starting point is 00:11:13 jacked. Yeah, the man without his soul. The only other nickname I can compare it to from the time is Hitler calling Reinhardt, Hydrich. The man with the iron heart. The man with the iron heart, yeah. Yeah, man. Anyway, amongst Mosley's
Starting point is 00:11:29 adoring fascist fans was Margaret White, an organizer of the women's section of the BUF, and within days of first meeting, the two began an affair. Joyce eventually dumped his first wife, Hazel, to take Margaret as his second wife. His pet name for her was Mother Sheep, and she in turn referred to him lovingly as the old ram. Margaret later boasted that she was like a dom and Joyce was her sub, and that he was pathologically devoted to her. She did not know, of course, that Joyce, true to form,
Starting point is 00:12:02 soon started an affair with another fascist fan girl named Sylvia Morris. So, these two Margaret and William Joyce are just one of the most toxic couples ever, and they both constantly cheat on the other. Now look, I'm not judging people if that's their thing, open marriages as a couple or whatever. If that's your thing, fine. But according to their joint biographer Nigel Farndale, this was done by each of them without the consent of the other. Part of the point was that they were cheating on each other. That was important to both of them, that they be cheating. Yeah. presumably that gives them the trill or whatever.
Starting point is 00:12:39 She was constantly cuckolding him and altered between pouring affection on him, mocking him, making him sexually jealous and frustrated. He responded by screaming verbal abuse at her, conducting his own illicit affairs, and inflicting occasional bouts of domestic violence on her. The fact that both of them were increasingly dysfunctional alcoholics
Starting point is 00:13:00 did not help matters. In their very, very fucked up relationship, which just got increasingly worse, the longer they were together. Yeah, that scans. That makes sense. Now, Mosley himself was no stranger to extramarital affairs, mistresses, and multiple spouses. And he also, of course, shared Joyce's talent for oratory.
Starting point is 00:13:22 Mosley appointed Joyce, the BUF's director of propaganda, which was a full-time paid position. It paid about £300 per year at a time when the average construction worker would have made about £130 pounds for years. So he's doing quite well off. And this allows Joyce to quit his teaching job and default himself full-time to politics. Mosley, of course, never joined in the adulation for Joyce, even though he respected his abilities.
Starting point is 00:13:54 He referred to Joyce as the little man. Now, for reference, Oswald, Tommy Mosley, as we know, was six foot two, whilst Joyce was just five foot five. And as Mosley's catty nickname for Joyce, applies, the two men had a fraught hyper-parasitic relationship, which was the best term I could find online to describe their dynamic. Okay.
Starting point is 00:14:16 Not a psychologist, but they're just two guys who were grifting off each other in an unending competition. Whilst Joyce had been drawn to the leader, or Mosley, by his strong man image and the promise of a new fascist British Empire, he felt that Mosley was too soft on the Irish question. because Mosley was not calling for the British Army to re-invade Southern Ireland. On a political level, Mosley admired Joyce's manic energy, his intelligence and dedication to the BUF, but an issue arose because of Joyce's fanatical, uncompromising,
Starting point is 00:14:54 an unhinged anti-Semitic rhetoric. As the BUF grew in popularity, its public image was increasingly tarnished by a wave of anti-Semitic attacks by the BUF in the East End of London, and of course the rising tide of anti-Jewish violence and pogroms in Nazi Germany. In response to this, Moseley turned down his own anti-Semitic remarks and repeatedly had to urge Joyce to do the same. And let's face it, you have a serious problem
Starting point is 00:15:23 if Oswald Mosley, the British Hitler, is telling you to dial down the anti-Jewish stuff. Yeah, yeah, you're going a little hard, man. Mosley, on a personal level, was wary of Joyce's popularity within the movement, and he viewed him as a potential threat. He's leadership. Regular bastards. It's one of the weaknesses these movements always have. When you have two guys who are really good at the whole being charismatic thing, they
Starting point is 00:15:48 inevitably fall out, right? You can't have two furors. Yeah, they love a good furor fight. Regular bastards bad listeners will recall that Mosley served in World War I as a member of the Royal Flying Corps, and he had crashed his airplane whilst doing a loop-de-loop to show off his mother. sister who are watching him fly an aeroplane in an aerobatic display. As a result of this self-inflicted war wound, Mosley developed phlebiatus in his leg, which
Starting point is 00:16:17 flared up from time to time. On one occasion, phlebiatus was so painful that he was not able to walk or stand to deliver a speech at a major black shirt rat. What is phlebitis? Because my only reference point is a joke they made with the Nixon character on Futurama. What are we talking about here? It's basically if you get a, now, not a medical doctor, but my understanding, because I looked it up for this, is if you get a broken bone and it doesn't heal properly, it can affect the nerves in the area around it and the nerves and the muscle can swell. So your leg could swell up so much so that it's painful to move the joint. Gotcha. Again, not a medical doctor, but that's what I could figure out from a quick, a quick, a quick, good.
Starting point is 00:17:05 Google, P-H-L-E-B-I-T-I-S. Don't take my word first. Go Google it yourself or ask your physician. Or say the word while doing a Nixon accent. You'll appreciate why it's such a good bit. Okay, I'm imagining that now. On one occasion, it was so painful he was not able to walk or stand to deliver a speech at a major black shirt rally.
Starting point is 00:17:29 Joyce took his place at the last moment, giving a rousing oration as good, if not better than anything Mosley could have delivered. Joyce was such a good stand-in that Mosley increasingly saw him as a threat and was now determined to keep the little man in line or to get rid of him altogether. Mosley got the opportunity to dismiss Joyce in late 136 in the wake of the fascist defeat at the Battle of Cable Street. Between 1933 and 1936, Mussolini had sent Mosley, a secret annual stipend of 60,000 pounds per annum. Again, remember... Jesus. Yeah. Jesus had not...
Starting point is 00:18:10 That's a lot of money back then. Yeah, it's... You're talking again, 130 pounds for a construction worker's annual wage, and Mosley is getting 60 grand. Yeah, that's a shitload back then. Yeah, so it gets laundered to Mosley through the London Bank account of William Allen, who's a former Belfast loyal.
Starting point is 00:18:30 member of parliament who had joined the British Union of Fascists. But after the Battle of Cable Street, Mussolini regarded Mosley as a failure and he cut off the funds in 1937. Though Mosley did later get financial support
Starting point is 00:18:48 from the Nazis, it never matched Mussolini's generosity. And this left Mosley in financial difficulty. So when he announced cutbacks, the very first thing that had to go was the BUS Department of Propaganda, which Joyce had been director of with an annual salary of £300. The loss of this wage was the last draw for Joyce, who already was suspicious that Mosley
Starting point is 00:19:11 was, quote, too soft on the Jewish question. So, in 1937, Joyce adopted Friend of the Pod Adolf Hitler as his new political Messiah, and he left the BUF to form his own organization called the National Socialist League with John Beckett, the secretly half-Jewish former socialist MP that I mentioned earlier. Now, Robert, what is the one thing that the Nazis in particular have always been streets ahead of compared to other political movements? I mean, I guess I would say, like, turning political violence into electoral success. Yeah, that's one thing.
Starting point is 00:19:52 I was thinking more along the lines of style. Oh my God. Yeah, the outfits. Jesus Christ. They looked so, I mean, fucking just look at the fascists we're dealing with today. Like, like, yeah. And honestly, Mussolini's brow, Mussolini, not a great looking movement, you know, weird looking outfits. But the Nazis, they had tailors. They had it. Hugo Boss was making their uniforms, yeah. So I think again of how powerful the swastka was as a symbol. And I think you covered this before. And think of, of how evil, cool, and genocidely stylish the SS look in their black uniforms. Yeah, and that was a big reason why people join them, right? You get a lot of early SSmen were like, well, I thought the uniforms looked cool. Yeah. Like that kind of, my politics descended from me wanting to look cool. Off many such cases, unfortunately.
Starting point is 00:20:45 That's it. So speaking of brilliant symbolism and style, I have sent you the, if you look in the emails, the logo that William Joyce designed for the National Socialist League. Yes. So I'm looking at it, and honestly, it looks more like the logo for a Pray Away the Gay Camp. There's a bunch of, like, I know what it's supposed to be. It looks like about four to six rolling pins are forming like almost like a Star of David type design with like a blue circle around them and then the word steer straight. underneath it. I know that
Starting point is 00:21:25 the rolling pins are actually supposed to be like a ship's wheel. What with England and the Navy being such a big deal. But just the whole steer straight thing, it looks like it's a, it looks like a pray away the gay camp logo, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, think of it, even steer
Starting point is 00:21:41 straight as a motto, like the Nazis have Deutsche and Ervach, you know, Germany awake, and these guys have steer straight. But Robert, do you know who else has a dog shit logo? Well, I mean, look, It was a long time ago when we got the logo for this podcast. It's done all right for us.
Starting point is 00:22:00 I was going to say not the sponsors of this podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good logos only, unless it's the Washington State Highway Patrol again. Ads. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse. and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed.
Starting point is 00:22:26 We have some breaking news to tell you about. Tennessee's attorney general is suing a Nashville doctor. In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight and trapped behind locked doors were more than a thousand frozen embryos. I was terrified. Out of all of our journey, that was the worst moment ever. At that point, it didn't occur to me what fight was going to come to follow. But this story isn't just about a few families' futures.
Starting point is 00:22:55 It's about whether the promise of modern fertility care can be trusted at all. It doesn't matter how much I fight. Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to what happened in Nashville on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1997, in Belgium, 37 female. body parts, placed in 15 trash bags, or found at dump sites with evocative names like the
Starting point is 00:23:27 path of worry, dump road, and fear creek. Terrible discoveries of Saturday, investigators made a new discovery yesterday afternoon of the torso of a woman. Investigators believe it is the work of a serial killer. Despite a sprawling investigation, including assistance from the American FBI, the murders have never been solved. Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence. and new suspects. We felt like we were in the presence of someone who was going to the grave with nightnourish secrets.
Starting point is 00:23:59 From Tenderfoot TV and IHard Podcasts, this is La Monsre Season 2, The Butcher of Mons, available now. Listen for free on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb explode, in the front seat of environmental activist Judy Berry's car. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded.
Starting point is 00:24:27 I felt it ripped through me with just a force more powerful and terrible than anything that I could describe. In season two of Rip Current, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Barry and why? She received death threats before the bombing. She received more stress after the bombing. The man and woman who were heard had planned to lead a summer of militant protest
Starting point is 00:24:48 against logging practices in Northern California. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture, it was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here.
Starting point is 00:25:18 This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988, to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse.
Starting point is 00:25:54 He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he would have this little practice, to the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionous History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, in 1938, Joyce hoped that his movement with a shitty ship's wheel logo would grow to replace Mosley's and that he would become the future British furor. The problem was that Mosley had 40,000 black shirts, whilst Joyce's splinter group had just 40.
Starting point is 00:26:42 One former comrade from the BUF came to see Joyce and Beckett speaking one day and recalled, quote, they were at a street corner with Joyce standing on a platform and speaking from it with Beckett, the only spectator pretending to be an opposition heckler. It was their way of trying to attract some controversy and to generate an audience for their open-air meeting. What a terrible come-down it was from the great BUF meetings, attended by thousands that I had seen these men speaking at. So Joyce writes the party's policy document entitled National Socialism Now, in which he declared his devotion to Hitler, but stressed that an indigenous form of Nazism was required for Britain.
Starting point is 00:27:32 Quote, we are the only 100% British organization working with British people and British funds for the rebuilding of Britain in a modern British way. So basically he just wants it to be made very clear that he is definitely not Irish. From the foundation of the party until the outbreak of the Second World War,
Starting point is 00:27:55 Joyce organized public meetings in London at which he disseminated Nazi propaganda, but he failed to attract many supporters. Joyce's meetings were mainly attended by hostile audiences. Joyce, in flame matters by singing God save the king as a means of ending each meeting,
Starting point is 00:28:12 which was fairly customary across most political parties in Britain at the time. But Joyce would follow the national anthem by giving the Nazi salute and shouting, Heil Hitler! The National Socialist League. Sure. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:25 See how that goes down in 1939, England. Yeah. Finger on the pulse, man. The National Socialist League's lack of success meant that it was soon deregistered as a political party, and Joyce re-registered it as a drinking club. I didn't realize you could formally found one of them in Britain,
Starting point is 00:28:45 but I suppose it's kind of like what the proud boys have now. Yeah. So he became increasingly depressed about the looming prospect of war with Nazi Germany and was growing even more dependent on alcohol. His last public meeting of the National Socialist League in May of 1939 ended in chaos when Joyce stood on stage,
Starting point is 00:29:07 giving the Nazi salute and repeatedly screaming Siegheil before stage diving into his audience in an attempt to punch a heckler. Joyce was brought to court twice for assault, but neither case ever proceeded to trial. Sounds like a screwdriver gig or something. Yeah. In the autumn of 1939,
Starting point is 00:29:28 as the threat of war with Nazi Germany loomed, the British government passed Regulation 18B to allow for the internment without trial of potential fascist fifth columnists. On the afternoon of 24th of August, 1939, Joyce received a phone call, warning him that his internment had been approved and that MI5 had been ordered to arrest him within 48 hours.
Starting point is 00:29:54 It is widely believed that the tip-off to Joyce had come from Maxwell Knight, the head of MI5, who not only was the main source of inspiration for the character M in Ian Fleming's James Bond, series, he was also a former friend and comrade of Joyce's from their time together in the early years of the British fascistee. Joyce simply picked up the receiver and listened to the caller for some minutes without replying. He and his second wife Margaret then immediately left for London. When Special Branch of the London Metropolitan Police raided his flat four days later,
Starting point is 00:30:29 they found Joyce's mother Gertrude and his mistress Sylvia Morris, both of whom he had chosen to abandon, along with his two daughters who he would never see again. Because just one week later, when Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, Joyce was already safely in Berlin looking for a way to serve the Nazi war effort.
Starting point is 00:30:51 William and Margaret Joyce arrived in the Third Reich without a plan. Joyce had not been in contact with the Nazis beforehand, and unlike Mosley's B.U.F., the Nazis had no idea who this guy was. The Joyce's were quickly running out of money and for a while it looked as if they will be interned as
Starting point is 00:31:11 enemy aliens. Luckily for Joyce, some other British Nazi sympathizers had fled to Germany earlier and had established close ties with the Nazi regime. Through this network, Joyce got a job broadcasting propaganda to Britain. During World War II, the Nazis set up dozens of radio stations in a multitude of languages broadcasting all over Europe. For example, Nazi propaganda was broadcast in minority indigenous languages, such as Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic and Welsh, in the hope of encouraging separatists in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to rebel against the English-dominated British government in London. Joyce was given a job broadcasting in English to the populace of Britain and Ireland. Each night, he bombarded his audience with anti-Semitic propaganda and assured them of the impending victory of Nazi Germany, and urge the British to seek peace terms.
Starting point is 00:32:08 His broadcasts always began the same way. I think we've recorded there the first one of how it starts. If no, people haven't heard it before. Germany calling. Germany calling. Germany calling. Here are the Reichsendor Ambush Station Bremen and Station DXB on the 31 meter bend. You are about to hear our news in English.
Starting point is 00:32:34 The British Ministry of Misinformation has been conducting a systematic campaign or frightening British women and girls about the danger of being injured by splinters from German bombs. The women have reacted to these suggestions and alarms by requesting their milliners to shape the spring and summer hands
Starting point is 00:32:57 out of very thin tin plate which is covered with silk, velvet or other draping material. Okay. Yeah. So, this was unbelievably successful at the time. Listening to
Starting point is 00:33:14 Joyce's pro-Nazi broadcasts in Britain was not illegal, but it was very much discouraged. Nonetheless, his broadcast were, as I said, a phenomenal success at a time when official BBC news broadcasts had a radio listenership
Starting point is 00:33:30 of 18 million listeners, was nightly, Joyce had a listenership of 9 million. Okay. Joyce. Yeah. So he's kind of giving the people what they want.
Starting point is 00:33:42 It drew a large audience in part because it usually had more accurate war news than the heavily censored BBC. I mean, this guy can say anything he wants once it causes chaos in Britain. So he entertained them with humor at a time when BBC broadcasts
Starting point is 00:33:59 were strictly scripted, stuffy and fairly boring. But most of all, he terrorised he's fascinated listeners by sowing fear, doubt and demoralising rumours aimed at undermining the British war effort. So
Starting point is 00:34:15 at a time when there were thousands of British men serving in the Royal Navy or flying against the Luftwaffe in the RAF, the BBC refused to report any war losses out of fear of demoralising the nation and undermining the war effort. In
Starting point is 00:34:31 an effective effort to fill this vacuum, Joyce regularly broadcast nightly lists of dead and captured British servicemen and, of course, millions of people tuned in to learn if their husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers were mentioned. God, that's bleak. I mean, it's why also that that's a bad propaganda idea, just pretending like nothing's bad happening while you're fighting a war. Like, people will be aware that things are, like, you know, they'll stop hearing from their loved ones.
Starting point is 00:34:59 they'll see that, like, the notes are going out to neighborhoods in town. Like, you can't hide that sort of shit, really. Yeah, and this is one of the things he does. Like, he's most famous kind of catchphrase, one of the big British battleships is the Ark Royal. And, of course, the guys on board it can't send home, you know, mail and stuff. And there's all kind of security, obsec, you know, things, you know, they can't report much about it or what it's doing. Or even if it's still afloat or if it's been sunk. So Joyce's catchphrase that he'd repeat every few episodes was,
Starting point is 00:35:32 where is the Ark Royal? Where is the Ark Royal? You don't know, but we do. And we can sink it any time we choose. So he also specializes in informing, like, think of what's happening in the early stages of the war. It just looks like rolling Nazi victory after Nazi victory. And he's happily broadcasting accurate information about it.
Starting point is 00:35:55 And this is terrifying people in Britain. saying stuff like, you know, the invasion is coming. Hitler, the time, the hour, the place, these are Hitler's secrets, but bear a mind he is coming, we'll be with you, I'll be broadcasting from London soon.
Starting point is 00:36:12 He also knew Britain very well because he had travelled all over England making speeches at different fascist rallies and he exploited his brilliant photographic memory to strike fear into people.
Starting point is 00:36:29 So he might broadcast to some English town saying, Dear listener in Sophie's town, Robert Shire, where Miss Smith serves tea in the Yellow Door Cafe, where the mallards swim in the duck pond off the village green, and the town hall pluck runs three minutes slow. And of course, this made it seem like he had a local secret Nazi spy, or if he had just parachuted in yesterday, because he's describing the place so well
Starting point is 00:36:57 when in fact he hadn't been there for years. And of course, there's a very good chance that one thing that keeps coming up in these listeners is the detail about the clock being three minutes slow. And of course, there's a very good chance that somebody locally had a watch that's three minutes fast and they look at the town hall clock and think, fuck, he's right.
Starting point is 00:37:18 Or else the town hall clock is two minutes slow and people ignore the discrepancy when they're down the pub. or else somebody spread a conspiracy theory saying, ah, but the clock was three minutes slow yesterday, but then the home guard were sent in to synchronise the time to undermine Joyce. And of course, all these rumours spread, and it creates sheer panic. And there are some verified cases of Joyce's listeners actually being so terrified of his shows
Starting point is 00:37:48 and the prospect of an immediate Nazi invasion that they commit suicide. Joyce would announce that a specific armaments factory in some city would be bombed the following night. And, of course, what happens is it might be bombed, coincidentally. He doesn't know what the Luftwaffe are planning. Or it might be bombed five nights later. And again, people forget the discrepancy. It's like Alex Jones predictions. People just remember the hits and forget all the misses it has.
Starting point is 00:38:19 Yeah. Or munitions workers will listen to the broadcast, and they just won't turn up at work. the next day, because they don't want to be bombed. And then the factory has to close. So the rumor goes out that, oh, it's been closed, and that's why the bombing raid didn't arrive. So basically, panic, fear, and rumor filled the vacuum of information left in the wartime censorship.
Starting point is 00:38:41 And that's, of course, what fascism drives on, you know, on fear. Yeah, fear isolation. Yeah. Yeah. And he's so successful that the British government actually considers blocking the cross-chamination. radio signal. But the problem is, if they broadcast a block his incoming broadcasts, they are also stopping their outgoing broadcasts and communications with the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, the OSS
Starting point is 00:39:07 and the French Resistance and so on. So they can't do anything about it. And for the first few years of his broadcast, Joyce remained completely anonymous. His nasal tone earned him the nickname Lord Hawaugh because of he's perceived haughty, haughty posh, mayfair accent. Now, Joyce, we don't know what kind of accent this guy had as a kid. Because remember, he's born either in America
Starting point is 00:39:34 or in Ireland. His father is Irish. His mother is English. And when he comes to, when he comes to Britain and starts making political speeches, I mean, he was from Galway. I'm from County Clare, which is the next
Starting point is 00:39:49 county down. So, like, you couldn't stand on a stage in Britain to give a political speech to the Conservative Party with my accent, you know, if we jar with people. So he basically gets received pronunciation lessons, and that is, that's where the accent seems to come from. There's a myth that you'll find online, and it's popular in Galway, that remember I said in episode one about how he used to make speeches against the IRA and against Bolshevism and stuff. Yeah, he was supposed to have gotten into a lot of fights. So there's a myth about it that some other kid broke his nose so badly that he had a nasal tone for the rest of his life, which is a great story. Not impossible.
Starting point is 00:40:32 Not impossible. I talked to, as in-depth research for this, I phoned up a friend of mine who's a consultant optomologist, and he said no. That is not really possible. And even if you can find early accounts of William Joyce, he always seemed to have a kind of nasal or high voice. People always talked about him being, yeah, well, you can still believe it. You can still believe it. Anyway, eventually, when a Nazi victory seemed inevitable in 1941, Lord Hawa,
Starting point is 00:41:07 as he was known, out at himself on air as William Joyce, ending years of feverish speculation as his identity. people didn't know. And actually the term Noah Cahaw got applied. It's kind of like the Dred Private Roberts.
Starting point is 00:41:21 It gets applied to several different speakers, but Joyce is the guy who becomes Wesley. He's the guy who goes on to kind of personify it. So, but the tide of war,
Starting point is 00:41:32 of course, after he outs himself and the tide of public opinion soon change. Because with rapid Soviet-Russian advances on the Eastern Front, the D-Day landings,
Starting point is 00:41:43 the Allied re-conquest of Africa and the invasion of Italy, Lord Hawa became less a figure of dread and more a figure of ridicule as he's in passion broadcasts about the inevitable Nazi victory rang more and more hollow. So Looney Tunes produced a cartoon called Tokyo Jokio as a piece of propaganda
Starting point is 00:42:05 and is mocking the Japanese but also features Joyce as Lord He-Haugh, depicting him. as a braying Nazi donkey at a microphone. I saw, yeah, I remember this cartoon. Yeah, and the, the British Pathé, who would produce newsreels also made, like they start playing Joyce at his own game and, you know, doing comedy, which is something that, you know, British Pate and the BBC would never have done before.
Starting point is 00:42:36 But they have nasty Nazi news featuring Lord Hawa, And they depict him as a wealthy buffoon in the comedy clips, you know, going around saluting Hitler's picture on the wall and all this kind of stuff. And they would show these before, you know, newsreels and movies in the cinema. And I think we have an audio clip. There's also a song by the Western Brothers that is written about Lord Hawa, the Humbug of Hamburg. And I think I've sent you a link to that, Robert.
Starting point is 00:43:12 Maybe the first 45 seconds or as much of it as you can stand, because it's atrocious. This is not a banger. Okay, not a banger. All right. Well, let's make that judgment for ourselves. Let's see how I feel about it. Maybe this guy's going to be my new obsession. Oh, referring to this fellow Lord Hawhor.
Starting point is 00:43:32 This is Germany calling so Bing to Laro. Who is the chap who is? hits the high spot, the greatest comedian now of the lot. The definite radio star number one, the life of the party, the bundle of fun. Lord Hawhor, the humbug of Hamburg, the bloke with the tonsils and tone, his homburg he raises in Hamburg. His top lip is quite overgrown. And yet in the winter. It's rather pathetic. He's frozen to death because his pants are synthetic Lord Hawaugh, the humbug of Hamburg.
Starting point is 00:44:25 Well, do you think you could, you could have prop or someone drops some beats behind this? Yeah, yeah. You could remix that to something good. No, you, that also reminds me, but you mentioned Pathay, which distributed a movie. It's one of my favorite, like, fringe little British comedies that has some, like, fake, like, comedy music bits like this in there that's made to sound like it's stuff from the 40s. There's this film called Churchill the Hollywood years with Christian Slater and Neb Campbell, where Christian Slater plays Winston Churchill. And it was kind of like a, there was this movie made in the 90s called U571. I think it made in the 90s. And it was basically, it was about the capture of the enigma machine by the
Starting point is 00:45:07 British, but since it was an American movie, we just replaced all the British soldiers. with Americans. So the bit in this movie is that like, no, no, no, all British heroes have been Americans throughout history. You know, like, it's a grand conspiracy to convince the British that they can have heroes, but it's really just Americans the whole tie. Yeah, what we get is we get the British kind of stealing Irish celebrities. They come along and they say that, oh, Sir Sharon and she's Irish, or they'll say, you know, Brendan Gleason or Colin Farrell or someone, and the award-winning Irish actress Brenda Fricker said when you're when you win an Oscar, they call you British
Starting point is 00:45:46 and when you're drunk in an airport, they call you Irish. You know, they've only ever called... Daniel DeLewis's mother in my left foot, that's the movie she won an Oscar for. Oh, okay, yeah, good. I think we need to take our revenge by just stealing British, successful British actors with no Irish heritage like Benedict Cumberbatch.
Starting point is 00:46:08 and just the first one of ours. I would say you guys are already ahead because you have Colmini. Obviously, one of the greatest actors of all time. Chief O'Brien, yeah. Chief O'Brien. He also beat the absolute shit out of James Bond in the movie Layer Cake. Just really absolutely annihilated him.
Starting point is 00:46:26 Yeah. And, of course, the famous Star Trek episode with the United Ireland, which is very relevant to him. But anyway, we've gotten a sidetrack from Lord Hall to Star Trek. I can talk about Colmini all day. But yes, let's get back to Lord Haha. Yes. Facing ridicule for his day job as a radio DJ, Joyce began increasingly turning his hand to writing propaganda leaflets
Starting point is 00:46:49 in a failed attempt to recruit, captured British prisoners of war as members of the British Freight Corps or the British Free Corps, a unit of the SS. He also published a book on Anglo-German Relations entitled Damer Over England or Twilight Over England, which was promoted by the German Ministry of Propaganda. It compared the alleged evils of supposedly Jewish-dominated Britain with the purported wonders of Nazi Germany.
Starting point is 00:47:20 The book was a publishing success, and it was reprinted three times. Dr. Joseph Goebbels was delighted with Joyce's propaganda efforts so much that he had Hitler bestowed the German War Merit Cross First Class on Joyce. However, Hitler did not bestow the Medal of, in person. And though Goebbels was often in the same radio broadcast center as Joyce and regularly left him gift baskets of cigars and brandy, he never met him in person. He did refer to Joyce, however, as the finest horse in our stable, but he never regarded him as an equal. He never met Joyce to shake his hand or to pose for a photo with him, but he was a big fan if he's writing, so much so that in
Starting point is 00:48:04 1943, he commissioned Joyce to write a detective novel. Now, Robert, I regret to inform you that when I looked in all the dark corners of the internet, I was unable to find a copy of Joyce's weird Hitler fanfic murder novel. That's tragic. That's tragic. But I think it's remarkable that in 1943 as the battle of, you know, Stalingrad is coming to an end, Gobel's thought, hey, I know what will turn the whole war effort around. Let's commission a detective novel championing national socialist principles. That does make sense for these guys. I mean, Hitler sent a bunch of cowboy novels to his generals on the Ostfront when things
Starting point is 00:48:43 were slowing down. They had a lot of faith in fiction. Well, Robert, you were some very talented listeners. So if somebody wants to design a title and a cover art for this, send it on. Anyway, as the military and political situation went to shit in Nazi Germany in late 1984 and early 95. So too did William and Margaret's marriage. Now, this had never been a Hollywood romance with a heavy dose of cheating, alcoholism, verbal abuse. Domestic violence, engaged in by both spouses by now. But amazingly, living in a war zone with almost nightly aerial
Starting point is 00:49:20 bombardment, widespread food shortages, and increasing societal collapse actually made their relationship worse. The pair got divorced on the 12th of August, 1941. but later reunited and remarried. Almost immediately, as soon as they remarried, they just dive back into their previous toxic behaviours. Margaret started a long-term affair with a Vermacct officer, and when he caught a bullet on the Eastern Front, she had a string of shorter affairs on one-night stands,
Starting point is 00:49:50 while Joyce fucked about every secretary who was willing in the radio centre. And for some fucking reason, they just would not call it quits or go to a terrible, or marriage counseling, and they just seem to take joy in making each other increasingly fucking miserable. Even towards the end of the war, Joyce's creepy fucker that he was, began fantasizing again about Mary Ogilvy, the teenage student that he had cheated and his pregnant wife with
Starting point is 00:50:20 when she was just 15 or 16 years old. And Joyce wrote in his diary, quote, I think I was luckier in the marriages I did not contract than in those I did. The exception was Mary, with whom I am sure success would have been certain. In the last years and months of the war, Joyce is just pounding shnaps all day, every day. And he was such a dedicated Nazi that when he was offered extra food rations or extra pay because of his privileged position as a broadcaster, he doggedly refused to accept it. But he did, however, take all the cigarettes and snaps that he could get.
Starting point is 00:50:59 and he was able to use his influence to dine out as often as possible in De Prez Club, one of Berlin's few remaining functioning restaurants. One evening, he was coming home from the club and he had gotten so fucking cabbage drunk that he started a fist fight with one of the wardens in charge of the air raid shelter
Starting point is 00:51:21 where he and Margaret were sheltering from Anoria on Arbarmint. So Robert, That is streng forbidden in Deutschland. I don't know if you know this, but the Germans are said to be pretty big on rules and discipline at the best of times. Yeah. And in the dying days
Starting point is 00:51:39 of the Third Reich, they are not cool with anybody, including state employees like Joyce, assaulting air raid wardens, which they see as a subversive act undermining the national morale and the Nazi war effort. Look, I very rarely say the Nazis have
Starting point is 00:51:57 a point on this one, but you probably shouldn't start a fist fight with an air raid warden. That might be antisocial behavior basically everywhere. Also, you should probably listen to their directions and take cover. Anyway, they're an air raid warden. Yeah. Joyce wakes up the following morning in prison with the mother of all hangovers. And even though he was a broadcaster on Nazi radio, he did not have enough influence to talk his way out of this. situation. He did get bail, but was due to be brought to trial for undermining the war effort.
Starting point is 00:52:33 Potential penalty if he was found guilty was death. But Joyce's case did not go to trial because the night before he was due to appear in court, the RAF did him a favor of killing the judge and obliterating the court records in an air raid, leaving Joyce free to return to the airwaves for the remainder of his increasingly pointless broadcasting career. So this is the second time the has escaped a debt sentence. He really owes the R.A.F. a favor here. Yeah. But his luck is about to run out.
Starting point is 00:53:07 But Robert, do you know whose luck won't run out? Our sponsors. No, absolutely not. Never. Absolutely. I remember your old ad pivot and the joke you had about the child hunting island with Blue Apron. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:53:20 But you would always... That got us in trouble. You would always beep out Blue Apron. But for me, listening in Ireland, I wasn't familiar with Blue Apron. and it's the exact same length of time and syllable starting off. I always thought you were saying Bill Clinton's Child Hunting Island. If you told him, if these emails have taught us to anything, it's that he used someone else's Child Hunting Island.
Starting point is 00:53:43 He didn't maintain his own. That's not the way it works when you're the president. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Joltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville? tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. We have some breaking news to tell you about. Tennessee's Attorney General is suing a Nashville doctor.
Starting point is 00:54:09 In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight and trapped behind locked doors were more than a thousand frozen embryos. I was terrified. Out of all of our journey, that was the worst moment ever. At that point, it didn't occur to me. me what fight was going to come to follow. But this story isn't just about a few families' futures. It's about whether the promise of modern fertility care can be trusted at all.
Starting point is 00:54:38 It doesn't matter how much I fight. Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to what happened in Nashville on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1997, In Belgium, 37 female body parts placed in 15 trash bags were found at dump sites with evocative
Starting point is 00:55:04 names like the path of worry, dump road, and Fear Creek. Terrible discoveries of Saturday, investigators made a new discovery yesterday afternoon of the torso of a woman. Investigators believe it is the work of a serial killer. Despite a sprawling investigation, including assistance from the American FBI, the murders have never been solved. Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence and new suspects. We felt like we were in the presence of someone who was going to the grave with nightnourish secrets. From Tenderfoot TV and IHeart Podcasts, this is La Mansre Season 2, The Butcher of Moss, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:55:53 May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb explodes in the front seat of environmental activist Judy Berry's car. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me with just a force more powerful and terrible than anything that I could describe. In season two of RipCurrent, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Berry and why? She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. The man and woman who were heard had planned to lead a summer of militant protest against logging practices in Northern California. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods.
Starting point is 00:56:34 The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture. It was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth's in its family waited for justice to occur.
Starting point is 00:57:16 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did. why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse. He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him.
Starting point is 00:57:38 So he had this little practice, to the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so the Joyce's were evacuated from Berlin in March of 1945 to a broad...
Starting point is 00:58:06 Good time to get out of Berlin. Yeah. Yeah, to a broadcasting station in Hamburg. And by April of 1945, it was clear to pretty much everyone that the Nazis had lost the war. But Joyce continued to broadcast every night. he was repeatedly assured that he would not be captured by the Allies because the Nazis would take him and Margaret by submarine to Ireland, which had remained neutral during World War II.
Starting point is 00:58:32 The reality was that Hitler had a very packed schedule in April and May of 1945. He was running a government, fighting a war on two fronts, planning his 56 birthday party, he had to get his favourite dog put to sleep, he was planning his wedding and two funerals. So he probably did not know who Joyce was, and any available submarines they had were being loaded with gold bars
Starting point is 00:58:54 and looted Renaissance masterpieces and if they were going anywhere, it was to South America with senior Nazis on board and not sailing to Ireland to save the Joyce's. Yeah. Joyce made his final broadcast
Starting point is 00:59:07 on the 30th of April, 1945, same day as Hitler's suicide. Joyce's last broadcast was a rambling monologue during which he was so rubber-drunk that he slurred his words repeated, and struggled to string sentences together. Joyce used this last opportunity to admonish Britain
Starting point is 00:59:27 for declaring war on Germany and warned of the global menace that the USSR posed to the whole world. So again, thankfully, our recording of this survives. You just want to pay like, I think, the last 45 seconds of it, Robert? A tremendous world-shattering conflict It's been ways. Good. I would only say that the men who have died in the Battle of Merin
Starting point is 01:00:00 have given their lives to show that whatever else happens, Germany will live. And therefore I say to you in these last world, Last word, you may not hear from me again for a few months. I say, S. Lieber, Deutschland.
Starting point is 01:00:37 And Fowler. Well, yeah, I think that's probably bad enough. Yeah. How half-hearted did that last Heil Hitler sound, Robert? does not sound motivated. It sounds like a guy who just got evacuated from Berlin in March of 1945 and is aware that like, uh, we, we lost about as badly as we could have lost. Yeah. After the fall of Berlin, Joyce fled to Flandzburg, uh, where Hitler's successor, Admiral Donuts, had established a makeship government and was busy teaching people how to shout,
Starting point is 01:01:15 Heil Donuts, whilst he plotted increasingly desperate strategies to try and keep the few scraps of territory that he had together under Nazi control as the Third Reich. Yeah, how'd that work for him? Yeah. Four days after Joyce made his last broadcast, Nazi Germany surrendered and the British Army took control of the Hamburg Broadcasting Centre. A German Jew named Horst Pinscher, who had fled Nazi Germany for Britain at the age of 17, walked into Joyce's former studio and turned on the transmitter.
Starting point is 01:01:51 Lieutenant Pinscher had survived the D-Day landing and was present at the liberation of Belsen. He picked up Joyce's old microphone and made this broadcast, quote, This is Germany calling for the last time from Station Hamburg. Tonight, you will not hear William Joyce, or Lord Hawa, as he is known to most of us in Britain. he has been most unfortunately interrupted in his broadcasting career and at present he has left rather hurriedly for a vacation an extremely short vacation if the British army has anything to do with it after tonight's great news of the surrender of the German forces
Starting point is 01:02:28 I wonder what now are Lord Hawa's views on the news incredibly just over three weeks later the two met in person William and Margaret Joyce were hiding in the town of Flensburg near the German-Danish border in the hope of escaping to neutral Sweden. On the 28th of May, Joyce left to search for some firewood with which to cook and keep the couple warm. Emerging from a forest clearing carrying a bundle of sticks, he was stopped when he met two British officers who were out on the same errand. one was Pinscher who was accompanied
Starting point is 01:03:09 by his commanding officer who had the most English name ever Captain Bertie Licorish Oh my God Wow Wow Yeah
Starting point is 01:03:20 There's actually a British company Bassett's a sweet company Like a candy company Who make liquorish all sorts And have done for like a hundred years And their mascot is called Bertie Like How the fuck did these parents
Starting point is 01:03:34 Give him this name Yeah that's that's That's shockingly English. Let's also just pause here to remember that Joyce is literally carrying the symbol of fascism, a bundle of sticks when he encounters the British army. Yeah, also that that facial scar is no longer doing him any favors, because he is pretty recognizable. Anyway, Joyce decides to bluff it out, and he pretends to be a displaced Belgian and speaks to the two British officers in French, shouting, there are um plu de brindel parisci, which I'm told is the French for
Starting point is 01:04:09 there is more firewood over here. So the trio collected some firewood together and exchanged a few pleasantries in German before Joyce broke into English. He began critiquing the two soldiers on their technique for gathering firewood and then launched into an impromptu lecture
Starting point is 01:04:26 on the difference between deciduous and coniferous trees before starting on about which types of timber were the best fuel. Lieutenant Pinscher later recalled he was insufferable. He would just not stop talking. Does he get himself caught because he's a fucking dry heart? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:04:45 The more he spoke, the more his voice sounded familiar. And eventually, our hero, Captain Bertie Lickoryish, grew suspicious and said to him, You wouldn't happen to be William Joyce, would you? Joyce immediately reached for a fake German passport he had. You wouldn't happen to be the British guy we're looking for, would you? You know, the one who's a huge asshole and has a scar on his face? But so he reaches for a fake German passport, thinking it's going to get him out of it.
Starting point is 01:05:17 But Lieutenant Pinscher, thinking he was reaching for a weapon, immediately drew his own gun and shot Joyce twice. Awesome. So it gets better, Robert. The first bullet went through and through both cheeks of Joyce's ass. The second lodged in his shoulder and knocked him off his feet. Neither wound looked fatal, but Pinscher was immediately worried that he might have shot an innocent civilian. But when they searched him, as well as the German passport with a fake name,
Starting point is 01:05:48 they found a Volkstorm Militia Pass issued in the name of William Joyce, and they knew they had captured Lord Hall. Why did he keep that? Go on. Throw that thing out, man. Joyce was taken to hospital in a Royal Army Medical Corps ambulance. It was a memorable journey for Joyce, who lay in the back of the vehicle with four bullet wounds in his ass
Starting point is 01:06:14 and another round lodged in his shoulder. Couldn't it happen to a nicer guy. It gets better. When the ambulance driver discovered who the wounded patient he had was, he drove as hard and as fast as he could, deliberately aiming the wheels of his vehicle at every rut. at every rut Yeah, at every rut
Starting point is 01:06:38 Potthole and Shell Crater he could find Meanwhile, Lieutenant Pincher Who was guarding the wounded prisoner In the back of the vehicle Took great delight in revealing to him That the British Army officer who had shot him Was in fact not an English Christian But a German Jew
Starting point is 01:06:52 In Jew course Joyce was extradited to Britain Where he was put on trial for treason Now Joyce was extradited the day after the felony treason act, which was a medieval law, had been updated to make his prosecution more likely. A legal issue arose because of a lack of evidence. BBC had only kept transcripts and recordings of Joyce's Lord Hawaul radio broadcasts
Starting point is 01:07:19 in the latter stage of the war. And Joyce became a German citizen in 1942. So after that point, his support for Nazi Germany couldn't legally be considered treason. They managed to find a police officer who claimed he had heard Joyce broadcasting in 1939 and had previously heard him at fascist meetings so he could identify the voice. But the problem is that's hearsay evidence they couldn't play the recording in court. Matters were further complicated by the fact that Joyce was now claiming American citizenship, and of course the USA had been neutral until 1941.
Starting point is 01:08:03 The British government's prosecution lawyer, however, was able to prove that Joyce had sworn allegiance to the British king when he joined the British Army to escape from Ireland in 22, and he had claimed the protection of the British crown when he travelled to Germany on a British passport just before the outbreak of war in 1939 and therefore had committed treason by making pro-Nazi broadcasts between 39 and 42 when he became a German citizen. At his trial, Joyce did not deliver an impassioned rousing speech from the dock to defend his life. He merely spoke two words when entering a plea, not guilty. After the death sentence was passed, he merely smiled and bowed his head, but otherwise remained
Starting point is 01:08:48 silent. Joyce's last recorded words were mailed to his friend John McNabb, who had been a member of the National Socialist League. Quote, I do not, in the most infinitesimal degree, regret what I have done. For me, underlined, there was nothing else to do. I am proud to die for what I have done.
Starting point is 01:09:08 I shall not die in vain, and suspect my service in dying may be greater than my service in living. May it be so. So a Nazi to the end. There is another cool story about him that when they hanged him, that the facial scar,
Starting point is 01:09:23 scar actually burst open because of the pressure, which is a very cool story, and I was going to include, but again, until I talked to my friend, the consultant ophthalmologist, and he said, no, scar tissue was incredibly strong. There is no way that happened. Yeah, you'd have to get something like scurvy or whatever to have that happen. Again, great story. There's loads that he's about Joyce everywhere. But anyway, Joyce was executed by hanging at Wandwork Prison on the 3rd of January 1946. If he made a
Starting point is 01:09:55 speech from the gallows, it was not recorded by his executioner Albert Pierpoint, who had also executed Irma Greece and other
Starting point is 01:10:02 Nazi war criminals convicted at Nuremberg. Joyce's body was initially buried in an unmarked grave within the prison walls.
Starting point is 01:10:12 But in the 1970s, his eldest daughter Heather began a successful campaign to get his body exhumed. And in
Starting point is 01:10:19 1976, it was reinterred at Bohermore cemetery in Galway City. His widow, Margaret, had vowed to William Joyce in one of her last prison letters to him that she would write his biography after he's martyred him. When she died in 1972, all she left as a manuscript were a few scant biographical details about Joyce scribbled on a piece of cardboard. That didn't prevent Joyce, however, becoming an inspiration to new generations of Nazis. First editions of Joyce's book, Twilight over England, are collector's
Starting point is 01:10:52 items often prized by neo-Nazis and sell for up to $10,000 online today. In the 1960s, American Nazi party leader George Lincoln Rockwell inspired Terry Byrne, an overweight Irish house painter who lived with his mom in Dublin to found the Irish Nazi Party. Oh my God. Yeah, Byrne said that his political heroes were Adolf Hitler and William Joyce. Like his hero, commander, uh, Byrne was like, like, Joyce repeatedly stabbed on more than one occasion by anti-fascist opponents in the IRA.
Starting point is 01:11:27 But incredibly, he survived until the 1980s. For almost 20 years, he echoed Joyce by continually encouraging his followers to harass Dublin's tiny Jewish community and attack Jewish-owned businesses there. Joyce also remains popular on the British far-right scene, members of the neo-Nazi movement, or sorry, the neo-Nazi British movement founded by Rockwell's English Pals, Colin Jordan, who incidentally was once convicted of shoplifting women's underwear, visited Joyce's grave in Galway City earlier this year to lay a reek to him on the anniversary of his execution. So that, Robert, is the Nazi bastard I have for you. Wow. He continues,
Starting point is 01:12:07 yeah, he continues to inspire hate from beyond the grave, but hey, at least he eventually got what he deserved after he was brought to justice by a Jewish refugee who shot him in the ass. So I consider that a happy ending. Hey, you know what? We, we, rarely get a happy ending like this, where it's like, and then the Nazi died, and then the Nazi was killed, you know, before he could get rehabilitated or enjoy a peaceful life. He just, somebody, somebody took that fucker out. And that's nice. That's happy.
Starting point is 01:12:38 I'm happy to hear that. There's your Christmas wish, Robert. Yeah. Okay. Well, what a beautiful story. Thank you so much. I think that's going to do it for us. Do you want to plug your plugables down at the end here?
Starting point is 01:12:50 Yeah. So my blogger, really, is my book, Burn Them Out. It is a history of fascism and the far right in Ireland. It's published by Bloomsbury, Head of Zeus. So just Google, burn them out, fascism, Ireland, and it should come up. And yeah, if you can buy that, that would be great. Thank you very much, Milamagif. Excellent.
Starting point is 01:13:09 All right. Well, thank you so much. And, yeah, everybody, that has been our week. We'll back next week with another piece of shit who probably lives a long life and dies in bed. or is still alive, one of the two. But at least this week, there was a happy ending. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website,
Starting point is 01:13:33 coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com, at Behind the Bastards. A new true crime podcast from Tenderfoot TV
Starting point is 01:13:55 in the city of Mance in Belgium, women began to go missing. It was only after their dismembered remains began turning up in various places that residents realized. A sadistic serial killer was lurking among them. The murders have never been solved. Three decades later,
Starting point is 01:14:12 we've unearthed new evidence. Le Mestre, Season 2, is available now. Listen for free on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Explain the mashup that occurs around the OK Corral. How in the world is it Doc Holliday's business? In episode 799 of the Meat Eater podcast, host Stephen Ronella talks with author and Old West historian Mark Lee Gardner.
Starting point is 01:14:36 Whenever there was a posse formed, Doc Holliday was always there to help out. So he's like, I'm sick, I'm half dead, I'd love to throw in. So he just gets excited when there's a posse. It's like your buddy drew a tag, you know. Listen to the Meat Eater podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me. In season two of RipCurrent, we asked, who tried to kill Judy Berry and why?
Starting point is 01:15:05 They were climbing trees, and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history.
Starting point is 01:15:39 And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use. cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline is. The most Texas story ever. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.