WM. JOYCE’S BOOK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 29 November 1945, Page 7

WM. JOYCE’S BOOK

“TWILIGHT OVER ENGLAND” FRANK ADMISSIONS AND BITTER ATTACKS “I came to Germany at the end of August, 1939, to play what humble part 1 could in working for her victory in the war which I knew to be inevitable." William Joyce (‘Lord Haw-Haw’ ), vvh ohas been senteifted to death for treason, makes this admission in his book “Twilight Over England.” a copy of which ha s been brought back by a New Zealand soldier who was a prisoner of war. The book which was written at the beginning of 1940, and published in English at The Hague in 1942. was amongst the literature provided by the Germans for prisoners of war, and the copy in New Zealand was smuggled out of one camp. A skilful interweaving of fact, half truth, and flat lie, the book is poor propaganda, and it is unlikely that any prisoner of war would have been impressed by Joyce’s distortion of English history, his ranting against the Jews, and his vulgar attacks on British war leaders. But every chapter reveals Joyce’s absolute belief Jn National Socialism, his intense adflp'ation for Hitler, and his bitter anti-Semitism. In the very first paragraph of his preface Joyce is quite open about what he calls his “High Treason.’’ He says that “when the writer is a daily perpetrator of high treason his introductory remarks may command from the English public that kind of awful veneration with which £SOOO confessions are perused in the Sunday newspapers, quite frequently after the narrator has taken his last leap in the dark. At any rate, I have reason to believe that many fictitious stories are being circulated about me in England already, and it seems less than fair to neglect* to provide them with that basis of fact which every skilful liar welcomes.” BORN IN NEW YORK Mr Justice Tucker ruled in Joyce's trial that the evidence that he was an American, and not a British subject, was overwhelming* Joyce says in his book that he was born in New York in 1906. His father’s people had lived in Ireland snipe the Norman Conquest. From his mother he inherited English. Irish, and Scottish blood. “Apart from my absolute belief in National Socialism and my conviction of Hitler's superhuman heroism, I had always been attracted to Germany.” says Joyce in his preface. “Perhaps the attraction was due to the German blood which flowed in the veins of some of my ancestors, it was no doubt helped by my veneration for the genius of men like Wagner and Goethe. Perchance my studies in German philology did much to make me aware of racial bonds that time and money have obscured. Whatever the reason may be, I grew up with that mystical attraction which has ended by my making Germany my permanent home.

“My hopes of being able to play some part of a definite kind, however small, in this struggle have been realised, thanks to the wonderful kindness and trust with which I, as a stranger, was greeted. . . . The ideological reasons which -have caused me to place my entire services at the disposal of the Third Reich are stated in the following chapters.” There are nine chapters in “Twilight over England.” and some of them deal with economic and political development in Britain, finance, the Jews, the British Empire. British foreign policy, and the post-war years in Britain from 1918 to 1939. Joyce claims to have studied English language and literature, history, and psychology at the University of London, and he makes apt use of quotations from Goldsmith. Marlowe, Dryden, Wordsworth, and the Jewish writer, Israel Zangwill, to bolster up his case. He has a particular fondness for Carlyle, who is described as a great National Socialist, and the writer who has inimitably expressed the spirit of Germany to-day. POLITICIANS IN THE PILLORY Joyce is most bitter in his attacks on men prominent in British public life. Mr Stanley Baldwin is the “pompous hardware monger from Worcester, always trying to ape the ways of a country gentleman," and the late Mr Ramsay MacDonald is first “this conceited child of Scotland” and then the “Loon from Lossiemouth.” Mr L. Hore-Belisha, once Secretary of State for War in Mr Chamberlain’s Cabinet, is described as “shoving, pushing, selfadvertising, gaudy, garish, clever. . .” while there is more than a page of. abuse of Mr Churchill He is given the title of Butcher-in-Chief to His Majesty the King, and Joyce says of him that “no more fitting representative could be found for the rotten old system against which Germany has been compelled to fight.” Joyce becomes almost hysterical in his admiration of Hitler, who was

“chosen by God to take the world through the greatest revolution since the Renaissance.” Hitler dared “to find work for the unemployed ... to remove the class barriers thrown up on the pavement of gold ... to dethrone money as the god of the human race ... to invoke the Lords of Light against the powers of darkness.” According to Joyce. Hitler showed his love for the working people throughout the whole of his life. and he “offered England the hand of friendship till it could be spurned no more ”

Joyce’s book shows that he has some skill as a writer and propagandist, but his concluding chapter reveals him as a very poor prophet. “In the days of his (Hitler’s) inevitable victory, when Britain is freed from the forces of darkness that have caused this war. the defeat of England w.ill be her victory. ... I hope and believe, that when the flames of war have been traversed the ordinary people of England will know their soul again and will seek, in National Socialism, to advance along the way of human progress in friendship with their brothers 04 German blood. That this hope and this belief shall not prove vain there are two guarantees, for me sufficient: the greatness of Adolf Hitler and the Greater Glory of Almighty God.”

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