How the fascist “Lord Haw Haw” was tried for treason

It was an ignominious end for a man who had become a household name in the United Kingdom when war broke out in September 1939. British citizens had expected Hitler to launch a disastrous attack immediately, but when that did not happen, the tense calm was dubbed the Phoney War. In those early days, the main danger on the home front was not air raids, but sprained ankles. To hinder German bombers, the government imposed a blackout. By Christmas 1939, a Gallup poll found that one-fifth of the country’s population had fallen downstairs, collided in the dark or suffered other injuries, most of them minor. Road deaths nearly doubled until gasoline rationing reduced traffic. Entertainment venues were closed and gatherings were banned, so people had no choice but to stay at home and listen to the radio at night.

Many were unimpressed by the BBC’s dreary schedule of short bulletins with little reporting, boring public information announcements, and filler such as Sandy Macpherson’s organ concerts. And along the radio dial, anxious listeners found something even livelier: a mysterious man broadcasting over Medium Wave on the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG), nationalized under the Nazis. With an exaggerated nasal English accent, he announced himself with the phrase “Germany is calling, Germany is calling.”

The Daily Express radio critic Jonah Barrington called him Lord Haw-Haw, and the nickname stuck. Barrington’s aim was to disparage the preacher from Germany, but it turned out that many listeners enjoyed the shock value of Haw Haw’s new work. His style was to entertain while undermining the morale of his British audience by sowing doubt through semi-plausible rumours, exaggeration and ridicule. On one radio programme, he spoke of “panic and confusion… gaining ground by the hour” in Britain. He said, “The only wonder is that it took the people of this afflicted island a long time to realize the nature of the positions into which their politicians led them.”

In another article, Haw-Haw ridiculed people’s fears about the German bomb threat. He said: “The British Ministry of Misinformation is carrying out a systematic campaign to frighten British women and girls about the risk of being injured by splinters from German bombs. Women have responded to these suggestions and warnings by asking milliners to shape their spring and summer hats from a very thin sheet of tin.” It doesn’t seem like much fun now, but maybe you should have been there.