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 and Tans. In later life, Elam reported that although she disliked Joyce, she believed that his execution by the British in 1946 was wrong, stating that he should not have been regarded as a traitor to England because he was not English, but Irish. In late August 1939, shortly before war was declared, Joyce and his wife Margaret fled to Germany. Joyce had been tipped off that the British authorities intended to detain him under Defence Regulation 18B. Joyce became a naturalised German citizen in 1940. In Berlin, Joyce could not find employment until a chance meeting with fellow Mosleyite