June 23rd, 1945IN THE immediate aftermath of the second World War stories about Hitler's whereabouts were common: in today's paper in 1945 he was reported to have escaped by submarine from a French port and been spotted in Hamburg.
The fate of Nazi leaders and those who helped them was also a favourite topic, as evidenced by the Irishman’s Diary that took up the case of William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, who was about to be condemned to death for treason for broadcasting Nazi propaganda to Britain.
It was written by the paper’s editor, Bertie Smyllie, under his pen name, Nichevo.
The British often have been accused of lack of imagination, and even their best friends must admit that sometimes this charge is based on fact.
Nobody can accuse me of lack of sympathy with Johnnie Bull; but when I read that William Joyce was being arraigned on a charge of High Treason, under some Act going back to the Flood, I must confess that I got a bit of a shock.
“If François Villon were the King of France” runs the old verse. I should like to write another, entitled “If Nichevo were the Prime Minister of England”.
What would I do? Quite a few things. But at the present moment probably the first thing I would do would be to drop the charge of treason against William Joyce, and include him in the next Honours List.
I would make Mr Joyce a Peer, conferring upon him the title of Lord Haw-Haw of Hamburg! And I mean that! It has been said that this and that individual “won the war” for the Allies; but in my humble opinion, no man did more to keep the morale of the British people up to the mark than this self-same William Joyce.
For the purposes of my argument, let me take myself as a typical adherent of the Allied cause, although technically, through no fault of my own, I was a neutral.
What happened? Simply this. Whenever I felt depressed at the bad news that from time to time – and how often? – came from the fighting fronts, all that I had to do to restore my equilibrium and to put me in good form again was to tune into Radio Bremen, Hamburg, and the rest, and listen for a few minutes to our old friend Liam of Galway. (By the way, was there not such a person among the crew of Christopher Columbus’s ship some years ago?)
“Haw-Haw” always acted on me as a tonic. Either he made me violently angry, or else he made me, like little Audrey, just “laff and laff”.
Either way he made me forget my depression, and, after all, that is what really mattered!
How nice it would be to hear him again – this time as a BBC announcer! If I were in a position to follow the Mikado’s example and make the punishment fit the crime, I would adopt a simple procedure – first, as I have said, having ennobled the gentleman in question, I merely would condemn him to re-read over the BBC network the broadcasts which he sent out from Germany, including the famous “Where is the Ark Royal?”
After a few weeks of that, poor William would be screaming for mercy!
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1945/0623/Pg003.html#Ar00302