History: Even 'Lord Haw-Haw' deserves a better book than this, writes Eunan O'Halpin.
Mary Kenny's introduction to this "personal biography" of Joyce explains that she will generally refer to her subject simply as "William", for the bizarre reason that readers might otherwise confuse him with James Joyce. This fantastic non-sequitur at least puts the reader on notice for what follows, a coy, cosy and sloppy narrative. We soon learn that Joyce "was not a particularly nice man, and when he was bad he was horrid"; that "his economic ideas about Ireland's woes were very sensible"; that he "had some of the attractive qualities of the absent-minded professor"; that "he could be very good company when he was on good form", and that he "certainly had some dreadful views, but he was not without redeeming qualities". His family remained devoted to him, and his brother, Quentin, fought long and hard to save him from the gallows. Kenny evidently believes that someone who was so loved could not really be a monster.
The problem with this kind of language and this kind of argument is obvious; the fact that Joyce's siblings and abandoned children cared for him, while commendable for them, confers no moral benediction on him. Equally, the doggedness with which he stuck to his unspeakable convictions renders these no less hideous. Otherwise, historians should be putting Hitler's chivalrous treatment of Eva Braun, making an honest woman of her even as the Soviets entered Berlin, and perhaps also his vegetarianism, his teetotalism, and his kindness to animals, on the scales against his appalling crimes.
William Joyce was born in the US in 1906, to Irish parents. The family moved back in 1909, settling first in Co Mayo and then in Galway. Joyce's childhood was happy enough, and his relationships with his parents and siblings good. He gave some trouble in school in Galway, and was singled out for his unfashionable and freely expressed pro-British views. He is said to have associated with the Black and Tans in Galway city, though being so young he can hardly have done more than cheer them along. It is claimed that the IRA planned to shoot him in 1921, though at 14 or 15 the diminutive Joyce would have been a shockingly young target. In the event, Joyce's family left Galway for London in December 1921, afterwards complaining at the inadequate compensation they received as displaced loyalists.
Joyce never regarded himself as either Irish or American but as British. In legal terms, however, he was not born British but American, because his father had taken out citizenship in the US. The fact of his American birth and arguable citizenship provided the basis for his lawyers' strong technical defence in 1945 that he could not have committed treason since he was not a British subject. Against this, he not only saw himself as British but had sought and used a British passport until he became a naturalised German citizen in 1941.
Joyce was a bright and energetic young man. He proved himself a gifted rabble- rouser, and despite his small stature was willing to mix it with opponents; fellow fascists must have envied him the prominent facial scar he acquired in one fracas. When Sir Oswald Mosley assumed control of the British fascist movement in 1932, Joyce became a paid organiser. In August 1939, anticipating that he would be interned if he stayed in Britain, Joyce travelled with his girlfriend, Dorothy, to Berlin. There he soon began broadcasting on German English-language transmissions to Britain, being awarded the mock-title, "Lord Haw-Haw", by the English media in 1940. It is more usual for the British to take titles away from traitors: Roger Casement in 1916, and Anthony Blunt in 1979.
There was nothing redeeming in Joyce's ideological beliefs, his private life, his indifference towards his children, and above all, his relentless attachment to the Nazi project to the bitter end in the spring of 1945, a downfall in his case apparently somewhat cushioned by prodigious amounts of booze and plenty of sex. What set him apart from other British traitors of the war was his unrepentant courage in facing his fate. There were no excuses, no snivelling, no self-pity. Sir John Stephenson, who, as an MI5 officer and lawyer, headed a traitor-catching unit in north-western Europe in 1944-5, told me that of the hundred or so renegades in whose cases he was involved, Joyce was the only one to display any gumption or character. Yet he and the pathetic John Amery, the errant son of Churchill's long-time supporter and wartime cabinet colleague, Leo Amery, were the only ones to die for their actions. The others, where they faced proceedings at all, were gradually allowed to return to civilian life and to bury their pasts.
Joyce did not display a shred of remorse for what he had done, initially as the taunting, then the triumphalist English voice of Hitler's war, later its defiant champion, and always a depraved anti-Semitic ranter. This last point is what makes Kenny's preferred punishment for him, that instead of the gallows he should have been sent on a tour of the death camps, so ludicrous. It implies that the scales would have fallen from "William's" eyes had he only seen what actually happened to Jews under Nazism. But Joyce had lived a comfortable and well-connected existence at the centre of Hitler's war since September 1939, and by 1942 knew perfectly well in general terms the fate of the Jews. For him a tour of Auschwitz would most likely have been not an epiphany, but a consolation that the real enemy against whom he had declaimed to the very end had also suffered.
Joyce was a bad man, but he deserves a better book than this.
Eunan O'Halpin is Bank of Ireland professor of contemporary Irish history at TCD. He is the editor of MI5 and Ireland, 1939-1945: The Official History (Irish Academic Press, 2002)
Germany Calling: A Personal Biography of William Joyce, "Lord Haw-Haw". By Mary Kenny, New Island Books, 320pp. €25