William Joyce William Joyce William Brooke Joyce (24 April 1906 – 3 January 1946), nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born, Anglo-Irish Fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during World War II. He took German citizenship in 1940. He was convicted of one count of high treason in 1945 and sentenced to death. The Court of Appeal and the House of Lords upheld his conviction. He was hanged on 3 January 1946, making him the last person to be executed for treason in the United Kingdom. (Theodore Schurch was hanged the following day, but for the crime of treachery
William Joyce rather than treason.) William Brooke Joyce was born on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn, New York, United States. His father was Michael Francis Joyce (9 December 1866 – 19 February 1941) an Irish Catholic from a family of farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, who had taken United States citizenship on 25 October 1894. His mother was Gertrude Emily Brooke, who although born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, England, was from a well-off Anglican Anglo-Irish family of medical practitioners associated with County Roscommon. A few years after William's birth, the family returned to Salthill, Galway, permanently. Joyce attended Coláiste Iognáid, a Jesuit