William Joyce
William Brooke Joyce (24 April 1906 – 3 January 1946), nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born fascist and Nazi propaganda broadcaster during the Second World War. After moving from New York to Ireland and subsequently to England, Joyce became a member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) from 1932, before finally moving to Germany at the outset of the war where he took German citizenship in 1940.[2]
For other people named William Joyce, see William Joyce (disambiguation).
William Joyce
24 April 1906
3 January 1946 (aged 39)
Lord Haw-Haw
- United States (1906–1946)[1]
- Germany (1940–1946)
Broadcasting German propaganda in World War II
2
At the end of the war, after capture, Joyce was convicted in the United Kingdom of high treason in 1945 and sentenced to death, with the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords both upholding his conviction. He was hanged in Wandsworth Prison by Albert Pierrepoint on 3 January 1946, making him the last person to be executed for treason in the United Kingdom.[a]
Early life[edit]
William Brooke Joyce was born on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn, New York,[3] United States. His father was Michael Francis Joyce, an Irish Catholic from a family of tenant farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, who had acquired U.S. citizenship in 1894. His mother was Gertrude Emily Brooke, who although born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, was from a well-off Anglican Anglo-Irish family of physicians associated with County Roscommon. A few years after William's birth, the family returned to Salthill, County Galway. Joyce attended Coláiste Iognáid, a Jesuit school in County Galway, from 1915 to 1921. His parents were unionist and hostile to Irish republicanism[4] and his mother was a devout Protestant. There were tensions between her and her family because she married a Catholic.
During the Irish War of Independence, Joyce was recruited while still in his mid-teens by British Army captain Patrick William Keating to work as a courier for military intelligence personnel stationed in County Galway.[5] He was also suspected by the Irish Republican Army of working as an informant for the Black and Tans, "which could have had extremely serious consequences in 1920–21." On 14 November 1920, Catholic priest and republican sympathiser Michael Griffin was abducted and murdered by members of the Auxiliary Division, and Joyce was further suspected of being involved in his murder, though "[charges] of some involvement in this case [were] never proved".[6][7] Keating eventually arranged for Joyce to be enlisted into the Worcestershire Regiment, moving him out of harm's way in Ireland by transferring him to the Norton Barracks in England where the regiment was stationed. However, Joyce was discharged a few months later when it was discovered that he was underage.[8]
Joyce remained in England and briefly attended King's College School, Wimbledon. His family followed him to England two years later. Joyce had relatives in Birkenhead, Cheshire, whom he visited on a few occasions. He then applied to Birkbeck College, London, where he entered the Officer Training Corps. At Birkbeck, he obtained a first-class honours degree in English.[9][10] After graduating he applied for a job in the Foreign Office, but was rejected and took a job as a teacher.[11] Joyce developed an interest in fascism and worked with, but never joined, the British Fascists of Rotha Lintorn-Orman. On 22 October 1924, while stewarding a meeting in support of Conservative Party candidate Jack Lazarus ahead of the 1924 general election,[12] Joyce was attacked by communists and received a deep razor slash across his right cheek. It left a permanent scar which ran from the earlobe to the corner of the mouth.[13] While Joyce often said that his attackers were Jewish, historian Colin Holmes claims that Joyce's first wife told him that "it wasn't a Jewish Communist who disfigured him .... He was knifed by an Irish woman".[14]
Family[edit]
Joyce had two daughters with his first wife, Hazel, who later married Oswald Mosley's bodyguard, Eric Piercey. One daughter, Heather Iandolo (formerly Piercey), spoke publicly of her father.[49] She died in 2022.[50]
In popular culture[edit]
The 1944 film Passport to Destiny features a character played by Gavin Muir as Herr Joyce/Lord Haw, based on William Joyce as Lord Haw-Haw.
Lord Haw-Haw appears as one of the central characters in Thomas Kilroy's 1986 play Double Cross. Stephen Rea originated the role.[51]
Bibliography
Further reading