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 then drove him to a border post and handed him to British military police. Joyce was then taken to London and tried at the Old Bailey on three counts of high treason: "Not guilty" were the first words from Joyce's mouth in his trial, as noted by Rebecca West in her book "The Meaning of Treason" (as noted by Whittaker Chambers in his 1947 review of that book). The only evidence offered that he had begun broadcasting from Germany while his British passport was valid was the testimony of a London police inspector who had questioned him before the war