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The reports of downed planes and torpedoed ships may have been exaggerated, but Allied listeners often tuned in to see if they could pick up clues about the fate of friends and relatives who were missing in action.

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Answer Man: Nothing humorous about Lord Haw-Haw
BY ROGER SCHLUETER - News-Democrat

Q. I am old enough to remember a Lord Haw-Haw. He became the German equivalent of Tokyo Rose as he broadcast Nazi propaganda in English to Allied countries during World War II. But I'm trying to tell my grandchildren about him and I can't recall many details -- his real name, what happened to him, etc. Can you help?

-- S.B., of Belleville

A. You can tell your grandkids there definitely was nothing funny about Lord Haw-Haw (or Lord Hee-Haw, as he was called for a while by Britain's Daily Telegraph.)

Starting on Sept. 18, 1939, Germany's Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda began transmitting English-language programming to Great Britain by medium-wave radio and to the United States by shortwave.

The goal was to demoralize the Allies and convince them to agree to peace terms that would leave the Nazi regime in place, according to "Nazi Wireless Propaganda" by Martin Doherty. The reports of downed planes and torpedoed ships may have been exaggerated, but Allied listeners often tuned in to see if they could pick up clues about the fate of friends and relatives who were missing in action.

The man behind the microphone picked up his British-style nickname when a radio critic for Britain's Daily Express wrote of him, "He speaks English of the haw-haw, dammit-get-out-of-my-way variety."

But to whom the critic was referring remains a lively debate, because a series of broadcasters held the post over the six-year course of the war. The list includes Irish-born Wolf Mittler, who eventually had to escape to Switzerland after being arrested by the Gestapo; Norman Baillie-Stewart, a British soldier caught selling secrets to the Nazis; and James R. Clark, whose pro-Nazi mother moved from England to Germany when he was 17.

Perhaps the most infamous dark lord, however, was William Joyce, who did the broadcasts for most of the war. Born in the United States and raised in Ireland (where he informed on the Irish Republican Army), he fled to Germany in 1939 after learning that he was about to be imprisoned for belonging to the British Union of Fascists.

He soon found a home pumping out propaganda over the airwaves with his distinctive "Jairmany calling" drawl, possibly resulting from a broken nose suffered during a fight as a youngster. He became such a familiar figure that the Germans began promoting him as "William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw-Haw."

But when the British overran Hamburg and knocked the Nazi propaganda machine off the air on April 30, 1945, Joyce probably wished he would have stayed anonymous. Charged with treason by the British, Joyce argued he was an American citizen and owed no allegiance to the Crown. The British said he had lied to receive a British passport -- and silenced him forever by hanging him on Jan. 3, 1946.