The man hanged for treason despite never actually being a British citizen
In short: William Joyce, the infamous Nazi propagandist known as Lord Haw-Haw, was executed in 1946 for high treason. Yet, legal inquiries revealed he was not a British subject. His conviction relied on a technicality involving a fraudulently obtained passport, a case that remains a landmark in British legal history.
Born in Brooklyn in 1906, William Brooke Joyce moved to Ireland and later England, where he became a prominent figure in Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. By 1939, he had fled to Germany, where he took citizenship and became the voice of the English-language Nazi radio service. His broadcasts, which began with the iconic phrase 'Germany calling,' reached an estimated six million regular listeners in the UK at their peak in 1940.
Following his capture in 1945, Joyce faced trial at the Old Bailey. The prosecution faced a significant hurdle: Joyce was not a British subject, meaning he could not technically commit treason against a country to which he owed no allegiance. The judge directed the jury to acquit him on the first two charges. However, the Attorney General successfully argued that by holding a British passport—even one obtained by misstating his nationality—Joyce had claimed the protection of the Crown and therefore owed it allegiance until the document expired.
The House of Lords upheld this controversial conviction in December 1945, with Lord Porter dissenting. Historian A. J. P. Taylor famously noted that Joyce was essentially hanged for a passport application error that would typically warrant only a small fine. Joyce was executed at Wandsworth Prison on 3 January 1946, the penultimate person in the UK to be hanged for a crime other than murder. Recent evidence suggests he may have secured immunity for his wife, Margaret, by withholding information about his MI5 connections during his final days.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: William Joyce
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