Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw-Haw: The History of the Axis Powers’ Most Notorious Propagandists during World War II

The subtle art of propaganda campaigns directed against one’s enemies has been a feature of war since ancient times. However, its potential for mass psychological impact created a new paradigm with the invention of modern electronic communications. Every nation involved in the Second World War, whether of the Allies or Axis, possessed an agency devoted to the mission of demoralizing and misleading the enemy, and virtually all artistic genres participated. In America, Frank Capra, director of beloved films such as It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , also directed wartime films demonizing the Germanic personality. In a notable example, a training film warns young GIs that German women do not share a natural capacity for human ethics common to higher civilizations and therefore must be avoided. Theodore Geisel, beloved to Western children as Dr. Seuss, wrote stories stereotyping, demeaning, and demonizing the Japanese, complete with insulting and offensive illustrations. Radio Free Europe filled the airwaves with pro-western speech as a counter to communist expansion and diatribes about the ‘otherness’ of enemy societies. As in virtually all wars, racism also made up a central component of the propaganda efforts going both ways between Japan and the United States in the 1940s. Racial superiority and a state of arrested evolution were ever-present themes. Leaflets were dropped on many European cities urging surrender and accentuating the hopelessness of resisting. With the honing of effective radio propaganda and the use of alien rhetorical talent, specific broadcasts from Europe and Asia targeted the rank and file of Allied soldiers fighting in every venue of the Second World War. These figures were often drawn from a pool of prisoners of war or expats disenchanted with their home countries. The mission required English speakers with a linguistic finesse and an understanding of the enemy’s source of morale and pride. In Germany, the most threatening and caustic radio personality was Mildred Gillars, known to the troops as the foreboding “Axis Sally.” William Joyce, known to the British homeland as Lord Haw-Haw, specialized in the same acidic diatribes against men and women of the western military, broadcasting from Berlin and easily heard in London. Reports over the airwaves suggested that specific family members had died back home or that male siblings had been killed in action. Wives and girlfriends were reported to be unfaithful in a soldier’s absence by agencies who claimed to be aware of such matters. Enemy assaults upon the Allies’ willingness to fight were frequently followed with fictitious reports of American, British, or other collaborators’ defeats. Dire threats were levied against those serving in specific locations, with precise military information invoked for enhanced credibility. Despite the many national talents in artistic expression, one of the mainstays of Japan’s participation in the “thought wars” was radio. Such sophisticated programming usually left little doubt in the minds of listeners as to the allegiance of the broadcaster. However, in America’s war against Japan in the Pacific, the matter became far more complicated. At face value, the case of Iva Ikuko Toguri, later dubbed “Tokyo Rose,” seemed straightforward. Considering her relationship with the American government and subsequent imprisonment following the war, no necessity to see her motives as anything but anti-American seems apparent. However, after broadcasting regularly to all branches of American servicemen in the Pacific theater in World War II, the woman associated with the infamous nickname never used the moniker, nor had she ever heard of it. [Joyce, William] Kenny, Mary. Germany A Personal Biography of William Joyce, 'Lord Haw-Haw'. Dublin, New Island, 2003. 16 cm x 24 cm. XX, 300 pages, 17 illustrations. Original Hardcover with illustrated dustjacket in protective Mylar. Paint marks on dustjacket, foxing to edges, bumped corners. Otherwise in very good condition with some signs of wear. William Brooke Joyce (24 April 1906 3 January 1946), nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born, Anglo-Irish Fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during World War II. He was convicted of one count of high treason in 1945 and was sentenced to death. The Court of Appeal and the House of Lords upheld his conviction. He was hanged at Wandsworth Prison by Albert Pierrepoint on 3 January 1946, making him the second to last person to be executed for treason in the United Kingdom (before Theodore Schurch the following day). William Brooke Joyce was born on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn, New York, United States. His father was Michael Francis Joyce (9 December 1866 19 February 1941) an Irish Catholic from a family of farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, who had taken United States citizenship on 25 October 1894. His mother was Gertrude Emily Brooke, who although born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, England, was from a well-off Anglican Anglo-Irish family of medical practitioners associated with County Roscommon. A few years after William's birth, the family returned to Salthill, Galway, permanently. Joyce attended St Ignatius College, a Jesuit school in Galway (from 191521). Joyce's mother was strongly Anglocentric and despite tensions with her father for marrying a Catholic, remained staunchly Protestant and Unionist herself, hostile to Irish nationalism. Joyce's father bought up houses and rented some to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). It was during the Irish War for Independence, that Joyce had his first taste in poli.. William Joyce Gained Notoriety As The Propaganda Voice Of The Third Reich. Known As 'lord Haw-haw', He Was The Last Man To Be Hanged For Treason By The British Crown, Executed As A British Subject Who Had Given Aid And Comfort To The King's Enemies In Time Of War. But William Joyce Was Not A British Subject. American By Birth, Irish By Upbringing, There Was No Basis For What Was Seen By Many As A Show-trial, Enacted To Express Post-war Anger Towards Hitler, Nazism And The Defeated Fascist Regime. Now, Sixty Years After The Second World War, Acclaimed Journalist And Author Mary Kenny Explores Afresh The Life Of William Joyce. Discovering An Eccentric Irishman Whose Values Were Warped By The Troubled Times In Which He Grew Up, Kenny Explores Joyce's Obsessive Anti-semitism, Laying Bare The Startling Realities Behind One Of The Twentieth Century's Most Notorious Voices.--jacket. Introduction: A Crazy Mixed-up Irishman -- Prologue: A Hanging And Two Burials -- Blood And Soil: The Family Heritage Of William Joyce -- A Jesuit Boyhood; A Time Of Troubles -- From Erin To Empire; From Anti-fenian To Anti-semite -- A Married Man -- With The Blackshirts: The 'mighty Atom' -- Germany Calls -- Becoming Lord Haw-haw -- A Hit With Hitler: Media Star Of The Third Reich -- Life In Berlin -- The Turning Tide -- The Road To Nowhere -- The Dramatic Last Days -- Epilogue: Post-mortem, Post-war. Mary Kenny. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. "High treason - the breach of allegiance which a subject owes to his or her sovereign - has always been regarded as the most serious of all criminal offences. Even today it still carries the death penalty. In addition, all the property of a person convicted of treason was, until the eighteenth century, forfeited to the Crown." "Wartime aside, there have been no prosecutions for treason for well over a century and the topic has almost, but not quite, disappeared from legal text books. In this revealing study, Alan Wharam relates the intriguing stories behind a dozen treason trials encompassing the Earl of Essex in 1601 to 'Lord Haw Haw' in 1946. The accounts are all based on the reports, believed in most cases to be the verbatim records of the evidence given, and of the speeches of Counsel and the directions of the judges, which appear in the State Trials and other similar works." "As for the conduct of the legal profession, this ranges across the whole of the spectrum of professional standards: from Sir Edward Coke and Chief Justice Popham engineering the judicial murder of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, to Adolphus and Pollock defending men, whose objectives they abhorred, with the highest degree of skill and integrity."--BOOK JACKET This book contains accounts of a number of treason trials ranging from the Earl of Essex in 1601 to "Lord Haw Haw" in 1946.