Letting the Side Down: British Traitors of the Second World War

by Sean Murphy

Book Overview

During the Second World War, a collection of misfits and renegades, followed the path of treason through collaboration with the Axis powers. This book uncovers the reasons for their treacherous... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0750941766
• ISBN13: 9780750941761
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Sutton Publishing
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Introduces Axis WWII collaborators & sympathisers

Sean Murphy (no relation that I know of!) gives an accessible, cogent, and brisk overview of a complicated topic, that only recently--with the partial opening of access to archives--has begun to be shared: how British civilians, soldiers, and diplomats shared secrets with the Nazis (and the Japanese, in one chapter) before and during WWII. He writes clearly about an impressively varied cast of dozens of scoundrels, opportunists, deluded idealists, and just plain spies. Most seem to have taken the chance for excitement or escape from a POW camp, a chance to revenge themselves for imagined or real grievances against the British in some personal or ideological manner, or for the cash--which rarely amounted to much. Some were half-German having been raised in England; some fell in love with a German and wished to become reunited with a paramour through espionage on the Continent; some--like PG Wodehouse or Susan Hilton--found themselves trapped as the Nazis gained control of France or were shipwrecked and landed in German custody or were interned as foreign nationals. Many were lonely or misfits, and easily induced by their new captors into some level of cooperation, although this process, as Murphy carefully shows, was not always clear at the outset to the British subjects under Nazi pressure. With characters such as Paul Nash, Norman Baillie-Stewart, Thomas Baty (an elderly Englishman working for the Japanese who dressed in geisha gear), the Mitford sisters, and the best known, Lord Haw-Haw/William Joyce and John Amery, the narrative takes you quickly but with sufficient attention to detail, often drawn from recently available National Archive primary sources, through the actions and the reasons why a few British, along with assorted Irish, Scots, and Channel Islanders, chose to--often rationalising that they were defending true British ideals--side with the German forces, often in the early days of the war before Dunkirk and the Blitz revealed the true nature of Nazi plans for Britain. Having a special interest in William Joyce, I was impressed by Murphy's attention to primary sources here. Although Mary Kenny's biography, "Germany Calling," had not appeared when this book was published, Murphy relies not on JA Cole's superb earlier biography or Selwyn's briefer work on Joyce so much as archival evidence. This concentration on first-hand detail, whenever possible, rather than secondary sources keeps the pace fresh and the scholarship current. Even with a rather familiar subject such as Joyce, Murphy comes up with cogent insights. About Joyce's claim that he was a British citizen rather than American-born, Murphy suggests that this knowledge may have not been known to Joyce earlier in his life, due to his father's secrecy, so "perhaps Joyce actually believed he was British." (104) Additionally, in an account of his trial, Murphy contrasts the fate of Joyce and Amery with lower-profile collaborators, all of whom had done far more damage to the Cro