William Joyce real name to his listeners; and he would occasionally be announced as "William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw-Haw". Urban legends soon circulated about Lord Haw-Haw, alleging that the broadcaster was well-informed about political and military events to the point of near-omniscience. Although listening to his broadcasts was officially discouraged (but not illegal), many Britons heard the broadcasts. At the height of his influence, in 1940, Joyce had an estimated six million regular and 18 million occasional listeners in the United Kingdom. The broadcasts always began with the announcer's words, "Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany calling". These broadcasts urged the
William Joyce wrote a book "Twilight Over England" promoted by the German Ministry of Propaganda, which unfavourably compared the evils of allegedly Jewish-dominated capitalist Britain with the alleged wonders of National Socialist Germany. Adolf Hitler awarded Joyce the War Merit Cross (First and Second Class) for his broadcasts, although they never met. On 5 May 1945, four days after the Allies took Hamburg, CBS war correspondent Bill Downs broadcast a report about the condition of that city using Joyce's microphone. Scripts and the microphone used by Joyce were then seized by soldier Cyril Millwood and have now come to light following Millwood's