WW2: Fascist Lord Haw-Haw Tried For Treason, Nazi Propaganda Radio Host 'Germany Calling': BBC
Last edited Mon Mar 23, 2026, 05:44 PM - Edit history (1)
'Germany calling': How fascist 'Lord Haw-Haw' was tried for treason,' BBC News, Dec. 29, 2025.
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With his mocking English accent, the mysterious radio host broadcast to the UK from a German station, spreading rumours and exaggeration in the early days of World War Two. Three days before Germany's unconditional surrender on VE Day in May 1945, BBC war correspondent Wynford Vaughan-Thomas spoke from a Hamburg radio studio on the same microphone and wavelength that weeks earlier had broadcast Nazi propaganda.
"Tonight, you will not hear views on the news by William Joyce. For Mr Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw to most of us in Britain, has been most unfortunately interrupted in his broadcasting career… This is the BBC, calling all the long-suffering listeners in Britain who for six years have had to put up with the acid tones of Mr Joyce." Rummaging through Joyce's desk, Vaughan-Thomas found his timetable for 10 April 1945: "At the end of it is the glorious item: 1450 to 1510 hours, 'A pause to collect my wits.'"
Warning: This article contains themes and language that might be upsetting.
Joyce had fled the war-ruined city weeks earlier with fake papers, at his wits' end and hoping to evade capture by the advancing Allied forces. On his final recording, he sounds drunk and defeated: "I have always hoped and believed in the last resort, there would be an alliance… between England and Germany. Well, at the moment that seems impossible. Good. If it cannot be, then I can only say the whole of my work has been in vain." The tape, retrieved from a captured Nazi recorder, may never have aired. A devoted Nazi to the end, he signs off: "Es lebe Deutschland (long live Germany), Heil Hitler and farewell."
🎙2:03, WATCH: 'No measures of tyranny that any foreign foe can introduce will shatter Germany'.
It was an ignominious end for a man who had become a household name in the UK when war broke out in September 1939. British citizens had expected Hitler to launch a catastrophic attack immediately, but when that didn't happen, the tense lull was dubbed the Phoney War. In those early days, the main hazard on the home front wasn't air raids but twisted ankles. To hinder German bombers, the government enforced a blackout. By Christmas 1939, a Gallup poll found a fifth of the nation's population had fallen downstairs, collided in the dark or suffered other, mostly minor, injuries. Road deaths almost doubled until petrol rationing cut traffic.
Entertainment venues were shut and gatherings banned, so at night people had little choice but to stay at home and listen to the radio.
"His style was to entertain while undermining his audience's morale by spreading doubt through semi-plausible rumours, exaggeration and ridicule...
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20251223-how-fascist-lord-haw-haw-was-trialled-for-treason
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- Wiki, Lord Haw- Haw. Lord Haw-Haw was a nickname applied to William Joyce and several other people who broadcast Nazi propaganda to the United Kingdom from Germany during the Second World War. The broadcasts opened with "Germany calling, Germany calling," spoken in an affected upper-class English accent.
Through such broadcasts, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda tried to discourage and demoralise both Allied troops and the British population. Although the broadcasts were known to be Nazi propaganda, they often offered the only details of Allied troops and air crews caught behind enemy lines. The nickname, coined by a reporter, was applied to other broadcasters of English-language propaganda from Germany, but it is Joyce with whom the name is overwhelmingly identified.
Aim of broadcasts. The English-language propaganda radio programme Germany Calling was broadcast to audiences in the United Kingdom on the medium wave station Reichssender Hamburg and by shortwave to the U.S. The programme began on 18 Sept. 1939 and continued until 30 April 1945, when the British Army overran Hamburg. The next scheduled broadcast was made by Horst Pinschewer (also known as Geoffrey Perry), a German-Jewish refugee serving in the British Army who announced the British takeover. Pinschewer was later responsible for the capture of William Joyce.
Through such broadcasts, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda attempted to discourage and demoralise American, Australian, British, and Canadian troops, and the British population, to suppress the effectiveness of the Allied war effort through propaganda, and to motivate the Allies to agree to peace terms leaving the Nazi regime intact and in power...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw
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